George A Romero Collection

3 DVD Set

Umbrella Entertainment

The George A Romero Collection from Umbrella is a solid collection of Romero’s earlier works – The Crazies, Martin and Dawn of the Dead. While Dawn of the Dead and his later Zombie works are better known, I think that both Crazies and Martin are significant titles within his canon of work and well worth seeing. Since Dawn of the Dead has been reviewed in earlier issues of Synergy, I will concentrate this review on the other two lesser known titles.

In the Crazies we have many of the themes which Romero later develops in his Zombie films. A military aircraft crashes into the water supply of Evan's City, Pennsylvania, infecting the inhabitants with a biological weapon known as Trixie. At first the military are told it was a vaccine and hence minimal preparation is made for a possible outbreak. But soon the truth becomes painfully obvious, it is an uncontrollable biological weapon that has no cure and causes death or insanity. The townspeople are soon driven to murderous rages and bouts of insane behaviour. The military are trying to keep the town under quarantine but with very limited resources the situation is a potential disaster. The president is notified and a plane with atomic weapons is flying overhead.

The townsfolk are terrified and begin to fight back and the situation gets out of control. Yet who are the monsters ? The military responds with what seems like extreme force (with many of them coming down with the virus) as the cycle of violence spirals out of control. A small group tries to escape but things are not always what they seem. How can you tell if someone has the virus? As the situation degenerates Trixie spreads…

The Crazies is an early effort by George Romero and with a relatively low budget he has produced a telling science fiction film which offers a solid horror experience as well as a dark reflection on the military and army culture. The fact that the military are nearly always depersonalized in white outfits with gas masks intensifies the overall tension of the film. This is a film strong on mood, there is a powerful emotional tension built up throughout the film until the climax which brings home the nature of germ warfare.

While not one of Romero’s major works, The Crazies has been under-rated and it is great to see it available in Australia on DVD. It also offers an excellent commentary track by George A. Romero himself.

Martin is a strange and uncomfortably exploration of the myth of the vampire, but it has been turned upside down and become something totally outside our expectations. The film opens with Martin Madahas (played superbly by John Amplas) stalking a woman on a train. Just as you expect him to kill her as a vampire would, the scene changes, he puts her to sleep using an injection and after a sexual encounter while she is drugged, slits her wrists with a razor blade drinking her blood. He then arranges the room to make it look like a suicide. It is a powerful and confronting scene and sets the stage for a very unconventional tale.

Martin is on the way to stay with his uncle who believes he is the curse of the family, a Nosferatu and demonises the lad at every opportunity. Slowly as more and more of the story unfolds you begin to wonder if this is a story about a vampire or a tale about the psychosis caused by family superstitions. It seems that since the boy was young he was “destined” to be a Nosferatu like those in the line before him and with constant degradation, abuse and exorcisms (show in black and white) he has come to fulfil the role. Martin seems to live in a disturbed dream world, when he commits his killings he sees the world in a fanciful way (also depicted in a stylized black and white way). So while on one level he is slicing with a razor and chancing an unwilling victim, in his fantasy, he is consummating a blood pact with a lover. This mixture of fantasy and reality seem to be the essence of Martin’s madness, yet the question remains - is he really a serial killer with a taste for blood or a disturbed youth driven to insanity by a violent and superstitious upbringing.

The film has a sense of sadness and melancholy and certainly ends on a tragic note. While Martin has only been only able to experience sexual satisfaction with a drugged partner, at last he finds a woman with whom he can make love only to have her commit suicide. His Uncle, convinced Martin has killed her in vampiric lust (which in this case he has not) drives a stake through his heart.

This is an intriguing story with many different levels of meaning. Time and time again Romero uses Martin to ridicule the myth of the “magic” of vampires such as garlic, crucifixes etc and yet Martin does kill and does so brutally. In the end Martin seems to be as much about the danger of superstition and where it can lead as much as above the myth of the Vampire. Romero has really turned the whole vampire tradition on its head and used it to get us to question the danger of superstition and where it can lead and the consequences on the lives of those it touches...

Martin also includes an audio commentary with George A. Romero, R. Rubinstein, T. Savini, M. gornick and D. Rubinstein and a featurette - Making Martin: A Recounting.

Together The Crazies and Martin are both exemplary works of filmmaking and combined with Dawn of the Dead, they make a great package.