My goodness I have a new follower! Thanks for stopping by Chris!!
I still have one VHS left from the nine I rented on Tuesday but I went to the video store again on Friday night and came home with eight more!! All on VHS, which only cost me $12.00! That is alot of viewing for not much coin! While there I asked the owner if the many old VHS tapes still get hired and he said yes they do, especially the horrors. The shelfs are packed with 80's horrors and it is a real thrill to go through them and remember them all from my teenage years. I suppose too that many 80's horrors have never been released onto DVD and the only way to see them is on VHS. One thing about having started this blog is after having searched around I am absolutely amazed at how many blogs there are solely committed to horror movies. Some of them are very, very good to.
Well the video I played first on Friday is a real classic of the 80's and regarded as one of the best zombie movies ever made. I really like zombie movies over straight horror films. They aren't as scary and generally have a comedy element as well. Night of the Creeps is still probably my all time favorite zombie flick. Living Dead was released in 1985 and had a R16 rating so I missed it at the theatre as I would have been only 14.
A history lesson here for you not old enough to rememeber the 80's! Back then movies took an incredible amount of time before they were realeased on video. Upwards of six months or more. Not like today where they are released virtually as soon as the theatre runs finish. Oh how times have changed! The other thing was in the 80's I found that an R rated movie was harder to rent than today if you were under age. When I got to about 16 I was quite tall for my age so could get away with it, but it is a vivid memory of renting R rated films when under age. Ah the innocence of youth!!
Living Dead is an 80's classic and rightly so. Unlike the recently reviewed Hellraiser and Night of the Demons I found time has been kinder to it than those two movies. The special effects and make-up are dated to be sure but it was never a horror and meant to scare, and I think this is why it has dated so well. It would be at least 23 years since I saw it and I had forgotten much, but at the same I was surprised at what I did remember. I have always liked the half zombie woman that was tied to the embalming table. For some reason it was always her rotting breasts that I remember most about that scene. But what has always stuck with me more was her spinal cord flicking back and forth. Great stuff, and after seeing it again I fell in love with it all over again! As a scene it hasn't dated as some others have.
Tar man from the barrel has dated and looks very 80's, but at the time he was gross and the height of movie make-up and effects. The other scene that stuck with me of course was the punk girl getting naked and dancing in the cemetary. To be honest my best friend and I rented this movie just to see that scene!!!!!! I kid you not! We where just a couple of horny hormonal teenaged boys that weren't getting any so seeing some tits on screen was a big deal to us. How things change, as while I still like boobies I don't go hiring a video just to see them anymore!!
Living Dead was a real trip down memory lane for me. I liked it then and still do. It is the zombie flick that started my love of them as genre. I saw Night of the Creeps in 1987 on the big screen and prefer it to Living Dead, but this one I think has the more 'cult' status. The thing that sets Living Dead apart from other zombies flicks is that here they can talk and hold conversations. This was unheard of in a zombie flick, the dead can't talk! ('Brains', 'brains', 'send more cops', 'brains to stop the pain of being dead', and so on.) It is a really great 80's zombie flick and set the standard of all that followed it. I honestly have loved watching some of them recently because I remember the 80's so well. It is interesting to see in particular how women's fashion has changed. Girls back then DID dress like that and horny teenagers like me used to drool over these very same screen babes with their clothes and hairstyles. Watching them is a real trip down memory lane.
If, like me, you are a child of the 80's and watched all horror movies going then rent this and enjoy it all over again. It is still a great zombie flick and I think you'll be amazed at how much you will enjoy it. Again, I think zombie flicks age better than horrors. Hellraiser has the same effects and make-up but is horrendously dated and is now unscary . Living Dead is of the same era and is still really cool and has an added 80's 'charm' factor that most gory movies of the day now lack.
Just pure unadulterated fun!!!!! Brains, brains!!!!!!!!!!
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And here for a really cool site devoted exclusively to the film:
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