Eli Roth's History of Horror (2018) s01e01 Episode Script
Zombies
[ominous music]
The zombie is absolutely
all-American horror metaphor.
- [growling]
- They are the monster
of the 21st century.
Right now it does seem like
we're in the middle
of a zombie apocalypse.
We're getting our chance
to exercise
our most anti-social emotions.
- [screaming]
- You know, that
that mob impulse that's like,
"Yeah, kill them all
and let God sort them out."
[zombies groaning]
Eventually
they overwhelm you.
- They're not stopping to eat.
- [screaming]
Well, I mean,
unless they're stopping
- to eat one of you.
- We're all gonna die.
We all are gonna
get cancer one day.
We're all gonna get sick.
It's almost like
an accelerated version of that.
We don't want zombies
to come and destroy
all of our friends
and family and institutions
but on some level,
maybe we do.
Like, on some level
it provides us a chance
to just dismantle
everything
[frantic music]
And possibly start over.
[screaming]
What are humans like
when faced with the end
of humanity?
What are they like
when they're faced
with very few choices
in in regards
to how to survive?
That's the horror
of zombie movies.
- No!
- It's the wrong impulses
that come out of people
that are far more terrifying
than the walking dead.
[zombies growling, screeching]
♪♪
[sinister music]
♪♪
[foreboding music]
I'm Eli Roth.
[hissing]
The history of horror
is filled with monsters.
Nightmare figures that tap
into our deepest fears.
♪♪
But our fears,
and our monsters,
change with the times.
♪♪
Right now, it's the time
of the zombie.
[zombies growling, screeching]
Fast zombies, slow zombies,
comedy zombies,
teen zombies
[screaming]
Whatever their shape,
zombies are everywhere.
How did we get here?
What set off zombie fever?
As we'll see,
zombies have been around
for decades.
[zombies hissing, growling]
♪♪
But the debut
of "The Walking Dead"
in 2010 saw them explode
- into popular culture.
- [growling]
To almost everyone's
surprise, a horror series
became the most popular show
on television.
♪♪
My brother's kids
ten years old, five years
they watch "Walking Dead."
[yells]
Kids eight years old
watch "Walking Dead."
What is it
about "Walking Dead"
that zombies have become so,
almost normalized
- that kids love it.
- [clears throat]
They don't take it seriously.
I think it's amazing.
- Well
- "Walking Dead" plays
- like a family show.
- It's all about
the characters.
♪♪
You can follow
this group of people
as they struggle to survive
week after week
after week after week.
[hissing]
♪♪
You can see them live,
you can see them die,
you can see everything
that they go through
with the zombie apocalypse
set as the backdrop.
- [zombies growling]
- [panting]
Everybody wants to
think that they would be able
to survive
the zombie apocalypse.
[grunting, exclaiming]
You figure, "What would I do
to survive?"
Uh, because that is the crux
of the show,
ordinary people who
all of a sudden
are thrust into
an extraordinary situation.
which always give you
some of the best drama.
[zombie growling]
Are you gonna fight
for what you believe in?
Are you gonna be
the type of person
that runs away from it?
You know, there's no status
and and fame,
and money, and uh,
there's none
of that bull[bleep].
The apocalyptic simulation
is really an interesting
sociological experiment
about, you know,
who do people become,
and who would I become,
and what would be okay
if the rules weren't
the same anymore?
I want to be a Michonne
[zombies hissing]
But I'm probably more of, um
I don't know, a Eugene.
[laughs]
You got a name, ass[bleep]?
Eugene.
They're coming to get you,
Barbara.
Stop it!
You're acting like a child.
They're coming for you.
Look, there comes
one of them now.
Without George Romero and
"Night of the Living Dead,"
there would be
no "Walking Dead."
"Night of the Living Dead"
laid the template
for every zombie
survival story that followed.
It's a simple plot
six people trapped
in a farmhouse
surrounded by
the flesh-eating undead
but it changed everything.
You got to see
the boundary pushed
going from
the 1950s creatures
the man in the rubber suit
to like, graphic viscera.
- Mm-hmm.
- What was it like seeing it
pushed farther and farther?
- [zombies growling]
- I can remember just
sort of wandering into
a screening
of "Night of the Living Dead."
The whole place was full
of kids it was like
a Saturday matinee
and they're all, you know,
yelling and grab-assing around
and throwing
their popcorn boxes,
and that thing got going
and they just fell
entirely silent.
[zombie growling]
- [weeping]
- And I was scared, too.
The first time that you see
something like that,
you're not prepared
for what you're looking at.
[sinister music]
George Romero
really creates the rules.
I mean, the whole thing
of, like, if you get bit,
- you turned into one
- Yeah.
Shoot them in the head
♪♪
- That didn't exist before.
- Those rules
for the modern-day zombie
were created 50 years ago.
- By George Romero.
- If I were surrounded
by six or eight
of these things, would I stand
- a chance with them?
- Well, there's no problem.
If you had a gun,
shoot 'em in the head.
That's a sure way to kill 'em.
If you don't, get yourself
a club or a torch.
Beat 'em or burn 'em.
They go up pretty easy.
♪♪
It almost feels like
the zombie movie
there's like a quantum leap
that happens
where there are
different phases.
Like the 1930s and '40s,
it was the
"I Walked With a Zombie."
It was "White Zombie."
It was the hypnotist zombie.
It was a mad scientist
on an island
that has found a way
to raise the dead
- and enslave them.
- A lot of zombie films
were about people
who had been just stripped
of their identity
and were slaves, almost.
You know, they could be
workers, or they could just
sort of shamble and look scary,
but they weren't attacking
and biting and killing
like they did
in "Night of the Living Dead."
Baby
[gasps]
- [whimpering]
- Mean, there were things
that were so transgressive
in that movie.
[whimpering]
[wailing]
The little girl stabs
her mother to death.
The little kid
killing her mom, that had
no one had ever seen
anything like that.
The first time you see it,
you're just horrified.
You can't believe
what you're seeing.
[screeching]
"Night of the Living Dead"
was much more
of a claustrophobic nightmare
kind of experience,
"Night of the Living Dead"
is also, uh,
somewhat facetious,
and it's also
it has its
sociopolitical allegory.
What's important about
"Night of the Living Dead"
is the fact that the travails
of the people
locked in that house
are really a microcosm
of what's going on
in American society
- [indistinct]
- The tumult of the late 1960s
is reflected in the fear
and the the violence
that that occur in
and around that house.
That movie's revolutionary
in many, many ways
and had profound impact
the fact it had
a black lead
[suspenseful music]
[groans]
Which George always said
was not deliberate.
It was that Duane was
the best actor.
I don't believe him.
I think it was deliberate.
With all of us working,
we can fix this place up
in no time.
We have everything we need
up here.
We can take all that stuff
downstairs with us.
Man, you're really crazy,
you know that?
Let's say you're a
a white viewer
in the late 1960s
who has a few prejudices, say,
and is a little bit worried
that the world is ending
because of all of the, uh,
racial legislation
of the '60s
The Voting Rights Act,
The Civil Rights Act
and here's this zombie film
where the dead
are coming back to life
and a black man is in charge.
I don't want anyone's life
on my hands.
- Is there anything I can do?
- I don't wanna hear any more
from you, mister.
If you stay up here,
you take orders from me.
I will contend that
that might have been
as frightening to some viewers
as the child eating her mother
in the basement.
[laughing]
[sinister music]
What we get is potentially
something hopeful, you know,
with the African-American
protagonist
like maybe some new direction
socially
but instead it just turns
into vigilante justice
represented by
a white lynch mob.
You can imagine the the shock
that audiences must have felt
to to be coaxed
into identifying
with a black man
only to have him shot
and then pitchforked
onto a pile of burning bodies
at the end.
That's a slap.
That's a direct slap
to any audience,
right wing or left wing.
"The Night
of the Living Dead"
does not end on any kind
of triumph.
Your hero is shot by police.
It's the most upsetting ending
in cinema.
And then that has continued
through horror cinema
of actually
It doesn't always have
a happy ending.
♪♪
I think that's the joy
of horror cinema,
is that it can, like,
affect you in lots
- of different ways.
- If George Romero
had only made
"Night of the Living Dead,"
- he would still be a legend
- [growling]
But he didn't stop.
"Night of the Living Dead"
and its sequels
changed the course
of film history.
and inspired the best
the horror genre has to offer.
- [groaning]
- He was such a big influence
on "Shaun of the Dead."
We liked this idea
of our film taking place
within George Romero's
universe.
[yelling]
- [grunts]
- "Shaun of the Dead"
was so well done
that it opened the floodgates
to, like, everybody to try
and make a zombie movie.
[dramatic music]
Today, zombie movies
and TV shows are everywhere.
but not so long ago,
they had virtually
disappeared.
Edgar Wright's
"Shaun of the Dead"
helped bring them back
bigger than ever.
[sinister music]
[zombies moaning]
When we thought up the idea
for "Shaun of the Dead,"
one of the inspirations for it
is because there hadn't been
a zombie film
for, like, 15 years.
♪♪
We always had this theory
that, like, uh,
John Landis' video
for "Thriller"
sort of killed off zombies
for the second half
of the '80s and early '90s.
[menacing laughter]
So I think what happened was,
all of a sudden
the zombie genre
which traditionally had
probably sort of died out
- Yeah.
- A little bit
and then all of a sudden
you have all these
zombie video games
and they're like, "[bleep],
man, people love
shooting zombies."
It was around, like,
the late 1990s
when "Resident Evil" came out
the game.
[gunfire]
- [zombie groans]
- So people started
to take an interest
in the genre again.
[foreboding music]
Every now and then,
we see a movie
that is supposedly horror
but yet uses
social commentary brilliantly,
and the best example
is "Shaun of the Dead."
[cheerful music]
You want to know
where Britain was
at that time, you look at
"Shaun of the Dead."
[groaning]
In the '90s and the dawn
of the new century,
we were in a new phase
in Britain
and a whole new generation
of Britons were asking:
"What's next?"
And they were a little lost.
[gunfire]
Hey, man, listen, um
oh, top left.
- Uh-huh.
- I was gonna say
- reload.
- I'm on it.
And it was brilliant.
What I love about
"Shaun of the Dead"
is they're not making fun of
zombie movies,
they're making
a funny zombie movie.
I'm not gonna say,
"If you love her, let her go,"
and I'm not gonna bombard you
with clichés.
But what I will say is this
[chuffs, sniffles]
It's not the end of the world.
[banging on glass]
[sinister music]
And they play on
all the tropes
Sorry, we're closed.
[moaning]
I'd been playing
"Resident Evil 3,"
like, all night.
[laughs]
My girlfriend at the time
had gone away
[zombie groans]
And I promised her
I wouldn't play video games
all weekend,
and I did exactly that.
I remember, vividly,
playing it until
the sun came up.
[dramatic flair]
[snores, grunts]
[coughs]
And then walking
across the street
to the news agent
to get some milk
to make some tea
and I walked across the street,
and it was completely empty
on a Sunday morning.
And the shop was
the only thing that was open,
and in that moment,
I had a thought of thinking,
"What would it be like if
if zombies were here right now,
and what would I do?"
Because we don't really
have guns in the UK,
- How would I defend myself?
- [coughing]
It's just
that little thought
really sort of started
to inspire the sequence
where Shaun walks
to the store and back
hungover.
So the zombie apocalypse
has started,
but he's still unaware of it.
[growling]
But he does this walk
it's a long,
steady cam shot
and he goes into the shop
and he doesn't notice
little things.
[music playing over speakers]
The bloody handprints
on the wall,
and he's walking away
from the refrigerator
and he just slips in blood.
[shoes squeaking]
It's so subtle, but it's
[laughing]
It's such a great moment
because you know
you as the audience
know what's coming
his character doesn't
know it yet, and it's
he he's still out of it.
- Nelson.
- It's such a simple moment
but it's one of my favorite
moments in the movie.
It's wonderful,
the way they show
the collapse of society.
[phone ringing]
Zombies become a symbol
of anarchy,
and the collapse
of the system,
and all that protects us.
[indistinct]
- [zombies groaning]
- Top left!
[lively music]
- Ah!
- Reload.
I'm on it.
We wanted to stay true
to the spirit
of "Night of the Living Dead"
and "Dawn of the Dead."
[eerie music]
The film is like a valentine
to George Romero
because we love those movies.
We're, like, sharing our deep,
deep love for the subject.
Right down to its title,
"Shaun of the Dead"
is a tribute to what
any horror fan will tell you
is the greatest zombie film
of all time.
There's no greater
zombie movie
than "Dawn of the Dead."
I think "Dawn of the Dead"
is a real masterpiece.
It's that rare kind
of, like, nightmare world
which you actually wouldn't
I mean, maybe this is just me,
but you wouldn't mind
being in it.
[laughing]
[zombies growling]
- No! No!
- George Romero's
"Night of the Living Dead"
created the modern zombie.
That was a hard act to follow,
but the director topped it
with his sequel,
"Dawn of the Dead."
[zombies growling]
[sinister music]
"Dawn of the Dead"
was a potent mixture
of horror, satire,
and outrageous
special effects.
[screaming]
[zombies growling]
It's, uh, basically
a continuation of the
of "Night of the Living Dead,"
where zombies are
taking over the world.
[zombies growling]
This was the first depiction
of a full-scale
zombie apocalypse,
a nightmare vision
of social collapse
that became the template
for virtually
every end-of-the-world story
we see today.
Once again, Romero used horror
to comment on American values.
He is masterfully executing
all of those horror elements
in a way that brings it
right to a social justice
scenario
Martinez!
You've been watching!
You know we've got
this building surrounded!
Particularly that opening
when in the ghettos,
all of the poor
are keeping their loved ones
hidden away from the rest
of the world,
because they know that
they will kill them.
People in this project
are your responsibility.
In the first 20 minutes,
there's a SWAT team
- raiding a house
- Yeah.
And one
of the police officers
is unbelievably racist.
Yeah, come on, Martinez.
Show your greasy little
Puerto Rican ass
so I can blow it right off.
And I was like,
"Why is this guy concerned
with racism?"
Like, there's zombies
in the building.
- [laughing]
- It was unbelievable.
I was like,
"Aren't there bigger problems?"
Let's go, let's go!
[all shouting]
That blew my mind as a kid
because I realized
I was watching
a political story
about the race
and class system in America.
[bell ringing]
After showing
society crumbling,
the film shifts focus
to a small group of survivors
who take refuge
in a suburban shopping mall.
I think the great thing
about zombies
is they are like
a catch-all metaphor
of the world's ills,
and I think George Romero
doesn't really get
enough credit as a satirist
as well as a horror film maker.
Come on!
[shouting]
"Dawn of the Dead"
being the most
kind of savage statement
about the state of consumerism
in the late '70s.
[zombie growling]
The idea of
the mindless hordes
flock to the big
fancy shopping mall
[cheerful music]
That was very pointed
and very funny.
What are they doing?
Why do they come here?
Some kind of instinct.
Memory of what
they used to do.
This was an important place
in their lives.
You can't watch that movie
and not become aware
of the fact
that this is a story about
what humans really are:
grasping, vampiric creatures
that kind of return endlessly
to their old habits
because it's
what they're taught.
I think "Dawn of the Dead"
should be sold in a box set
with "Easy Rider."
It should be called
"The Baby Boomers:
The Beginning and the End."
Romero has managed
to distill
[camera shutter snapping]
The worst of every generation
into all of his movies.
You see the baby boomers
losing their souls.
What have we done
to ourselves?
Because what Romero did
was channel his outrage
at his generation's
ultimate surrender
of all their ideals
- and he put it in a movie.
- So, I mean,
if you were gonna go out and do
a talky little, uh, drama
to try to criticize
the consumer society
that we have here,
you couldn't make
- $30 million, you know?
- That's for sure.
So, terrific.
You get a couple of jabs in
while you're having fun
with the rollercoaster ride
which really is the surface.
[indistinct shouting]
Romero was a man
with a message,
but his gleeful embrace
of gore
made him a horror favorite.
"Dawn of the Dead,"
I had never seen that level
of a body count in a movie.
[gunshots]
You're, like, watching like,
"Who made this?"
- Yeah.
- Like, a maniac?
[dramatic music]
But normally, one movie,
there'd be one kill
that was amazing,
and it was like
every 30 seconds,
each kill was different.
[propeller whirring]
- That helicopter blade
- Yeah.
- Pulling it off the head
- The guy with
- the giant forehead.
- Which which if you were
- Exactly.
- By the way, when you're a kid
you never see that coming.
You see he staggers out
and his head
[all chattering]
You never put
two and two together.
Now you look at it and go,
"Oh, of course, he's gonna
get his head cut off."
Really accomplished
horror directors knew
having Tom Savini doing
the make-up special effects
that it was gonna
elevate that film.
and give them a wider audience
than they ever anticipated.
Well, it was Halloween
every day.
We did that for three months
in a shopping mall.
[growling]
80% of the effects in that
were stuff that
we came up with.
We'd go to George and say,
"Hey, how about if we drive
a screwdriver through
through the zombies, here."
And he'd go, "Okay."
So then two hours later
we're making
retractable screwdrivers
and, you know,
making it bleed inside
a zombie's ear.
[dramatic music]
But the scene
that makes you like, wonder,
"Oh, wow
can I even handle this?"
Is when the zombie
in the project
- when, uh, his wife
- [shouting]
He's still alive,
comes to her and
and embraces him.
"My baby, my baby."
And then she he just bites
just a chunk out
of her shoulder.
- Carlito
- [growling]
[shrieking]
It just looks real.
It just it just
you buy it.
- [screaming]
- If humans had
shark-like mouths,
that's probably the effect
of what would happen
if a sharky human bit you.
[growling]
It's just an effect
we had never seen before,
and it draws a line
in the sand.
"Am I ready
for the rest of this?"
[sinister music]
George Romero's vision
was so influential
that for decades,
most screen zombies
were slow-moving ghouls.
But in 2002,
Danny Boyle's
"28 Days Later"
gave us a zombie
for the fast-moving
21st century
and set off a controversy
that rages to this day.
- I'm a slow zombie guy.
- I like fast zombies.
I'm a card-carrying
slow zombie fan.
[zombies screeching, growling]
[dark music]
Imagine waking up in a world
ravaged by a disease
that turns ordinary people
into mindless predators
driven to kill.
♪♪
This is the premise
of "28 Days Later,"
director Danny Boyle's
groundbreaking reinvention
of the zombie film.
[zombie screaming]
- [hissing]
- [yells]
Fight! Fight!
"28 Days Later"
is a perfect horror movie
because it's based
on a premise
you can completely believe.
- [growling]
- I don't know what it's like
- to be bitten by a vampire.
- [roaring]
I don't know what it's like
to be threatened
- by a werewolf.
- [indistinct]
[electronic interference]
But I can imagine
what it's like
to have a plague spread
like wildfire
because it's just too close
to the headlines
of today's news.
[growling]
- [hissing]
- It could happen.
[dramatic music]
"28 Days Later" came out
a year after 9/11,
and it includes
these really haunting scenes
of a deserted London
♪♪
Missing persons flyers
pasted to bulletin boards
like we saw post 9/11
♪♪
It also was able to, uh,
capitalize on a lot of the
the anxieties
and fears of the time.
♪♪
SARS and anthrax
and Mad Cow's Disease,
bird flues
- [hissing]
- Father
- [growling]
- Also, Danny Boyle
was commenting on, uh,
the rage that he saw
in society.
Road rage,
people fighting on line
in the supermarkets
[grunts]
He envisioned a zombie story
that took advantage
of this psychological virus
that could be unleashed
and have, like,
a zombie effect on people.
[tense music]
There was one big difference
between George Romero's'
zombies and the infected
in "28 Days Later":
these zombies were fast.
People talked about sort of
the next quantum leap
in zombie movies
As "28 Days Later"
'cause it had running zombies.
Even though there were
running infected
in Umberto Lenzi's
"Nightmare City" from 1980.
[laughing]
[indistinct shouting]
I'm a slow zombie guy.
- [shouting]
- Not that I don't like
- a good fast zombie movie.
- Somebody!
Uh, I loved "28 Days Later."
Yes, I know.
They're not technically dead.
They are rage virus.
- I get that.
- [hissing]
[zombies growling]
If I can make a criticism
of running zombies, it's this:
It's that running zombies
generally
there's kind of like
a fitness level.
If you look at the zombies
in "28 Days Later,"
they're nearly always, like,
sort of fit.
You know, like they're in
like a sneakers commercial.
[laughing]
[zombies shouting]
When you increase the speed,
the people that lose out
are the old zombies,
and the overweight zombies,
and the little kid zombies,
and I would rather have
a more inclusive range
of zombies.
[eerie music]
Zombies that are slow are
infinitely more terrifying.
It's the difference between
getting shot
and getting cancer.
[crowd shouting]
You get killed by, say,
a fast zombie
in the "World War Z" movie
or "28 Days Later,"
you're dead
before you know it.
[zombies growling]
Happens too fast.
♪♪
But the slow zombie
the zombie that gives you
time to think
allows you to visualize
your own death
[zombies growling]
And that is one
of the darker elements
of the human mind.
- Fast or slow
- [growling]
Zombies are usually created
by accidental radiation leaks
or rogue viruses.
[growling, babbling]
But there is another kind
of zombie:
The deliberately
reanimated corpse,
like Frankenstein's monster.
- Alive!
- Created by Mary Shelley
in 1818,
Frankenstein's monster
is the most famous member
of the walking dead.
Frankenstein's monster
is a zombie for sure.
In the novel, he's just a
a zombie that can talk
way too much.
As a kid,
I really felt connected
to Frankenstein's monster,
not so much
to Frankenstein himself.
I think that goes for a lot
of those
original horror classics.
Those characters
are sort of stand-ins
for people that are
on the fringe of society
or castaways cast outs.
[crowd shouting]
Boris Karloff's
Frankenstein
is still
the definitive version
of this monster.
Its direct descendant
is "H.P. Lovecraft's
Re-Animator."
With "Re-Animator,"
director Stuart Gordon
reimagined the zombie film
as a wildly transgressive
horror comedy.
[dark music]
I remember I went to a
like a a bunch of kids
were hanging out at a house
like have having a party
and they watched
"Breakfast Club,"
and I was never I had never
been so bored in a movie.
I was just, like, waiting
for something to happen.
- Somebody gets the hot potato.
- Something.
And I was like, "I have
a much better movie."
- And I put on "Re-Animator"
- [laughing]
And the whole party
cleared out.
- [wailing]
- [screaming]
[both screaming]
Well, the film
is about medical students
who find a way to bring
the dead back to life.
Particularly,
there's this one genius,
Herbert West
he's developed a serum which,
when it's injected
into a dead body, revives it.
[screaming]
But the dead
are never very grateful.
- [growling]
- [choking]
What was great about
Stuart Gordon's take on it
he put a really interesting
sense of humor
in the whole thing.
- [growls]
- 'Cause you can look
- at "Re-Animator" as a comedy.
- You'll never get credit
for my discovery.
Who's going to believe
a talking head?
Get a job in a sideshow.
"Re-Animator"
was like nothing
I had seen before
like nothing anyone
had seen before
and the audacity of it
is what makes it
so powerful.
[dark music]
♪♪
Boy, that's a sick picture.
Really transgressive.
Got a lot of crawling hands
and heads rolling around
- like bowling balls.
- [growling]
You should not be
censoring yourself.
[drill whirring]
You know, they'll be doing
everything they can
to censor you.
You should not give them
an inch.
[drill whirring]
♪♪
"Re-Animator's" fun.
I don't know what it's about,
like, that I don't know
that it's about
any big ideas whatsoever,
except that it would be fun
to keep heads alive
- in a basket.
- It's about conquering death.
- That's really what it's about.
- [snarling]
[screaming]
- [grunts]
- My father passed away
when I was 14 years old,
and I think that
that was the hook for me.
People always say,
"If you could
bring anybody back's life,
who would it be?"
In my case, it's a
it's a no-brainer:
It would be my father.
- [screams]
- [wails]
When you look at
most horror movies, I think,
they're about
an impossible dream.
In 1985, "Re-Animator"
and Dan O'Bannon's
"Return of the Living Dead"
explored the comic frontiers
of the zombie genre.
♪♪
Brains!
That same year,
the king of the zombies
George Romero was crafting
a much darker film,
what he hoped would be
the zombie film
to end all zombie films:
"Day of the Dead."
"Day of the Dead"
was intended
to be George Romero's
$10 million opus.
[dramatic music]
- No
- George Romero's
first two zombie films
invented a new kind
of monster
- [shrieking]
- And a new metaphor
for life in America.
One, two, three, go.
[gunshots]
By 1985, he was making
what he hoped would be
his ultimate statement,
a zombie film that combined
incredibly realistic
special effects
with a powerful message.
- [screaming]
- [wailing]
[zombies growling]
The message
of the Reagan era was
no more war on poverty,
no more war on crime,
no more war
on racial segregation.
Uh, screw it.
[zombies shouting]
We've lost.
There's more of them
than there are of us,
so you need to retreat
into your protective enclaves
and husband your resources.
And that's exactly
what our characters do.
- You must listen!
- Listen to this.
[dramatic music]
In "Day of the Dead," we see
the military rule,
- and that's even scarier.
- I'm running
this monkey farm now,
Frankenstein,
and I want to know
what the [bleep]
you're doing with my time!
A bunch of people
who are trying to do good
and find a cure
are being ruled
by this military presence
that is very aggressive
and will do anything it takes
to preserve itself,
so that's terrifying as well.
[electrical zapping]
The zombies are
in some ways, you know
the ones who are being
experimented upon
kind of more sympathetic
than many of the humans.
[zombies groaning]
Rhodes!
In "Dawn of the Dead,"
we're losing.
In "Day of the Dead,"
we've lost.
Most good directors
that really have a grasp
on the medium
can do horror.
- It's not as delicate as humor.
- Mm.
It's not as delicate.
Uh, there are some tricks
of the trade
that you can apply.
Like his other zombie films,
"Day of the Dead" was shot
in Romero's hometown
of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,
far outside
of the Hollywood system.
But that's what made
George Romero
such a terrific filmmaker,
was that he was a legit,
regional filmmaker,
and what made it special
was the slightly
homemade quality
to the movies.
Everywhere that he would go
in Pittsburgh,
you knew somebody
that was a zombie.
You knew somebody
that was involved
with George Romero's movies,
and that's how I got
into the business.
Because when "Day of the Dead"
came along,
I had befriended George
because of some mutual
family friends, and he's like,
"Hey, I'm doing a sequel
to 'Dawn of the Dead.'
Do you want a job?"
I'm like
"I was gonna be a doctor,
but this sounds way better."
[suspenseful music]
And this is where
George Romero
and Tom Savini
arguably their creative peaks
at the same time,
working together.
Special effects artists
like Rick Baker
and Tom Savini were heralded
as, like, kings and icons
of the horror film
because they were creating
special effects
that were out of this world.
Like something
we'd never seen before.
Vietnam was a lesson
in anatomy for me.
I was a combat photographer.
I saw horrible stuff.
In fact, I'm the only
make-up artist, I think,
- that has seen the real stuff.
- [screaming]
- [shrieking]
- In a movie,
when someone dies
they close their mouth
and they wanna look pretty
for the camera
[funereal music]
And that just takes me
right out of it,
because that actor doesn't
know how to portray death,
or the director doesn't know
to tell them
the mouth always goes slack.
[dark music]
My masterpiece
is "Day of the Dead."
♪♪
[moaning]
There a lot of cool stuff
in, uh in "Day of the Dead."
♪♪
We cut the guy's arm off,
you know.
I dug a hole under the guy
so his real arm goes
into the hole.
♪♪
And tearing Taso's head off
[screaming]
And it's actually
Greg Nicotero's fingers
in the eyeballs
of the fake head,
and we're running cables down
to make the head work,
you know,
so it was effects guys
that were the featured zombies
tearing the head off.
My head comes back
as a zombie head
in "Day of the Dead."
You gotta think about the way
that Tom designed things,
because he approached
everything
like it was a magic trick.
You know, the idea
that you're you're taking
a special effect
and you're deconstructing it
to the point where it's gotta
be a magic trick that's gonna
- fool the audience.
- The disembowelments
in "Day of the Dead"
are unmatched.
- [zombies groaning]
- [gasping]
Without a doubt,
and that's why you get into
people who who watch movies
and get get offended
by the the gore,
and you're like,
"Well, you know
it's corn syrup"
- It's a real presentation.
- Red powered
red powdered food coloring.
Miller!
- Miller!
- [screaming]
The special makeup effects
pioneered by Tom Savini
and Greg Nicotero
on "Day of the Dead"
- [growling]
- Led directly
to the amazing work
we see today
on "The Walking Dead."
The kind of household
I grew up in was, you know,
"Oh, you can't go see
'Day of the Dead.'
That's too that's too much."
But now you see, uh,
the level of gore that we saw
in George Romero's, uh,
"Day of the Dead"
on "Walking Dead" every week,
which is insane to me.
[sinister music]
[engine revving]
[tense music]
[zombies growling]
♪♪
Go to the left!
♪♪
In the wake
of a zombie apocalypse,
a small band of survivors
look for a safe place to live.
The biggest threat they face
aren't zombies,
but other people.
This is the premise
of "The Walking Dead,"
the TV series that brought
realistic horror
to the small screen.
[door creaking]
[snarling]
People used to come to me
and say, "Can you make us
a violent TV series?"
And I'd say, "Well,
what makes horror work is you
"is you have the threat
of killing your characters,
"and what TV what makes TV
work is you want to see
- those characters every week"
- Right.
So you can't have them
almost die, and I could never
- do the violence I wanted to do.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Cut to
- Here we are.
Greg Nicotero
and "The Walking Dead."
[dramatic music]
♪♪
"The Walking Dead" for sure
is the next
cultural milestone
really since "Dawn of the Dead"
and "Night of the Living Dead."
And, you know,
that's really been you.
[hooves clattering]
"Walking Dead"
is basically a Western with
with the zombie, uh,
apocalypse
set as the backdrop.
If "The Walking Dead"
had to be told
in a 2½ hour time slot,
you'd never be able to do it.
You wouldn't care
about the characters.
You wouldn't really know
who Daryl is
- Yeah.
- Who who Rick is.
I'm sorry
this happened to you.
[growling]
The plight of the survivors
is a dark reflection
of life in America today.
The mortgage crisis of 2008
resulted in more than
3 million people
losing their homes.
Problems with
the housing market
Since then,
rising housing prices
in the major cities
have forced more people
- to live on the street.
- Global meltdown.
There's a sense
that civilization is fragile.
That any day now,
we could be like Rick,
Daryl, and Carol,
always moving,
surrounded by threats
on every side.
[zombies snarling]
That's what I always loved
when "Walking Dead" came out,
I would say to people, like,
"If the zombie apocalypse
"were real,
this is the closest thing
"that I've seen to what
that would probably feel like
and be like."
When I first read
that script, I didn't
you know, I didn't read it
as a zombie thing.
I read it as this guy
lost his family,
and he woke up, and he didn't
know where he was.
And he was gonna do anything
to go find his family,
and that's
that stuck out on the page
way more than a zombie
here and there, you know?
And everybody
played it like that.
[somber music]
You have to play everything
as real as possible.
- [snarling]
- [indistinct]
There's so many examples
on that show where, like
You're like, "Oh, my God,
is this gonna work?"
- And the actors
- No, no, no!
Just pulled it out
and made it perfect.
[screaming]
No!
- [grunts]
- She was playing with me!
- She wanted a friend!
- She wanted to kill you!
I was gonna lead her away!
- You could have died.
- It's the same thing!
You killed her!
You killed her!
There's a reason
there wasn't really
a zombie TV show before.
[dark music]
- Ugh
- Effects need
to be really good
on a television show
so that people don't fall out
of the reality
that you're trying to sell.
The best zombies, I think,
are what Greg is doing
in "The Walking Dead."
The best zombies today.
Uh, and there's a lot
of CGI there, you know,
and necessary,
because the zombies
have been around for so long,
now they're decaying
and rotting, you know?
- [gagging]
- Just a little more.
- [gurgling]
- There's that one famous
- the "well walker"
- Stop!
- Come on!
- Where he's just
so waterlogged and bloated
that he just sort of, like,
comes apart.
- [all grunting]
- [gurgling]
♪♪
That's one
of the beautiful things
that Greg does, is his team
you can see the lost person
behind the monster, you know?
That's that's when
they become scary.
I never get sick of it,
honestly.
They keep they keep
reinventing the wheel
- with the zombies, it's nuts.
- [growling]
♪♪
Obviously the the irony is,
who are the walking dead?
Is it the actual zombies
or is the people?
- Right, right.
- Uh, what are they willing
to do to each other to survive?
- And that's
- Yeah, at what point
- do you lose your humanity?
- Right.
"Walking Dead" being on
for so long surprises me,
'cause y'all should be dead
by now, man.
[snarling]
You know,
because it doesn't make sense.
- To me.
- [snarling]
[gasping, whimpering]
Doesn't it feel like zombies
are cresting now, too?
Yeah, right now it does
seem like we're in the middle
of a zombie apocalypse.
[procession chanting]
Yeah.
The dumbing down of society.
We're all zombies.
[zombies snarling]
Zombies are representative
of of Alzheimer's
a just terrifying disease.
And zombies
are representatives of cancer.
To me, what's happened
with the zombie
is now they're representatives
of anarchy
and the collapse
of government.
The collapse of order.
[menacing music]
Zombies are really sort of
a wonderful catch-all metaphor
because they can mean
absolutely anything.
- [screaming]
- Zombies in 1968
are the breakdown
of American society.
[zombies groaning]
In 2017
with "The Walking Dead"
uh, who knows
what it represents.
[zombies growling]
One take-away could be
that everything's hopeless
[distant shouting]
[exclaims]
Another take-away could be
that humans
will always persevere
even when
it seems like there's
no reason to
or that it's impossible to.
[gunfire]
[zombies snarling]
Yeah, zombies will never die.
No pun intended.
[laughing]
- [babbling]
- [screaming]
It's so interesting,
the resurgence of zombies,
and the fact that they kind of
won't ever go away.
[zombies snarling]
We'll always be
telling stories.
I think we'll
we're never gonna lose
our fascination with them.
Half a century ago,
George Romero created
the modern zombie
America's great contribution
to monster horror.
[sinister music]
Now, zombie movies are
an international phenomenon.
♪♪
The zombie plague
has infected the world.
- [screams]
- As relentless
and unstoppable
as the flesh-eating undead.
♪♪
We wake them
and we got it all!
The zombie is absolutely
all-American horror metaphor.
- [growling]
- They are the monster
of the 21st century.
Right now it does seem like
we're in the middle
of a zombie apocalypse.
We're getting our chance
to exercise
our most anti-social emotions.
- [screaming]
- You know, that
that mob impulse that's like,
"Yeah, kill them all
and let God sort them out."
[zombies groaning]
Eventually
they overwhelm you.
- They're not stopping to eat.
- [screaming]
Well, I mean,
unless they're stopping
- to eat one of you.
- We're all gonna die.
We all are gonna
get cancer one day.
We're all gonna get sick.
It's almost like
an accelerated version of that.
We don't want zombies
to come and destroy
all of our friends
and family and institutions
but on some level,
maybe we do.
Like, on some level
it provides us a chance
to just dismantle
everything
[frantic music]
And possibly start over.
[screaming]
What are humans like
when faced with the end
of humanity?
What are they like
when they're faced
with very few choices
in in regards
to how to survive?
That's the horror
of zombie movies.
- No!
- It's the wrong impulses
that come out of people
that are far more terrifying
than the walking dead.
[zombies growling, screeching]
♪♪
[sinister music]
♪♪
[foreboding music]
I'm Eli Roth.
[hissing]
The history of horror
is filled with monsters.
Nightmare figures that tap
into our deepest fears.
♪♪
But our fears,
and our monsters,
change with the times.
♪♪
Right now, it's the time
of the zombie.
[zombies growling, screeching]
Fast zombies, slow zombies,
comedy zombies,
teen zombies
[screaming]
Whatever their shape,
zombies are everywhere.
How did we get here?
What set off zombie fever?
As we'll see,
zombies have been around
for decades.
[zombies hissing, growling]
♪♪
But the debut
of "The Walking Dead"
in 2010 saw them explode
- into popular culture.
- [growling]
To almost everyone's
surprise, a horror series
became the most popular show
on television.
♪♪
My brother's kids
ten years old, five years
they watch "Walking Dead."
[yells]
Kids eight years old
watch "Walking Dead."
What is it
about "Walking Dead"
that zombies have become so,
almost normalized
- that kids love it.
- [clears throat]
They don't take it seriously.
I think it's amazing.
- Well
- "Walking Dead" plays
- like a family show.
- It's all about
the characters.
♪♪
You can follow
this group of people
as they struggle to survive
week after week
after week after week.
[hissing]
♪♪
You can see them live,
you can see them die,
you can see everything
that they go through
with the zombie apocalypse
set as the backdrop.
- [zombies growling]
- [panting]
Everybody wants to
think that they would be able
to survive
the zombie apocalypse.
[grunting, exclaiming]
You figure, "What would I do
to survive?"
Uh, because that is the crux
of the show,
ordinary people who
all of a sudden
are thrust into
an extraordinary situation.
which always give you
some of the best drama.
[zombie growling]
Are you gonna fight
for what you believe in?
Are you gonna be
the type of person
that runs away from it?
You know, there's no status
and and fame,
and money, and uh,
there's none
of that bull[bleep].
The apocalyptic simulation
is really an interesting
sociological experiment
about, you know,
who do people become,
and who would I become,
and what would be okay
if the rules weren't
the same anymore?
I want to be a Michonne
[zombies hissing]
But I'm probably more of, um
I don't know, a Eugene.
[laughs]
You got a name, ass[bleep]?
Eugene.
They're coming to get you,
Barbara.
Stop it!
You're acting like a child.
They're coming for you.
Look, there comes
one of them now.
Without George Romero and
"Night of the Living Dead,"
there would be
no "Walking Dead."
"Night of the Living Dead"
laid the template
for every zombie
survival story that followed.
It's a simple plot
six people trapped
in a farmhouse
surrounded by
the flesh-eating undead
but it changed everything.
You got to see
the boundary pushed
going from
the 1950s creatures
the man in the rubber suit
to like, graphic viscera.
- Mm-hmm.
- What was it like seeing it
pushed farther and farther?
- [zombies growling]
- I can remember just
sort of wandering into
a screening
of "Night of the Living Dead."
The whole place was full
of kids it was like
a Saturday matinee
and they're all, you know,
yelling and grab-assing around
and throwing
their popcorn boxes,
and that thing got going
and they just fell
entirely silent.
[zombie growling]
- [weeping]
- And I was scared, too.
The first time that you see
something like that,
you're not prepared
for what you're looking at.
[sinister music]
George Romero
really creates the rules.
I mean, the whole thing
of, like, if you get bit,
- you turned into one
- Yeah.
Shoot them in the head
♪♪
- That didn't exist before.
- Those rules
for the modern-day zombie
were created 50 years ago.
- By George Romero.
- If I were surrounded
by six or eight
of these things, would I stand
- a chance with them?
- Well, there's no problem.
If you had a gun,
shoot 'em in the head.
That's a sure way to kill 'em.
If you don't, get yourself
a club or a torch.
Beat 'em or burn 'em.
They go up pretty easy.
♪♪
It almost feels like
the zombie movie
there's like a quantum leap
that happens
where there are
different phases.
Like the 1930s and '40s,
it was the
"I Walked With a Zombie."
It was "White Zombie."
It was the hypnotist zombie.
It was a mad scientist
on an island
that has found a way
to raise the dead
- and enslave them.
- A lot of zombie films
were about people
who had been just stripped
of their identity
and were slaves, almost.
You know, they could be
workers, or they could just
sort of shamble and look scary,
but they weren't attacking
and biting and killing
like they did
in "Night of the Living Dead."
Baby
[gasps]
- [whimpering]
- Mean, there were things
that were so transgressive
in that movie.
[whimpering]
[wailing]
The little girl stabs
her mother to death.
The little kid
killing her mom, that had
no one had ever seen
anything like that.
The first time you see it,
you're just horrified.
You can't believe
what you're seeing.
[screeching]
"Night of the Living Dead"
was much more
of a claustrophobic nightmare
kind of experience,
"Night of the Living Dead"
is also, uh,
somewhat facetious,
and it's also
it has its
sociopolitical allegory.
What's important about
"Night of the Living Dead"
is the fact that the travails
of the people
locked in that house
are really a microcosm
of what's going on
in American society
- [indistinct]
- The tumult of the late 1960s
is reflected in the fear
and the the violence
that that occur in
and around that house.
That movie's revolutionary
in many, many ways
and had profound impact
the fact it had
a black lead
[suspenseful music]
[groans]
Which George always said
was not deliberate.
It was that Duane was
the best actor.
I don't believe him.
I think it was deliberate.
With all of us working,
we can fix this place up
in no time.
We have everything we need
up here.
We can take all that stuff
downstairs with us.
Man, you're really crazy,
you know that?
Let's say you're a
a white viewer
in the late 1960s
who has a few prejudices, say,
and is a little bit worried
that the world is ending
because of all of the, uh,
racial legislation
of the '60s
The Voting Rights Act,
The Civil Rights Act
and here's this zombie film
where the dead
are coming back to life
and a black man is in charge.
I don't want anyone's life
on my hands.
- Is there anything I can do?
- I don't wanna hear any more
from you, mister.
If you stay up here,
you take orders from me.
I will contend that
that might have been
as frightening to some viewers
as the child eating her mother
in the basement.
[laughing]
[sinister music]
What we get is potentially
something hopeful, you know,
with the African-American
protagonist
like maybe some new direction
socially
but instead it just turns
into vigilante justice
represented by
a white lynch mob.
You can imagine the the shock
that audiences must have felt
to to be coaxed
into identifying
with a black man
only to have him shot
and then pitchforked
onto a pile of burning bodies
at the end.
That's a slap.
That's a direct slap
to any audience,
right wing or left wing.
"The Night
of the Living Dead"
does not end on any kind
of triumph.
Your hero is shot by police.
It's the most upsetting ending
in cinema.
And then that has continued
through horror cinema
of actually
It doesn't always have
a happy ending.
♪♪
I think that's the joy
of horror cinema,
is that it can, like,
affect you in lots
- of different ways.
- If George Romero
had only made
"Night of the Living Dead,"
- he would still be a legend
- [growling]
But he didn't stop.
"Night of the Living Dead"
and its sequels
changed the course
of film history.
and inspired the best
the horror genre has to offer.
- [groaning]
- He was such a big influence
on "Shaun of the Dead."
We liked this idea
of our film taking place
within George Romero's
universe.
[yelling]
- [grunts]
- "Shaun of the Dead"
was so well done
that it opened the floodgates
to, like, everybody to try
and make a zombie movie.
[dramatic music]
Today, zombie movies
and TV shows are everywhere.
but not so long ago,
they had virtually
disappeared.
Edgar Wright's
"Shaun of the Dead"
helped bring them back
bigger than ever.
[sinister music]
[zombies moaning]
When we thought up the idea
for "Shaun of the Dead,"
one of the inspirations for it
is because there hadn't been
a zombie film
for, like, 15 years.
♪♪
We always had this theory
that, like, uh,
John Landis' video
for "Thriller"
sort of killed off zombies
for the second half
of the '80s and early '90s.
[menacing laughter]
So I think what happened was,
all of a sudden
the zombie genre
which traditionally had
probably sort of died out
- Yeah.
- A little bit
and then all of a sudden
you have all these
zombie video games
and they're like, "[bleep],
man, people love
shooting zombies."
It was around, like,
the late 1990s
when "Resident Evil" came out
the game.
[gunfire]
- [zombie groans]
- So people started
to take an interest
in the genre again.
[foreboding music]
Every now and then,
we see a movie
that is supposedly horror
but yet uses
social commentary brilliantly,
and the best example
is "Shaun of the Dead."
[cheerful music]
You want to know
where Britain was
at that time, you look at
"Shaun of the Dead."
[groaning]
In the '90s and the dawn
of the new century,
we were in a new phase
in Britain
and a whole new generation
of Britons were asking:
"What's next?"
And they were a little lost.
[gunfire]
Hey, man, listen, um
oh, top left.
- Uh-huh.
- I was gonna say
- reload.
- I'm on it.
And it was brilliant.
What I love about
"Shaun of the Dead"
is they're not making fun of
zombie movies,
they're making
a funny zombie movie.
I'm not gonna say,
"If you love her, let her go,"
and I'm not gonna bombard you
with clichés.
But what I will say is this
[chuffs, sniffles]
It's not the end of the world.
[banging on glass]
[sinister music]
And they play on
all the tropes
Sorry, we're closed.
[moaning]
I'd been playing
"Resident Evil 3,"
like, all night.
[laughs]
My girlfriend at the time
had gone away
[zombie groans]
And I promised her
I wouldn't play video games
all weekend,
and I did exactly that.
I remember, vividly,
playing it until
the sun came up.
[dramatic flair]
[snores, grunts]
[coughs]
And then walking
across the street
to the news agent
to get some milk
to make some tea
and I walked across the street,
and it was completely empty
on a Sunday morning.
And the shop was
the only thing that was open,
and in that moment,
I had a thought of thinking,
"What would it be like if
if zombies were here right now,
and what would I do?"
Because we don't really
have guns in the UK,
- How would I defend myself?
- [coughing]
It's just
that little thought
really sort of started
to inspire the sequence
where Shaun walks
to the store and back
hungover.
So the zombie apocalypse
has started,
but he's still unaware of it.
[growling]
But he does this walk
it's a long,
steady cam shot
and he goes into the shop
and he doesn't notice
little things.
[music playing over speakers]
The bloody handprints
on the wall,
and he's walking away
from the refrigerator
and he just slips in blood.
[shoes squeaking]
It's so subtle, but it's
[laughing]
It's such a great moment
because you know
you as the audience
know what's coming
his character doesn't
know it yet, and it's
he he's still out of it.
- Nelson.
- It's such a simple moment
but it's one of my favorite
moments in the movie.
It's wonderful,
the way they show
the collapse of society.
[phone ringing]
Zombies become a symbol
of anarchy,
and the collapse
of the system,
and all that protects us.
[indistinct]
- [zombies groaning]
- Top left!
[lively music]
- Ah!
- Reload.
I'm on it.
We wanted to stay true
to the spirit
of "Night of the Living Dead"
and "Dawn of the Dead."
[eerie music]
The film is like a valentine
to George Romero
because we love those movies.
We're, like, sharing our deep,
deep love for the subject.
Right down to its title,
"Shaun of the Dead"
is a tribute to what
any horror fan will tell you
is the greatest zombie film
of all time.
There's no greater
zombie movie
than "Dawn of the Dead."
I think "Dawn of the Dead"
is a real masterpiece.
It's that rare kind
of, like, nightmare world
which you actually wouldn't
I mean, maybe this is just me,
but you wouldn't mind
being in it.
[laughing]
[zombies growling]
- No! No!
- George Romero's
"Night of the Living Dead"
created the modern zombie.
That was a hard act to follow,
but the director topped it
with his sequel,
"Dawn of the Dead."
[zombies growling]
[sinister music]
"Dawn of the Dead"
was a potent mixture
of horror, satire,
and outrageous
special effects.
[screaming]
[zombies growling]
It's, uh, basically
a continuation of the
of "Night of the Living Dead,"
where zombies are
taking over the world.
[zombies growling]
This was the first depiction
of a full-scale
zombie apocalypse,
a nightmare vision
of social collapse
that became the template
for virtually
every end-of-the-world story
we see today.
Once again, Romero used horror
to comment on American values.
He is masterfully executing
all of those horror elements
in a way that brings it
right to a social justice
scenario
Martinez!
You've been watching!
You know we've got
this building surrounded!
Particularly that opening
when in the ghettos,
all of the poor
are keeping their loved ones
hidden away from the rest
of the world,
because they know that
they will kill them.
People in this project
are your responsibility.
In the first 20 minutes,
there's a SWAT team
- raiding a house
- Yeah.
And one
of the police officers
is unbelievably racist.
Yeah, come on, Martinez.
Show your greasy little
Puerto Rican ass
so I can blow it right off.
And I was like,
"Why is this guy concerned
with racism?"
Like, there's zombies
in the building.
- [laughing]
- It was unbelievable.
I was like,
"Aren't there bigger problems?"
Let's go, let's go!
[all shouting]
That blew my mind as a kid
because I realized
I was watching
a political story
about the race
and class system in America.
[bell ringing]
After showing
society crumbling,
the film shifts focus
to a small group of survivors
who take refuge
in a suburban shopping mall.
I think the great thing
about zombies
is they are like
a catch-all metaphor
of the world's ills,
and I think George Romero
doesn't really get
enough credit as a satirist
as well as a horror film maker.
Come on!
[shouting]
"Dawn of the Dead"
being the most
kind of savage statement
about the state of consumerism
in the late '70s.
[zombie growling]
The idea of
the mindless hordes
flock to the big
fancy shopping mall
[cheerful music]
That was very pointed
and very funny.
What are they doing?
Why do they come here?
Some kind of instinct.
Memory of what
they used to do.
This was an important place
in their lives.
You can't watch that movie
and not become aware
of the fact
that this is a story about
what humans really are:
grasping, vampiric creatures
that kind of return endlessly
to their old habits
because it's
what they're taught.
I think "Dawn of the Dead"
should be sold in a box set
with "Easy Rider."
It should be called
"The Baby Boomers:
The Beginning and the End."
Romero has managed
to distill
[camera shutter snapping]
The worst of every generation
into all of his movies.
You see the baby boomers
losing their souls.
What have we done
to ourselves?
Because what Romero did
was channel his outrage
at his generation's
ultimate surrender
of all their ideals
- and he put it in a movie.
- So, I mean,
if you were gonna go out and do
a talky little, uh, drama
to try to criticize
the consumer society
that we have here,
you couldn't make
- $30 million, you know?
- That's for sure.
So, terrific.
You get a couple of jabs in
while you're having fun
with the rollercoaster ride
which really is the surface.
[indistinct shouting]
Romero was a man
with a message,
but his gleeful embrace
of gore
made him a horror favorite.
"Dawn of the Dead,"
I had never seen that level
of a body count in a movie.
[gunshots]
You're, like, watching like,
"Who made this?"
- Yeah.
- Like, a maniac?
[dramatic music]
But normally, one movie,
there'd be one kill
that was amazing,
and it was like
every 30 seconds,
each kill was different.
[propeller whirring]
- That helicopter blade
- Yeah.
- Pulling it off the head
- The guy with
- the giant forehead.
- Which which if you were
- Exactly.
- By the way, when you're a kid
you never see that coming.
You see he staggers out
and his head
[all chattering]
You never put
two and two together.
Now you look at it and go,
"Oh, of course, he's gonna
get his head cut off."
Really accomplished
horror directors knew
having Tom Savini doing
the make-up special effects
that it was gonna
elevate that film.
and give them a wider audience
than they ever anticipated.
Well, it was Halloween
every day.
We did that for three months
in a shopping mall.
[growling]
80% of the effects in that
were stuff that
we came up with.
We'd go to George and say,
"Hey, how about if we drive
a screwdriver through
through the zombies, here."
And he'd go, "Okay."
So then two hours later
we're making
retractable screwdrivers
and, you know,
making it bleed inside
a zombie's ear.
[dramatic music]
But the scene
that makes you like, wonder,
"Oh, wow
can I even handle this?"
Is when the zombie
in the project
- when, uh, his wife
- [shouting]
He's still alive,
comes to her and
and embraces him.
"My baby, my baby."
And then she he just bites
just a chunk out
of her shoulder.
- Carlito
- [growling]
[shrieking]
It just looks real.
It just it just
you buy it.
- [screaming]
- If humans had
shark-like mouths,
that's probably the effect
of what would happen
if a sharky human bit you.
[growling]
It's just an effect
we had never seen before,
and it draws a line
in the sand.
"Am I ready
for the rest of this?"
[sinister music]
George Romero's vision
was so influential
that for decades,
most screen zombies
were slow-moving ghouls.
But in 2002,
Danny Boyle's
"28 Days Later"
gave us a zombie
for the fast-moving
21st century
and set off a controversy
that rages to this day.
- I'm a slow zombie guy.
- I like fast zombies.
I'm a card-carrying
slow zombie fan.
[zombies screeching, growling]
[dark music]
Imagine waking up in a world
ravaged by a disease
that turns ordinary people
into mindless predators
driven to kill.
♪♪
This is the premise
of "28 Days Later,"
director Danny Boyle's
groundbreaking reinvention
of the zombie film.
[zombie screaming]
- [hissing]
- [yells]
Fight! Fight!
"28 Days Later"
is a perfect horror movie
because it's based
on a premise
you can completely believe.
- [growling]
- I don't know what it's like
- to be bitten by a vampire.
- [roaring]
I don't know what it's like
to be threatened
- by a werewolf.
- [indistinct]
[electronic interference]
But I can imagine
what it's like
to have a plague spread
like wildfire
because it's just too close
to the headlines
of today's news.
[growling]
- [hissing]
- It could happen.
[dramatic music]
"28 Days Later" came out
a year after 9/11,
and it includes
these really haunting scenes
of a deserted London
♪♪
Missing persons flyers
pasted to bulletin boards
like we saw post 9/11
♪♪
It also was able to, uh,
capitalize on a lot of the
the anxieties
and fears of the time.
♪♪
SARS and anthrax
and Mad Cow's Disease,
bird flues
- [hissing]
- Father
- [growling]
- Also, Danny Boyle
was commenting on, uh,
the rage that he saw
in society.
Road rage,
people fighting on line
in the supermarkets
[grunts]
He envisioned a zombie story
that took advantage
of this psychological virus
that could be unleashed
and have, like,
a zombie effect on people.
[tense music]
There was one big difference
between George Romero's'
zombies and the infected
in "28 Days Later":
these zombies were fast.
People talked about sort of
the next quantum leap
in zombie movies
As "28 Days Later"
'cause it had running zombies.
Even though there were
running infected
in Umberto Lenzi's
"Nightmare City" from 1980.
[laughing]
[indistinct shouting]
I'm a slow zombie guy.
- [shouting]
- Not that I don't like
- a good fast zombie movie.
- Somebody!
Uh, I loved "28 Days Later."
Yes, I know.
They're not technically dead.
They are rage virus.
- I get that.
- [hissing]
[zombies growling]
If I can make a criticism
of running zombies, it's this:
It's that running zombies
generally
there's kind of like
a fitness level.
If you look at the zombies
in "28 Days Later,"
they're nearly always, like,
sort of fit.
You know, like they're in
like a sneakers commercial.
[laughing]
[zombies shouting]
When you increase the speed,
the people that lose out
are the old zombies,
and the overweight zombies,
and the little kid zombies,
and I would rather have
a more inclusive range
of zombies.
[eerie music]
Zombies that are slow are
infinitely more terrifying.
It's the difference between
getting shot
and getting cancer.
[crowd shouting]
You get killed by, say,
a fast zombie
in the "World War Z" movie
or "28 Days Later,"
you're dead
before you know it.
[zombies growling]
Happens too fast.
♪♪
But the slow zombie
the zombie that gives you
time to think
allows you to visualize
your own death
[zombies growling]
And that is one
of the darker elements
of the human mind.
- Fast or slow
- [growling]
Zombies are usually created
by accidental radiation leaks
or rogue viruses.
[growling, babbling]
But there is another kind
of zombie:
The deliberately
reanimated corpse,
like Frankenstein's monster.
- Alive!
- Created by Mary Shelley
in 1818,
Frankenstein's monster
is the most famous member
of the walking dead.
Frankenstein's monster
is a zombie for sure.
In the novel, he's just a
a zombie that can talk
way too much.
As a kid,
I really felt connected
to Frankenstein's monster,
not so much
to Frankenstein himself.
I think that goes for a lot
of those
original horror classics.
Those characters
are sort of stand-ins
for people that are
on the fringe of society
or castaways cast outs.
[crowd shouting]
Boris Karloff's
Frankenstein
is still
the definitive version
of this monster.
Its direct descendant
is "H.P. Lovecraft's
Re-Animator."
With "Re-Animator,"
director Stuart Gordon
reimagined the zombie film
as a wildly transgressive
horror comedy.
[dark music]
I remember I went to a
like a a bunch of kids
were hanging out at a house
like have having a party
and they watched
"Breakfast Club,"
and I was never I had never
been so bored in a movie.
I was just, like, waiting
for something to happen.
- Somebody gets the hot potato.
- Something.
And I was like, "I have
a much better movie."
- And I put on "Re-Animator"
- [laughing]
And the whole party
cleared out.
- [wailing]
- [screaming]
[both screaming]
Well, the film
is about medical students
who find a way to bring
the dead back to life.
Particularly,
there's this one genius,
Herbert West
he's developed a serum which,
when it's injected
into a dead body, revives it.
[screaming]
But the dead
are never very grateful.
- [growling]
- [choking]
What was great about
Stuart Gordon's take on it
he put a really interesting
sense of humor
in the whole thing.
- [growls]
- 'Cause you can look
- at "Re-Animator" as a comedy.
- You'll never get credit
for my discovery.
Who's going to believe
a talking head?
Get a job in a sideshow.
"Re-Animator"
was like nothing
I had seen before
like nothing anyone
had seen before
and the audacity of it
is what makes it
so powerful.
[dark music]
♪♪
Boy, that's a sick picture.
Really transgressive.
Got a lot of crawling hands
and heads rolling around
- like bowling balls.
- [growling]
You should not be
censoring yourself.
[drill whirring]
You know, they'll be doing
everything they can
to censor you.
You should not give them
an inch.
[drill whirring]
♪♪
"Re-Animator's" fun.
I don't know what it's about,
like, that I don't know
that it's about
any big ideas whatsoever,
except that it would be fun
to keep heads alive
- in a basket.
- It's about conquering death.
- That's really what it's about.
- [snarling]
[screaming]
- [grunts]
- My father passed away
when I was 14 years old,
and I think that
that was the hook for me.
People always say,
"If you could
bring anybody back's life,
who would it be?"
In my case, it's a
it's a no-brainer:
It would be my father.
- [screams]
- [wails]
When you look at
most horror movies, I think,
they're about
an impossible dream.
In 1985, "Re-Animator"
and Dan O'Bannon's
"Return of the Living Dead"
explored the comic frontiers
of the zombie genre.
♪♪
Brains!
That same year,
the king of the zombies
George Romero was crafting
a much darker film,
what he hoped would be
the zombie film
to end all zombie films:
"Day of the Dead."
"Day of the Dead"
was intended
to be George Romero's
$10 million opus.
[dramatic music]
- No
- George Romero's
first two zombie films
invented a new kind
of monster
- [shrieking]
- And a new metaphor
for life in America.
One, two, three, go.
[gunshots]
By 1985, he was making
what he hoped would be
his ultimate statement,
a zombie film that combined
incredibly realistic
special effects
with a powerful message.
- [screaming]
- [wailing]
[zombies growling]
The message
of the Reagan era was
no more war on poverty,
no more war on crime,
no more war
on racial segregation.
Uh, screw it.
[zombies shouting]
We've lost.
There's more of them
than there are of us,
so you need to retreat
into your protective enclaves
and husband your resources.
And that's exactly
what our characters do.
- You must listen!
- Listen to this.
[dramatic music]
In "Day of the Dead," we see
the military rule,
- and that's even scarier.
- I'm running
this monkey farm now,
Frankenstein,
and I want to know
what the [bleep]
you're doing with my time!
A bunch of people
who are trying to do good
and find a cure
are being ruled
by this military presence
that is very aggressive
and will do anything it takes
to preserve itself,
so that's terrifying as well.
[electrical zapping]
The zombies are
in some ways, you know
the ones who are being
experimented upon
kind of more sympathetic
than many of the humans.
[zombies groaning]
Rhodes!
In "Dawn of the Dead,"
we're losing.
In "Day of the Dead,"
we've lost.
Most good directors
that really have a grasp
on the medium
can do horror.
- It's not as delicate as humor.
- Mm.
It's not as delicate.
Uh, there are some tricks
of the trade
that you can apply.
Like his other zombie films,
"Day of the Dead" was shot
in Romero's hometown
of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,
far outside
of the Hollywood system.
But that's what made
George Romero
such a terrific filmmaker,
was that he was a legit,
regional filmmaker,
and what made it special
was the slightly
homemade quality
to the movies.
Everywhere that he would go
in Pittsburgh,
you knew somebody
that was a zombie.
You knew somebody
that was involved
with George Romero's movies,
and that's how I got
into the business.
Because when "Day of the Dead"
came along,
I had befriended George
because of some mutual
family friends, and he's like,
"Hey, I'm doing a sequel
to 'Dawn of the Dead.'
Do you want a job?"
I'm like
"I was gonna be a doctor,
but this sounds way better."
[suspenseful music]
And this is where
George Romero
and Tom Savini
arguably their creative peaks
at the same time,
working together.
Special effects artists
like Rick Baker
and Tom Savini were heralded
as, like, kings and icons
of the horror film
because they were creating
special effects
that were out of this world.
Like something
we'd never seen before.
Vietnam was a lesson
in anatomy for me.
I was a combat photographer.
I saw horrible stuff.
In fact, I'm the only
make-up artist, I think,
- that has seen the real stuff.
- [screaming]
- [shrieking]
- In a movie,
when someone dies
they close their mouth
and they wanna look pretty
for the camera
[funereal music]
And that just takes me
right out of it,
because that actor doesn't
know how to portray death,
or the director doesn't know
to tell them
the mouth always goes slack.
[dark music]
My masterpiece
is "Day of the Dead."
♪♪
[moaning]
There a lot of cool stuff
in, uh in "Day of the Dead."
♪♪
We cut the guy's arm off,
you know.
I dug a hole under the guy
so his real arm goes
into the hole.
♪♪
And tearing Taso's head off
[screaming]
And it's actually
Greg Nicotero's fingers
in the eyeballs
of the fake head,
and we're running cables down
to make the head work,
you know,
so it was effects guys
that were the featured zombies
tearing the head off.
My head comes back
as a zombie head
in "Day of the Dead."
You gotta think about the way
that Tom designed things,
because he approached
everything
like it was a magic trick.
You know, the idea
that you're you're taking
a special effect
and you're deconstructing it
to the point where it's gotta
be a magic trick that's gonna
- fool the audience.
- The disembowelments
in "Day of the Dead"
are unmatched.
- [zombies groaning]
- [gasping]
Without a doubt,
and that's why you get into
people who who watch movies
and get get offended
by the the gore,
and you're like,
"Well, you know
it's corn syrup"
- It's a real presentation.
- Red powered
red powdered food coloring.
Miller!
- Miller!
- [screaming]
The special makeup effects
pioneered by Tom Savini
and Greg Nicotero
on "Day of the Dead"
- [growling]
- Led directly
to the amazing work
we see today
on "The Walking Dead."
The kind of household
I grew up in was, you know,
"Oh, you can't go see
'Day of the Dead.'
That's too that's too much."
But now you see, uh,
the level of gore that we saw
in George Romero's, uh,
"Day of the Dead"
on "Walking Dead" every week,
which is insane to me.
[sinister music]
[engine revving]
[tense music]
[zombies growling]
♪♪
Go to the left!
♪♪
In the wake
of a zombie apocalypse,
a small band of survivors
look for a safe place to live.
The biggest threat they face
aren't zombies,
but other people.
This is the premise
of "The Walking Dead,"
the TV series that brought
realistic horror
to the small screen.
[door creaking]
[snarling]
People used to come to me
and say, "Can you make us
a violent TV series?"
And I'd say, "Well,
what makes horror work is you
"is you have the threat
of killing your characters,
"and what TV what makes TV
work is you want to see
- those characters every week"
- Right.
So you can't have them
almost die, and I could never
- do the violence I wanted to do.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Cut to
- Here we are.
Greg Nicotero
and "The Walking Dead."
[dramatic music]
♪♪
"The Walking Dead" for sure
is the next
cultural milestone
really since "Dawn of the Dead"
and "Night of the Living Dead."
And, you know,
that's really been you.
[hooves clattering]
"Walking Dead"
is basically a Western with
with the zombie, uh,
apocalypse
set as the backdrop.
If "The Walking Dead"
had to be told
in a 2½ hour time slot,
you'd never be able to do it.
You wouldn't care
about the characters.
You wouldn't really know
who Daryl is
- Yeah.
- Who who Rick is.
I'm sorry
this happened to you.
[growling]
The plight of the survivors
is a dark reflection
of life in America today.
The mortgage crisis of 2008
resulted in more than
3 million people
losing their homes.
Problems with
the housing market
Since then,
rising housing prices
in the major cities
have forced more people
- to live on the street.
- Global meltdown.
There's a sense
that civilization is fragile.
That any day now,
we could be like Rick,
Daryl, and Carol,
always moving,
surrounded by threats
on every side.
[zombies snarling]
That's what I always loved
when "Walking Dead" came out,
I would say to people, like,
"If the zombie apocalypse
"were real,
this is the closest thing
"that I've seen to what
that would probably feel like
and be like."
When I first read
that script, I didn't
you know, I didn't read it
as a zombie thing.
I read it as this guy
lost his family,
and he woke up, and he didn't
know where he was.
And he was gonna do anything
to go find his family,
and that's
that stuck out on the page
way more than a zombie
here and there, you know?
And everybody
played it like that.
[somber music]
You have to play everything
as real as possible.
- [snarling]
- [indistinct]
There's so many examples
on that show where, like
You're like, "Oh, my God,
is this gonna work?"
- And the actors
- No, no, no!
Just pulled it out
and made it perfect.
[screaming]
No!
- [grunts]
- She was playing with me!
- She wanted a friend!
- She wanted to kill you!
I was gonna lead her away!
- You could have died.
- It's the same thing!
You killed her!
You killed her!
There's a reason
there wasn't really
a zombie TV show before.
[dark music]
- Ugh
- Effects need
to be really good
on a television show
so that people don't fall out
of the reality
that you're trying to sell.
The best zombies, I think,
are what Greg is doing
in "The Walking Dead."
The best zombies today.
Uh, and there's a lot
of CGI there, you know,
and necessary,
because the zombies
have been around for so long,
now they're decaying
and rotting, you know?
- [gagging]
- Just a little more.
- [gurgling]
- There's that one famous
- the "well walker"
- Stop!
- Come on!
- Where he's just
so waterlogged and bloated
that he just sort of, like,
comes apart.
- [all grunting]
- [gurgling]
♪♪
That's one
of the beautiful things
that Greg does, is his team
you can see the lost person
behind the monster, you know?
That's that's when
they become scary.
I never get sick of it,
honestly.
They keep they keep
reinventing the wheel
- with the zombies, it's nuts.
- [growling]
♪♪
Obviously the the irony is,
who are the walking dead?
Is it the actual zombies
or is the people?
- Right, right.
- Uh, what are they willing
to do to each other to survive?
- And that's
- Yeah, at what point
- do you lose your humanity?
- Right.
"Walking Dead" being on
for so long surprises me,
'cause y'all should be dead
by now, man.
[snarling]
You know,
because it doesn't make sense.
- To me.
- [snarling]
[gasping, whimpering]
Doesn't it feel like zombies
are cresting now, too?
Yeah, right now it does
seem like we're in the middle
of a zombie apocalypse.
[procession chanting]
Yeah.
The dumbing down of society.
We're all zombies.
[zombies snarling]
Zombies are representative
of of Alzheimer's
a just terrifying disease.
And zombies
are representatives of cancer.
To me, what's happened
with the zombie
is now they're representatives
of anarchy
and the collapse
of government.
The collapse of order.
[menacing music]
Zombies are really sort of
a wonderful catch-all metaphor
because they can mean
absolutely anything.
- [screaming]
- Zombies in 1968
are the breakdown
of American society.
[zombies groaning]
In 2017
with "The Walking Dead"
uh, who knows
what it represents.
[zombies growling]
One take-away could be
that everything's hopeless
[distant shouting]
[exclaims]
Another take-away could be
that humans
will always persevere
even when
it seems like there's
no reason to
or that it's impossible to.
[gunfire]
[zombies snarling]
Yeah, zombies will never die.
No pun intended.
[laughing]
- [babbling]
- [screaming]
It's so interesting,
the resurgence of zombies,
and the fact that they kind of
won't ever go away.
[zombies snarling]
We'll always be
telling stories.
I think we'll
we're never gonna lose
our fascination with them.
Half a century ago,
George Romero created
the modern zombie
America's great contribution
to monster horror.
[sinister music]
Now, zombie movies are
an international phenomenon.
♪♪
The zombie plague
has infected the world.
- [screams]
- As relentless
and unstoppable
as the flesh-eating undead.
♪♪
We wake them
and we got it all!