Obligatory Halloween Post Has Risen From The Grave

Beast Witches to Boo on Halloween!

So, here we are yet again, scare addicts! It's that time of year when I talk about a movie that took a sizable chunk outta my sanity as an impressionable yoot!

In past chapters I've talked about some of the scariest fright flicks ever made, including An American Werewolf in London, The Exorcist, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Alien, The Return of the Living Dead, The Evil Dead and The Shining.

I'm not sure how old I was when I first saw this year's entry, but I learned of its existence when my parents inexplicably let my buy The Encyclopedia of Horror edited by Richard Davis back in 1981.

At the tender age of 11, I certainly wasn't prepared for the gruesome image I saw on page 139:

A distinct look of revulsion played over my face as I read that the still was from a movie that "showed in macabre detail what happened when zombies overran New York."

I can already hear the hard-core horror hounds out there screaming "What?!? New York?!? It happens in Pennsylvania, you dumb-ass!"

But back then I didn't know any better. I took the writer at face value as he went on to add: "Most of the action takes place in a large supermarket (?) which becomes awash with blood."

I was officially intrigued. As I read through the book I encountered more details on page 149:

"Mr. Romero now has color, and blood is gorier in color. Mr. Romero has never been one to eschew physical grue. Characters have the tops of their heads blown off in graphic closeup. Bolstered by larger budgets, Mr. Romero doesn't always resist the temptation to indulge himself, and is danger of overstatement as far as his moral message is concerned."   

The intensity of the movie was further bolstered by the following lurid image on page 153:

The pic was captioned thusly:

"In the 1970's, horror movies, with their surfeit of blood and special effects, were becoming almost too gruesome and frightening for the average horror fan." 

Yeah, no shit, Rich.

Prior to reading this book and seeing these images, the most graphic violence I'd seen in a film was likely Raiders of the Lost Ark. It would still be a year or so before I'd see "Mr. Romero's" notorious first feature film, a nasty little piece of celluloid which I've already talked about here and here.

In fact, the experience of seeing that particular magnum opus traumatized me so badly that I swore off Romero movies for at least two or three decades. I honestly didn't want to subject my embryonic  wits to any more of this madman's nightmare fuel. But every subsequent horror book I collected talked about this nasty sequel in hushed tones, as if daring me to watch it.

Here's what Tom Hutchinson had to say about it in Horrors: A History of Horror Movies two years later:

"Most of the later part of the action takes place in a huge shopping mall to which the zombies come. 'They gravitate to places that have meant a lot to them when they were living,' says one of the characters in the most overt statement yet about such a consuming and consumed society, although the sight of redneck farmers out on a zombie-shoot is a fairly obvious comment on our sporting lives."

And whereas its predecessor was in black-and-white, this sequel was in color, which meant "the gore was more realistically effective in the way it looked on screen. So heads explode in wincing close-up, because that is still the only way to eradicate the zombie plague, as once again a small group of people flees the rotting wrath to come. The plague analogy is very relevant for, besides being cannibalistic, the zombies pass on their contagion to whomever they bite, so that a man on the run dies of the bite and is then revived as one of the living dead." 

By this time I'd seen Romero's debut film and knew I wasn't even vaguely ready to watch it's gorier color sequel. Especially based on what I read and saw in Nigel Andrew's book Horror Movies.  

This book featured another stomach-turning still from the movie:

Now, it's one thing to screw up the courage to watch a movie that's scary but its a completely different bag o' rats to stare down the barrel of what my increasingly-frantic horror library was calling one of the goriest films ever made.

But eventually my horror movie apprenticeship hardened my stomach to the point where I thought I could tackle this one. So I took a trip down to my local video store, rented the town's single threadbare copy and followed my usual masochistic ritual. I turned off all the lights and crawled up on the couch. Given the film's reputation for vomitorial visceralism, I eschewed the snacks that I normally set aside for movie time. 

Despite my precautions, I had no idea at the time that nothing can prepare you for your first viewing of...

Dawn of the Dead (1978)

***WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD*** 

If you've never seen this classic horror movie, then what the hell are you doing?!? Go watch it first and then come back to read what this inconsequential jack-ass has to say about it!

After pressing "PLAY", I watched with dread as the movie began with a television station in turmoil. Nothing directly ties Dawn to its predecessor, but I like to think that this flick continues the story started in Night of the Living Dead...and the zombie plague has gotten a helluva lot worse.  

People are shouting, papers are flying in the air and two "experts" are hotly debating the current situation, leading to one of the film's many memorable quotes:

"Every dead body that is not exterminated becomes one of them. It gets up and kills! The people it kills get up and kill!" 

For some reason the yahoos gathered in the studio started heaping scorn upon the guy for saying this. Were they oblivious to what was going on all around them? Hadn't they seen the first film? In some weird way, this presages the current Trump-era tend of dismissing clear and present dangers like climate change as "fake news." 

So Romero, sneaky bastard that he is, wasted no time sneaking in some sly social commentary. Beyond this scene parroting the growing trend towards "circus" television, I watched as Givens, the unscrupulous station manager, forced his employees to keep broadcasting a list of non-existent rescue stations. One of our protagonists, Fran, played by the delightful Gaylen Ross, kicked back against this, which led to the following exchange:

Givens:    Garret, who told you to kill those supers?

Fran:        Nobody. I killed 'em. They're out of date. 

Givens:    I want those supers on the air all the time! 

Fran:        Are you willing to murder people by sending them out to stations that have closed down?

Givens:    Without those rescue stations on screen every minute people won't watch us. They'll tune out!

This introduced a pretty constant theme in the movie: seeking diversion and comfort from a world spinning down through through materialism and short-term gain. Realizing that all semblance of remaining order is lost, Fran agreed to escape in the station's news helicopter with her partner Stephen, a.k.a. Flyboy, played by David Emge. 

We then smash-cut to a S.W.A.T. team that's poised to raid a dilapidated tenement building. At least I assumed they were S.W.A.T.; most of them looked like hippies dressed up in Halloween costumes and awkwardly toting plastic M-16's. Clearly the movie didn't have the budget nor the inclination to hire real S.W.A.T. guys or train the extras in weapon handing and police tactics. As I would quickly learn, these petty observations would soon be rendered inconsequential. 

At the time I had no sweet clue what was supposed to be happening in this scene. And that's what I love about independent movies from this era. Unlike modern studio films, you're not spoon fed information and you've gotta puzzle things out for yourself.

Distracted by trauma during the introduction, I'd missed out on the reference to martial law. Apparently, things have gotten so bad that citizens were no longer able to occupy private residences and the bodies of the recently deceased had to be turned over to authorities for proper disposal. Well, the folks in this particular building weren't too keen on the idea of the cops bombing in and taking over their turf. An armed conflict ensued, giving Romero and horror movie makeup maestro Tom Savini an excuse to set off more explosive blood squibs than what was used to kill Sonny Corleone in The Godfather.

As someone who was still squeamish about seeing on-screen blood and graphic violence, this scene quickly caused my stomach to curdle. And when one the S.W.A.T. guys, appropriately named Wooley, suddenly veered deep into the weeds, things got much, much worse. 

I remember thinking to myself: 'Yeah, I know society is falling apart here, but how did this sloppy, psychotic fuck pass his last psych exam? Or his fitness exam, for that matter? Sorry, but as soon as this loon racked his shotgun and started raving about how Martinez needed to show his "greasy Puerto Rican  ass" so he could "blow it off", I was hoping the field commander would show up, take Mr. Electricity off to the side and ask him to "ex-nay the whole Uuertopay Icanray thing". Oh, and maybe encourage him to switch to decaf.

But nope, I sat there, jaw agape, as this lunatic went into rampage mode throughout the building. At one point Officer Batshit kicked down a random door, fired his shotgun, and blew the head off the poor fucker who just so happened to be standing there. 

This prompted me to punch the "STOP" button on the VCR remote control, for the first of many, many times during the movie.

"Wha-wha-what the fuck was the point of that?!" I muttered to myself, reflexively putting the back of my hand up to my mouth. Clearly the years hadn't caused Romero to go soft. If they're starting with a full-on head explosion, what they hell were they gonna do next?

Tentatively I pushed the "PLAY" button again and recoiled away from the television screen. 

My answer came pretty quick. I watched as a bunch of zombies got released from one of the quarantined rooms as they tried to put Old Yeller down. One of ghouls grabbed his unwitting girlfriend (?) and chomped down on her neck and then her arm. Again, Tom Savini's gut-wrenching makeup effects prompted another pause.

'I'm not gonna make it,'  I thought to myself, trying to stem the rising tide of bile. As my horror books had blithely observed, the gore in Night of the Living Dead was repellent enough, but this time out things were in color. Lurid, realistic, stomach-churning color.  

When I resumed the movie, my nausea got a brief reprieve but my nerves didn't. I was introduced to two of the S.W.A.T. team members, namely Peter (Ken Foree) and Roger (Scott Reiniger), who have an encounter with a one-legged priest who's unpretentious delivery gives added resonance to the following chilling line:

"When the dead walk, señores,we must stop the killing or we lose the war."

Much to my complete and utter lack of delight, I got to see what this creepy and cryptic reference meant in the very next scene. As it turned out, the people in the tenement building have been stashing their dead and dying loved ones in the basement, who are then zombie-ing out and eating each other. *HUUURRRKK* Romero and Savini, the sick little monkeys that the are, document all of this in a series of devilishly-sadistic closeups.

I swore under my breath as I mistakenly hit "PAUSE" instead of the "STOP" button, inadvertently lingering on the sight of a gross, putrefying zombie gleefully munching away on a leg bone. Averting my gaze, I started mashing random buttons until the screen mercifully went black. 

"Jesus Christ!" I yelled out loud, likely causing my parents in the next room to stir. "What the fuck is wrong with these people?" 

Now, it wasn't as if I was watching this movie at an impressionable age and I couldn't tell the difference between reality and fantasy. It was just so vile, repulsive, realistic and nightmarish that it was starting to make me feel sick. After resuming the film, I managed to get to the end of the scene, feeling a palpable sense of relief every time Roger and Peter delivered another merciful head-shot to each of the rotting, cannibalistic aberrations.  

Something else worth noting at this point is the film's production design, or lack thereof. Dawn of the Dead wasn't shot on some hermetically-sealed, pre-constructed back-lot set that was made to look grungy. Nope, Romero went out, found the gnarliest, most dilapidated, run down, filthy apartment building he could find and then just started crankin' the camera. Between the vile setting and Michael Gornick's sickly-looking cinematography, Dawn of the Dead actually looks like it smells bad. In fact, to paraphrase my recent review of Terrifier, this movie looks like it was shot in "Smell-O-Vision" and the knob got permanently stuck on the "Devil's Anus" setting. 

As it turns out, Roger and Stephen are bros, so both he and Peter go along in the chopper flight. As the foursome get a bird's eye view of the countryside, we witness the full scale of the zombie apocalypse as packs of armed rednecks and military types are shown roaming the countryside, gunning down any wandering ghouls they encounter. 

Many times I've bitched about movies being tonally inconsistent, and this one is no exception. In fact, a case could be made that Dawn is tonally schizophrenic. After all, movie drunkenly careens from one of the most intense moments of visceral horror to a scene where roving bands of heavily-armed yahoos are wandering around, sport-shooting ghouls and enjoying an outdoor boil-up, all to the tune of "'Cause I'm A Man" by The Pretty Things.  

But somehow it worked for me. Maybe its because Romero had given me just enough down time in the helicopter to get to know our main characters. Perhaps it was because a moment of levity was just what I needed after all of that extreme brutality. Maybe it was the oddly-reassuring connective tissue (pun not intended) that this sequence provided to Night of the Living Dead. Whatever the reason, it didn't feel completely out of place to me. 

Eventually our heroes were forced to land and refuel. It was at that point when I really noticed the film's oddball musical choices. Speaking of schizophrenic, Dawn of the Dead's soundtrack is just as patchwork as its tone, featuring genuinely-creepy tracks by legendary Italian prog-rock band Goblin sandwiched between incongruous clips of generic stock music. The music is super-weird in the airport sequence; kinda like a bandsaw being oscillated back and forth at high speed. It really adds to the feeling of creeping doom. 

As our heroes explored the abandoned airport, a deader popped out of nowhere and tackled Flyboy. At the time I chuckled to myself, thinking 'Wow, dude might be an ace pilot, but he's pretty useless when it comes to hand-to hand combat. What the dell was that whole cross-body-block thing? Honestly, that shit's funnier than the redneck cook-out scene.'

Moments of black comedy dispensed with, it was clearly time for Romero to get down to the task of scaring the shit out of me again. I watched as a cadaver started to creep up on an oblivious Roger as he re-fueled the chopper. Now, in a crappy horror movie, this would result in some big showdown between the two, but not here. Here it's all about the gag. Driven by pure instinct, the zombie climbed atop a pile of crates interposed between him and Roger, inadvertently stuck his Frankensteinian melon up into the helicopter's rotor blades and promptly got more than a little taken off the top. 

Moments like this started to take the sting out of the graphic violence for me, to the point where the movie started to transition from balls-out horror to something kinda comic book-y. Having said that, not two minutes later, in one of the movie's more subversively-tasteless scenes, I watched in abject terror as Peter was forced to gun down two prepubescent ghouls who bushwhacked him in the airport office.

My nerves scarcely had a moment to recover before one of the most iconic zombies in cinema history made his debut. I squirmed in my seat as this bald rotter with the hideously decayed face and chest started silently closing in on a distracted Peter. Given his black and red plaid shirt, I idly wondered if this guy had inadvertently wandered down south from Mississauga.

As Flyboy aimed his rifle at the encroaching ghoul, I knew that he'd never owned a Daisy air rifle as a kid since he'd clearly never been exposed to even the most basic gun safety rules. His shot missed the zombie and nearly hit Peter, requiring a timely intervention from crack shot Roger.

Now refueled, our heroes quickly got airborne again. Eventually they flew over a massive parking lot and an equally-sprawling two-level complex. This led to one of the most gloriously-dated exchanges in film history:

Stephen: What the hell is it?
Roger: It looks like a shopping center, one of those big, indoor malls

Even in the mid-Eighties this was a really antiquated reference. By then, consumerism was at its zenith and shopping malls were everywhere. After touching down, our heroes looked down into the parking lot where scores of zombies were aimlessly milling around. This led to the following dialogue between Stephen and Fran, which continued to hammer home the film's theme:

Fran: What are they doing? Why do they come here?
Stephen: Some kind of instinct. Memory of what they used to do. This was an important place in their lives.

Fun fact: after you watch Dawn of the Dead you'll never look at shoppers in a mall around the Christmas season the same way again.

As the characters first ventured inside, I was really impressed by how well the movie used the mall as a location. Sometimes it felt as if Romero was shooting the flick in real time as the actors explored their surroundings. At one point the lights, animated displays and the incongruous muzak got turned on, leading to yet another funny tonal shift. I even found myself chuckling as Romero juxtaposed more over-the-top gore with scenes of zombies bumping into one another on the escalators and tumbling over the railing and into the fountain. 

At this point I really took notice of the low-fi makeup job on most of the zombies. In Night of the Living Dead, the make-up artists had it relatively easy. Since it was in black and white, all they needed to do is slap white makeup, facial appliances and chocolate sauce on a bunch of extras and *poof*, instant zombies. But in Dawn, Savini had a much bigger challenge.

Between shooting in color, the on-set lighting, the film stock used, and the sheer number of zombies that were needed, Savini's plan to shellac the background performers in a flat grey hue kinda backfired since it ended up photographing blueish-green. But considering the film's budget and time constraints, I find it easy to suspend disbelief and just go with it.

I also noticed that the blood in the film didn't really look like blood at all. I didn't know it at the time, but the egg tempera candy apple red gore used on-set was actually mass-produced by the 3M corporation. When the dailies started to come in, Tom told George that he hated the color of the blood, but George thought it was reminiscent of the EC Comics of his childhood and they decided to just roll with it.

After Peter and Roger took off to look for supplies, I felt a rush of anger as Stephen charged after them, effectively leaving Fran to her own devices. With everyone running riot around the mall, a Hari Krishna zombie slipped into the stairwell, leading to a legitimately creepy scene where he menaces Fran. Mercifully she managed to hold the l'il undead bastard at bay long enough for the guys to get back and help her.

Wow, and you though Hari Krishna's were pushy in real life!

This brings me to actress Gaylen Ross and the character of Fran. Compared to the shell-shocked  Barbra in Night of the Living Dead, Fran is practically Ellen freakin' Ripley. Sadly, she's also kinda useless at the start of the film, leaving Stephen to fend for himself during the airport attack and then retreating from the Hari Krishna zombie quicker than if it was alive. But the good news is, Fran does have an arc. She starts out about as valuable as a screen door on a submarine but by the end of it, she can handle herself quite well.

Nowadays you'd probably get criticized for showing a female character experience any sort of courage or competency struggle *cough, cough* Rey in Star Wars *cough, cough* but, in my humble opinion, that isn't realistic either. Hey, I'm big enough to admit that, if I was faced with what Fran had to deal with in Dawn of the Dead, I'd probably be the first one to go "full Barbra" on my fellow survivors. 

It's then revealed that Fran isn't at the top of her game because she's got a bun in the oven, prompting this bizarre exchange between Peter and Stephen:

Peter: Do you want to get rid of it?
Stephen: What?!?
Peter: Do you want to abort it? It's not too late...and I know how.

When I heard this I thought to myself: 'How the hell does Peter know how to abort a baby?!? Is he just gonna boot her in the stomach?!?' As a good Catlick boy, hearing this casually-thrown-out line was more shocking than some of the gore effects. This leads me to another point: sometimes George Romero's dialogue is pretty tin-eared.

Anyhoo, back to what was happening on screen. I was really enjoying how every part of the plan to seal off and then secure the mall was being documented in loving detail. It was almost as if Romero and company were providing a real zombie apocalypse visual survival guide. But every time Peter and Roger haphazardly tore-ass through the parking lot with another set of trucks, I couldn't help but wince. To this day, I'm stunned that no one was killed while making the film.

After fooling the zombies time and time again, ol' Rog starts to get pretty cocky, bordering on Wooley-levels of unhinged. This leads to one of my all-time favorite lines in cinema history:

I felt myself growing increasingly nervous as Roger's overconfidence started to get the best of him. He let his guard down at one point and got chomped on both the arm and the leg. Now, you gotta understand the context here. This was very likely only the second or third movie I'd ever seen that  featured zombies. The concept of a dead body being reanimated, walking around and spreading its infection by biting other people was nebulous, mysterious and decidedly vile.

Notwithstanding the compelling visual evidence that at least a baker's dozen aspiring stuntmen were maimed or killed during this scene, the chaos was palpable. A lot of the gore is incidental; such as the throwaway moment where a zombie gets run over, stands back up, ripping his own arm off in the process, and then continued to attack the truck. Again, going back to the golden zombie rule: these things weren't dropped until the creature's nexus of animation, the brain, was destroyed. Needless to say, the implications for this rule is a gore hound's wet dream.

With all of the entrances sealed off, our heroes set their sights on exterminating all of the zombies inside the mall. This was kicked off with a wonderful scene where they raid a gun shop, montage-style. Say what you want about Romero practically bolting the camera down as well as his workmanlike dialogue coverage, he's undeniably a crackerjack editor and this sequence is pure gold. Keep in mind: this pre-dates Ash getting prepped in The Evil Dead by three years. Oh, and you gotta dig that weird-ass tribal music playing in the background!

Eventually Peter, Roger, Stephen and Fran managed to put all of the zombies down and life slowly started to return to some semblance of normalcy. For one brief shining moment we got a chance to breathe a sigh of relief. But even then, the ever-present sound of the zombies pawing away at the mall's entrance doors was a constant reminder that a tsunami of death and chaos was lurking just outside, seeking to find and exploit a single crack in their defenses.

This led to the movie's most iconic scene where our Fantastic Four are standing together up on the top floor of the mall, looking down and listening to the slathering horde pounding and clawing away outside. Even though Romero's dialogue can falter at times, it's bone-chillingly effective in this sequence:

Fran: They're still here.
Stephen: They're after us. They know we're still in here.
Peter: They're after the place. They don't know why; they just remember. Remember that they want to be in here.
Francine Parker: What the hell are they?
Peter: They're us, that's all, when there's no more room in hell.
Stephen: What?
Peter: Something my granddad used to tell us. You know Macumba? Voodoo? My granddad was a priest in Trinidad. He used to tell us, "When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the Earth."

Like all the best campfire tales, Ken Foree's accomplished delivery sent chills down my spine and prompted me to seek comfort in a...well, a comforter that was lying on the couch. I bundled myself up, steeled my nerves and kept watching.

This dire speech was immediately re-enforced by poor Roger finally succumbing to his zombie bites. Between Scott Reiniger's stirring performance and the eerie musical cues, it was really, really hard to watch. Especially as Roger's corpse started to stir under the sheet and sit up, eventually revealing yet another classic Tom Savini makeup job.

Side note: every once and awhile the character's turn on their television, and we see a dude I originally dubbed "crazy eye patch guy" appear in emergency news broadcasts. For the record, the character's name is actually Dr. Millard Rausch and he's played with aplomb by Richard France. Only in a 70's-era low budget indie horror flick would a guy like France be cast as a scientist. Nowadays it would be some prim n' proper Anderson Cooper-looking motherfucker.

But no, here we get Richard France, yet another gloriously-distinctive weirdo that Romero loves to cast in his movies. I immediately fell in love with this guy. Thanks to his deep, baritone voice, matter-of-fact delivery, strange mannerisms and absolute certainty in delivering the script's whack-a-do lines, he effortlessly commanded every single scene that he was featured in. Plus, I admired his penchant for screaming "DUMMIES!!! DUMMIES!!! DUMMIES!!!" over and over again.  

Eventually life became so domesticated inside the mall that, at one point, Peter prepared an elegant anniversary dinner for Stephen and Fran in has to be the most gloriously-dated 70's-era scene in any film. Even though the couple are surrounded by the trappings of normal life all around them, there's something supremely claustrophobic and depressing about the whole thing. If anything, this sequence embodies Fran's prescient prediction from earlier in the film:

"You don't see that it's not a sanctuary, it's a prison!"

As if in response to this, a huge pack of motorcycle-riding lunatics showed up to invade the mall. Again, Dawn shows it's influence by presaging Mad Max by a year and The Road Warrior by four. Prior to the big show down, I watched with growing concern as Peter, Fran and Stephen removed all of their jewelry and fancy clothes and donned their survival gear again. The message wasn't lost on me: if the world is falling apart you can only distract yourself for so long before you're forced to deal with it.

What followed over the next thirty minutes could only be described as an orgy of blood and mayhem. After getting past the barriers, the invaders drove their bikes en masse right through the mall and then started to pillage everything. Witnessing the looters snatch up property that he thought now belonged to them, Stephen snapped and started sniping away at them.

During the ensuing chaos, I was witness to approximately one-hojillion explosive blood squibs, a multitude of hacked-off limbs, decapitations and at least one nauseatingly-realistic disembowelment. Presiding over this insanity was a gleefully-anarchic Tom Savini, providing the gore effects behind the scene and inhabiting the role of lead-biker Blades. Witness the scene where he buries a machete in the head of one of the zombies, resulting in the iconic third still at the beginning of this entry. 

I didn't know it at the time, but, just like every other setting for Dawn of the Dead, the mall was a very real location: namely Munroeville Mall in Munroeville, Pennsylvania. Every night, after the place closed closed down for the day, Romero and his cadre of cinematic horror nerds would bomb in, shoot all night long and then try and clean everything up before the place re-opened in the morning.

Re-watching the film, I'm stunned that they managed to make the place presentable every day, what with cars and motorcycles ripping around, mannequins being run over and gore flying everywhere. I've always wondered if any casual shoppers ever slipped in an errant patch of blood in the sporting goods section of JC Penny or noticed a random ear stuck to the inside of the photo booth.

Whereas the 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake featured the fast-moving zombies which were de rigueur at the time, I still maintain that Romero's shambling ghouls are much more interesting. Eschewing the fantasy logic that re-animated dead bodies shouldn't even be physically capable of sprinting around like Usain Bolt, the shufflers really lull you into a false sense of security. They may be clumsy and inherently pathetic, but if you aren't paying attention and they come at you in a clutch you can find yourself proper fucked without much ado.

By the time the pie scene rolled around, I really didn't know what to think. I remember having a really hard time reconciling the violence with the humor. Towards the end, Dawn of the Dead is like a live-action Road Runner cartoon where Wild E. Coyote's resulting wounds are realistically and clinically depicted by a crazy former Vietnam combat photographer cum supremely-talented makeup artist. I didn't know if I should laugh, scream, cry or projectile-vomit onto the television screen.

As the zombies began to overwhelm the bikers, something happened that made absolutely no sense to me. With the ghouls closing in all around, one of the raiders inexplicably strapped himself into a heart monitor machine and gamely followed through with the test, even as the creatures fell upon him like a living luau. I sat there in stunned silence, listening to the monitor's readings screech as they literally tore him limb from limb right before my disbelieving eyes.

This necessitated another pause. As gross as the visuals were, even I knew that Romero was clearly fucking with me at this point. The thing that surprised me the most is that I hadn't stopped the movie in quite awhile. So, either I was becoming numb to the cavalcade of gore or the film's humor had de-fanged any cruelty inherent in the act. 

But even then, Romero still had one final, amazingly-memorable trump card to play. After Flyboy got lethally nibbled he came and back almost immediately as one of the most iconic zombies in cinema history. As if Tom Savini's hero-level makeup job wasn't amazing enough, David Emge completely sells the illusion. When he emerged from that elevator, eyes and mouth agape, covered in hideous wounds, revolver dangling abstractly off one finger, Emge became the prototypical zombie in my mind. To this day I still have no idea how he managed to walk around on his ankle like that.

And with that, the living dead reclaimed the mall. As if to reinforce the whole "zombies gravitate to places that are familiar" angle, Zombie-Stephen instinctively staggered his way back through the mall, tore through the wall and incrementally made his way back to the hero's secret safe-room. Unfortunately his new squad of undead bros came along with him.

This led to an absolutely insane climax. With a tidal wave of ghouls now streaming past their barricade, Peter told Fran to escape in the helicopter while he held off the horde. But, then, right at the last second, instead if Peter shooting himself in the head, he jumped up, battled his way through the slavering undead and fought his way towards the helicopter. The musical accompaniment for this sequence, by the way, sounds like it might have inspired the opening title score for the A-Team.

Years later I found out that Romero's original ending was crazy-bleak. Peter shoots himself in the head and Fran decapitates herself by sticking her l'il blonde noggin' into the helicopter's rotor blades.¡Ay, caramba! I'm super-glad Romero jettisoned this downer ending. Between the pie fight and the death of Stephen, I don't think my poor brain could have coped with yet another whiplash-style tonal shift. 

As the orchestral strings swelled and the helicopter flew away, I breathed a palpable sense of relief and felt kinda proud of myself. I'd managed to make it all the way to the end without tossing my cookies or pausing every five seconds to dry-heave into a beef bucket. If anything, Dawn of the Dead truly reinforced the artistry of horror films for me. Even if they weren't made for a lot of money, they could still be epic, tackle big themes and resonate with you long after the credits rolled.

I'd also finally come to the conclusion that cinema gore was illusory. Convincing and gross, sure, but an illusion nonetheless. From that point forward, whenever I saw a practical effect, my first question was "Wow...how did they do that?" instead of "Oh gawd...can I reach the terlet in time?"

Whenever I re-watch Dawn of the Dead, my respect for the movie continues to grow. To me, it's more than just an iconic horror flick. I see it as a direct response to film critics and the moral majority who continue to complain that movie violence begets real violence.

To me, it's the other way around. Compared to news footage of kids coming home from Vietnam in body bags or students getting shot in cold blood by National Guard at Kent State, movies like Dawn of the Dead were just a reflection of the turbulent times that the creators lived through. In fact, by combining extreme gore with black comedy, Romero was telling us not to get bent out of shape over the fake stuff but to pay attention to the real horrors inherent in our reality. 

So, this Halloween season, avoid Zack Snyder's serviceable but vapid remake and check out the one and only Gone With The Wind of zombie flicks, Dawn of the Dead.

EPIC:  Recent documentary about the making of the film, included in Anchor Bay's marvelous DVD boxed set from 2004. WARNING: SPOILERS AND NOT EVEN VAGUELY SUITABLE FOR WORK!

VINTAGE EPIC:   This once hard-to-find doc from 1985 talks about Romero's early career and features some stellar behind-the-scenes footage from the production of Dawn of the Dead:

IRONIC FAIL: The reason Dawn of the Dead is currently unavailable in hi-def form is because the film's original producer and current rights holder, Richard P. Rubenstein, blew six million dollars inexplicably converting this classic horror movie into 3-D and now he wants a ludicrous amount of money for the rights to try and recoup his losses. Read the infuriating details right here.  

Please Be Smarter Than Your Phone

 
Howdy, Phone Fiends!

I have a phone but it isn't particularly smart.  In fact, if my phone went to school it would probably ride the short bus.  Please, don't repeat that.  My phone is very sensitive.  

There was a time when I was completely against getting a smart phone.  Then again, there was also a time not so long ago when I was completely opposed to acquiring my current cute-but-not-too-bright phone.  I kinda dug the idea of going off the grid so that people had no idea where I was or how to get ahold of me.

Yeah, that turned out to be practical.

Eventually I abandoned my Luddite ways and got a cell phone.  Within a few short days of this overdue acquisition I began thinking to myself: "Man, how did I ever live without this thing?"   It was just so friggin' handy, even for simple stuff like coordinating dinner plans on the fly, locating my wife in a crowded mall or determining if my bus vanished into the Bermuda Triangle.

My smart phone resistance seems to ebb and flow based on how many people I see zombified by these siren devices.  Words can't describe how monumentally sad I feel when I see four or five young people sitting around together at a pub, ignoring each other in lieu of practicing solo pollexian cardio.  I'm also alarmed by how many people text while driving or charge head-long down the street like the Rhino in a Spider-Man comic, oblivious to mailboxes, light poles or fellow pedestrians.  In the immortal words of Don Cherry: "Keep yer head up, kid!"  The next self-absorbed douchebag that nearly runs into me is gonna get hip-checked into traffic. 

I was on a sparsely-populated bus heading up into Bayers Lake recently when I suddenly noticed that every single one of my fellow public transportationists was completely and totally engrossed by their hand-held bliss devices.   Seeking solace, I quickly directed my attention out the window but discovered to my horror that the occupant of every car passenger seat was similarly transfixed.  It was like something out of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, fer Crissakes!  

In spite of these harrowing experiences, my infinitely-more-forward-thinking-half brought home an iPhone 4 ("Not even a 4S?!?!?  Ewwwwww!") about a month ago.  After giving her a hard time for about a week, something miraculous and completely unexpected started to happen.  Not only did I begin to tolerate this sexy, little, rectangular interloper, I actually found myself starting to relying on its bottomless fount of wisdom.

Remember those heady, pre-Internet days when you'd get into knock-down, drag out fights over whether or not Dick Yorke or Dick Sargeant was the original Darrin Stephens in Bewitched?  Now with the power of mobile interwebs, you can settle passionate disputes like this without murdering your best friend/spouse/family member in a fit of rage and then burying their body in a shallow grave somewhere in the woods.  Um, maybe you should ignore that last part...

I've since had plenty of opportunities to see these miraculous little gizmos in action.  For example:

1. While camping this summer we used The Night Sky to survey the stars over head.  I'm sorry, but that's just plain awesome.
2. We've used SoundHound to identify intriguing new tunes on our favorite radio station, Live 105.        
3. Last week we went to the wrong place to pick up a digital photo.  Needless to say, the ability to pop into Bookface and find the right spot without shleppin' all the way home was incredibly handy.  
4. A friend's GPS ap allowed us to quickly and efficiently locate The Wheel while passing through Antigonish recently.  Yay for yummy, expedited pizza!  
5. Waiting in endless line-ups is a breeze now thanks to the time-altering power of Scribblenauts Remix.  

Not to mention the fact that I'm already predisposed to MP3 players and eReaders.  So, whenever I notice that my fellow human beings are overly preoccupied by their portable devices, I like to think that it has nothing to do with swapping text messages about Big Brother or sharing links to "Stupid Hoe" by Niki Minaj.

Instead, I assume that everyone is spaced out and bumping into fire hydrants because they're all reading George Orwell's 1984 while listening to the Ramones and researching the theories of Ray Kurzweil. 

Translation: just like everything else, smart phones can either help us fulfill the true meaning of life by making us all smarter.

Or, if we let it, they'll completely lobotomize us.

EPIC   To make sure that no-one acts like a dick when you go out to dinner with friends I highly recommend that you employ the awesome power of the "Phone Stack".

EPIC PRANK #1   Actually, I'm pretty sure that zombies are slightly more observational...

EPIC PRANK #2  "Brains...BRAINS!!!"

FAIL  Zombification isn't the only threat to our collective souls when it comes to these gadgets.

A PICTURE'S WORTH A THOUSAND FAILS

"The End of Days" - Part I of V

Hi, Folks.


For the next few days I'm likely to be AFK.  The last time I did that there were no updates at all, and in retrospect, that's a bit of a cheat.  Sooooooo, instead of offering nothing, I'm gonna post up a short story I did a little while back.


A bit of a lead in to what your about to read: I have a bit of a fetish for zombies.  I don't know why but ever since I saw George A. Romero's "Night of the Living Dead" when I was a (relatively) innocent thirteen year old, I've just been fascinated by the Walking Dead. 


This short story is inspired by that seminal film and all the subsequent zombie fiction that's followed.  I hope you like it...

WARNING: Due to scenes of violence and mild language reader discretion is advised!

The End of Days

ONE

On days like this Father Paul Guinn wished he hadn’t answered a calling that required him to have a belief in all things spiritual. Especially on this, what anyone would have to consider the END OF DAYS.

As he finished the rosary and blessed himself he looked up to the image on the cross and an odd thought struck him. Resurrection was supposed to be miraculous; a symbol of triumph over death. His dreams over the past few nights, the recent signs he’d witnessed, and the news from earlier convinced him that what was to come was anything but a triumph. It was an abomination against the natural order of things.

Surely there could be no other higher power with sway over life and death?

For many of his brethren, the coming crisis would surely shatter their faith. ‘How could God let this happen under his watch?’ they’ll cry.

For Father Paul, however, what was about to transpire would only serve to harden his resolve. This was proof positive that the spiritual world did, in fact, exist. He knew God wasn’t responsible for the coming trials, but he was also positive that He would certainly be there to provide comfort when things were restored to normal.

Father Paul stood up, walked over to the altar and took a small pewter crucifix from its resting place. He kissed it gently and placed it within his breast pocket. Even strengthened, the emerging sound of pounding on the walls and the breathy exhalations from the things gathering outside was unnerving.

Again he told himself that God would be there to give solace when everything was set to rights. He just prayed that there would be enough of His servants up to this task.

With that, he redoubled his resolve, strode down the aisle, passed through the heavy wooden doors and into the maelstrom.

***

Harmony’s door creaked open and she sat up in a start. Reflexively, the portal was pulled too a bit, leaving a small wedge of light from the kitchen that stretched across the floor.

“Sorry, darlin’”, said the silhouette in the doorway. “I was just checkin’ on ya. I thought you were asleep.”

Harmony blew a sigh of relief.

“Naw, not yet,” she replied. “I think I’m in for a long night.”

Her father considered this. Just knowing that someone was concerned for her seemed to drive some of the dark thoughts from her mind.

“Well, don’t you worry. I’m just in the next room here. Get some sleep, we got a busy day tomorrow.”

She smiled and settled down again.

“Thanks, Daddy,” she said, wincing at her own childish reference. “G'night.”

“G’night, darlin’. Sleep well, alright?”

The door creaked shut and the catch fell into place. Despite the comforting sounds of activity coming from the living room, she still felt strangely isolated. Just as soon and Harmony’s head hit the pillow, she knew she wasn’t going to sleep a wink.

Normally exhausted from what her father called “an honest day’s work”, the news she’d heard earlier was enough to chill her blood and ensure she’d toss and turn for most of the night. She didn’t know what was more upsetting: the news of a tragic death in town or the fact that her father seemed so affected by it.

She felt terrible for her poor dad and suspected that he must feel like the harbinger of doom. If it wasn’t one thing, it was another. Either the crops were blighted, the coming winter would be lean, her mother wasn’t well, and now this: a violent death happening just up the road from them.

She didn’t know much about Ed Munroe, only that he was Mandy’s father. There’d been rumors going around for ages that Ed was a drunk and he neglected his family. Harmony didn’t put much credence in rumors since she and her family had been the victim of more than their fair share of hearsay. But it was impossible to deny that something terrible had happened earlier and as news started to come out it was unlikely to get better.

Another sudden sound gave her a start. This time it was from behind her, above her head. It sounded like a faint drumming noise then a squeak. A few months ago her father caught some boys from school trying to peek through her window and she wasn’t in the right frame of mind to put up with that again.

“Daddy!” she shouted, hoping to scare away the interloper. “I think someone’s at my window again!”

A coughing noise from the living room distracted her. The light under her door was suddenly extinguished by darkness. A shadow from the window played across the side of her face and was gone. Slowly she twisted around in her bed and drew herself up. Just as her eyes cleared the edge of the sill a bloodied, decrepit palm slammed into the glass, nearly breaking through.

Harmony screamed and sprang from the bed, landing nearly half way across the floor of her room in the process. She dressed hastily and grabbed a small flashlight off her dresser just as the glass in her window gave way. She stood there aghast for a moment as a gnarled paw fumbled over the edge of the window frame, coming down on top of a particularly jagged remnant of glass. Harmony watched in horror as the clear dagger pierced through the top of the intruder’s hand. Oblivious to the injury, another arm shot through what was left of the damaged window.

Harmony jumped back again, bringing up against the door. She fumbled with the handle, tore it open and promptly slipped on something spilled on the floor just outside.

Her flashlight beam washed down upon the sight of her father lying on the floor. Open, bloodied and defiled by something hunched over him. Her wavering beam of light moved instinctively towards the sound of contented chewing.

Her brain took a gruesome inventory: two bloodied hands, a matted tangle of blackened hair, blue-gray flesh and milky, eager eyes that looked up from its horrible repast. Despite the cloudy eyes, Harmony recognized a distinct look of joy.

The joy of future prospects.

Harmony screamed, making a noise she thought herself incapable of. She tore towards the front door and burst from the house pausing at the tree stump in the front yard. Without effort she pulled free the axe buried there like the sword from the stone and raced on to the only place she thought to be safe anymore.

***

Regardless of how many graveyard shifts she’d served as a nurse over the years, Jessica knew she’d never get used to the intrinsic eerie quality of being alone in a hospital in the dead of night. Although anyone could see that the facility here in Styler was practically a day spa compared to the creepy asylum she used to work in up in Ravenswood, she still couldn’t keep the morbid thoughts at bay.

She chastised herself as she grabbed a clipboard bearing the same checklist she’d completed for the past four nights since she started at the hospital. Why did she find this place so creepy? After all, the hospital was brand new, nothing like that near-medieval asylum she'd presided over for far too long.

She set off down the hall to begin her rounds, measuring her footfalls as she went. Despite her hesitation, the bare stone floors and cold walls echoed the slightest sound. Each one of her steps sounded conspicuous. The muted lights on the vacant crash carts and wheelchairs cast odd shadows around her. Then her mind’s eye betrayed her and she had a flash of the man from earlier...

The body the sheriff brought in was reeking of alcohol and mangled from some horrible accident. After the son came to identify the body it was very late, and all Doc Mullins seemed willing to do was pronounce the obvious and go home.

‘Poor Ed,’ Jessica overheard the Sheriff say. ‘I don’t know how many times I’ve had to tell him to quit drinking and take care of his kids over the years. Some higher power got to him by the looks of it.’

‘What a mess,’ Doc Mullins muttered back. ‘I’ll do an autopsy first thing tomorrow morning. I assume you’ll be bringing the detective in for this?’

‘Hate to agree, but I have to,’ the law man replied, sounding weary. ‘Do you think all this happened before or after?’

The doctor ripped off his blood-stained gloves, dropped them in the trash and pushed his glasses back onto his face with the back of his hand.

‘For this town’s sake, we better hope it was after.’

Over the years Jessica had seen the human body distorted in many surreal forms. That didn’t bother her. What was lingering in her mind’s eye was the odd nature of the clearly fatal wounds and the stark look of rigor-fear on the man’s face.

Had the victim actually been partially eaten?

As she hurried towards the morgue, a part of her was tempted to dart in, roll out the slab and have a second look, but instead she resolved to double-time right on by. She rounded the corner and promptly slid to a dead stop.

The very same body she’d been thinking about mere seconds ago was standing upright in the hallway, the door to the morgue still held open against a twisted leg. Reacting to Jessica’s pleasant arrival, the thing turned in a pivot, looked at her with glazed eyes and gurgled what sounded like a death rattle.

Jessica felt as if the mechanism in her brain that allowed her to scream burnt out at that moment. She was distracted momentarily by the sound of her clipboard rattling to the floor.

***

Bobby paused for a moment, suddenly seized by paranoia about the gun going off by mistake. He decided to err on the side of caution and stuff the revolver in the back of his pants instead. Wouldn’t it be hilarious if he shot himself before he had a chance to be the big hero?

Before he took his father’s gun from the closet, he’d debated back and forth whether or not to load it. He knew for sure he could whip Todd in a simple brawl, but the little punk might still be armed.  He’d killed Mandy’s step-dad earlier and he probably wasn’t above doing it again.

The bad-blood between Todd and Ed had been brewing for quite some time. Rumor had it that Ed had gotten drunk earlier, beat Mandy up pretty bad and Todd had responded to her call. With a pistol.
Three other kids already told him that Todd pulled the trigger. But with his father being the Sheriff, what would be the point reporting it? If he could just get the little bastard to confess even the Sheriff couldn’t deny that justice had to be done.

Todd would go away for a long time. Leaving Mandy alone...

The teenager put his head down and continued his strident trek across the park at the center of town. His sneakers were almost wet from the rain that had doused the grass earlier in the evening and it was cold enough on this October night for him to see his breath. He knew that Sheriff Cooper would probably still be at the station filling out a stack of paperwork. With some luck, he’d find his rival alone and catch him by surprise.

Seeing someone approach, Bobby adjusted his stride a bit so as not to look so hell-bent. He cursed under his breath as the figure seemed to recognize him and lurch in his direction. The thought that there might be a new candidate for the role of town drunk amused him, but it was Saturday night, so it could be any one of his countless friends.

Idly he wondered why he couldn’t see the man’s breath. This trivial thought evaporated when he realized that the approaching figure appeared to be carrying the remains of a human arm. In a flash, the appendage was discarded and the thing was upon him.

Instantly, Bobby was on the football field. The same instincts that had allowed him to avoid a blitz at the line of scrimmage countless times before kicked in. He straight-armed the encroaching tackler and was reviled as the flesh he made contact with gave way into something wet and cold. He screamed, pulled his hand free and then scrambled out of the pocket.

Unlike being at the ten-yard line on the school field, Bobby quickly realized he had a unique line of defense against this particular linebacker. He reached into the small of his back and produced his father’s pistol.

“Alright, freak!” he bellowed. “Don’t come any closer!”

With a sickening gurgle, the thing shambled forward. The teenager was almost relieved to be done with the courtesy warning phase and squeezed the trigger at point-blank range.

The man’s head vaporized like an over-ripe pumpkin.

For a moment Bobby could only stand there and shiver, despite the fact that he felt he was burning up under his varsity jacket. The miasma of stench, violated flesh and his last action all conspired to make him ill.

As he slowly came to his senses the thought dawned on him that it might not just be old Ed’s last night on earth... 

TO BE CONTINUED IN PART II

That's How I Roll - Part II - Revelations and Reminders

Hello, Fellow Gamerz.

Welcome to Part II of my board games confessional.  Okay, so where were we? Oh, yes...

By the time I'd reached my mid-teens I'd become bored with chess.  I was tired of its scripted and abstract qualities and was now looking for strategic games with more variables and realism.  One day when I was at my local library I came across this fateful tome:

When I found out that there were board games that simulated famous battles of history, I became somewhat obsessed.  This led to immediate frustration.  I could read about the existence of these so-called "war games", but I couldn't get a hold of any of them where I lived. Even mail order was limited back in the Dark Ages and E-Bay didn't even exist.  What to do?

About the only game I could get with a vaguely war-gamey feel was this old "Parker Brothers" chestnut:

But even as a kid, Risk failed to impress. It was w-a-a-a-a-a-y too unrealistic and abstract.  It used to piss me off when your opponent would turtle down in Australia.  Where were my amphibious landing craft and columns of marauding tanks, dammit?!  

I know the most recent versions of the game have improved things somewhat, but I can still only give Risk three pips out of six in good conscience:

Mercifully the Leisure World hobby and craft store forty minutes away in Corner Brook started stocking cool games in the early Eighties.  This was one of my first purchases:

Y'see, Godzilla was another huge fixture of my childhood, making this a no-brainer for me. The only challenge with this game was trying to get one of your willing buddies to play the military side while your patron monster gleefully mashed populace units, crushed buildings and lit half the map on fire.

The Creature That Ate Sheboygan was proof positive that there were games out there for every area of interest, games that were sophisticated and realistic.  Or, as realistic as a board game could be about a giant  robot annihilating a major piece of real estate in Wisconsin.

For allowing me to get my smash-on, The Creature That Ate Sheboygan rates four pips outta six:

And then there was this pop-culture behemoth:

Frankly, I'm not gonna dwell on this very much, 'cuz, frankly, it deserves it's own entry.  But if Star Wars was my childhood obsession, then Dungeons & Dragons was what creatively propelled me through my early teens. 

Dungeons & Dragons represents another major sea-change in gaming.  It was the first of the "role-playing games" in which players could create their own customized avatars with variable strengths and weaknesses.  Supported by a rule set that accounts for any possible action, the characters band together and are set loose into a world brought to descriptive life by their Dungeon Master.  

Random die rolls, difficulty levels and the character's own innate abilities determine their likelihood of success or failure with tasks like sword-swinging, spell-flinging and other examples of daring-do.  The goal of the game is for the players to work together to overcome obstacles, slay the monsters, gather the treasure and explore avenues of self-advancement.  Not that much different from real life, n'est pas?

Back when the Lord of the Rings movies were coming out (ten years ago now, madre de dios!) I got a group of eight people together to run a few games of this and we had such a blast! 

Hmmmm, I must blow the dust off the 'ole dice pouch (and, no, that's not code for something).  For those of you predisposed to giving it a shot, it's been revamped in a Fourth Edition recently.  I personally can't vouch for it, but many people say it adopts some of the evolutionary traits of modern-day online role-playing games.  Frankly I'm not sure if that's good thing or a bad thing...

For teaching problem solving, social skills, inspiring a host of other pretenders to the throne (World of Warcraft, I'm looking in your direction) and resulting in the death of millions of innocent orcs, D & D scores a full six pips out of six!

Here was another major discovery for me:

Finally I had my columns of tanks! We played the hell out of this. Some matches would get really heated.  Two of my best friends (who were like oil and water together) often came close to blows over this one, even when they were supposed to acting together as allies! 

One of these two characters eventually became the co-creator of an independent expansion game for Axis & Allies called Enemy on the Horizon.  I’m even listed in the rules as a play tester!

If you're going to use the word EPIC at all to describe a game, it's Axis & Allies.  It depicts World War II globally on a grand, tactical level.   Up to five players take the role of the major powers of the war: for the Axis it's Japan and Germany and for the Allies it's the USA, the United Kingdom, and the USSR. 

The world map is divided into land and sea regions which help you determine movement of your units.  The game is chock full o' awesome "bits" like plastic miniature fighters, bombers, tanks, infantry, anti-aircraft, transports, subs, battleships and even aircraft carriers.  Every one of these units performs like a reasonable facsimile of their real-life counterparts.  For example, tanks are great on aggressive blitzing offensive moves but are weak defensively and more expensive than infantry, which are cheaper to produce and better on defense.  Players can even invest in weapons development to try and invent fancy things like jet aircraft, rockets or...EEEK...the A-bomb!  

In theory, the players who are allied together have to co-ordinate their efforts economically, strategically and militarily in order to win. As you capture or liberate enemy territory it goes towards your resources, thus allowing you to build more units.

Now it may seem odd for me to lovingly talk about war games like this, but I really do believe these things are educational.  They teach players geography, history, and analytical thinking.  In fact, I wish we could see world leaders sit down over a board game and settle their differences like this instead of shedding real blood.     

This game series has been wildly popular and there have been a lot of different versions.  Here's the latest revision:

Axis & Allies deserves its 5 pips out of 6!

Here's one a buddy of mine bought from the same line as Axis & Allies that I thought didn't fare quite so well:

And, yes, that is a picture of Saddam friggin' Hussein on the box.  Pretty nutty, huh?

Basically, Fortress America is Red Dawn, the board game.   It taught me a valuable lesson about the hobby: regardless of how amazing the game's components look, balance is still a critical consideration. 

No matter how many times we played this thing, the invaders always got their collective butts handed back to them. We even tried a few house rules, including scaling back the frequency of heavily-armed redneck partisans popping up, but to no avail.

I guess the designers took the whole "land of the free, home of the brave" thing a bit too seriously.  I always thought the thing was kinda "broken", but it was worth a few yuks at the time.   For being so grossly unbalanced I can only give it two pips out of five:

My love affair with licensed games continued when a buddy of mine introduced our gaming circle to this beauty:

 

In 1987 I'd been appropriately blown away by James Cameron's sequel to Alien.   The dude who owned Fortress America (who apparently had the ultimate hook up and unlimited funds for acquiring this sort of contraband) also introduced our gaming group to this and it was an immediate smash.

It was my first experience with a truly "co-operative" board game.  Every player took control of a certain contingent of heavily-armed Colonial Marines and the game rules controlled all the aliens automatically, essentially playing them as 'bots.  You really had to rely on your fellow player to use teamwork in order to survive.

I can't think of too many games that do such a fantastic job replicating the frenetic action of the movie from which it’s based. This game also taught me that board games can quickly devalue due to components that aren't exactly “built to last” or go out of print almost overnight. As soon as I heard the phrase E-Bay years later, this baby had to be mine!  I paid a king's ransom for the friggin' thing, but it was worth every penny and is still one of my prized possessions.       

I give the Aliens game five die pips outta six:

As I went through my late teens I had a regrettable bout of being too "cool" for stuff like this (at least as cool as I could muster).  I wouldn't even be caught dead in the toy section of a department store at the time.  

Ah, the sad and oft-vain pursuit of trying to get laid.  

I look back on this and ponder what a moron I was!  There were some awesome games that were released at the time that, like Aliens, are long since out of print.

But once a board game geek, always a board game geek.  Something would inevitably come down the pike that would lure me, Siren-like, back to my beloved hobby.  And that inevitable something was Magic: The Gathering:

M:TG was the very first Collectible Card Game (or CCG for short).  Players can buy pre-made decks or design them from scratch using "Booster Packs" of fifteen random cards of varying scarcity or visit retailers that sell individual cards.  

After you've procured a functional deck you can use it to duel against an opponent. Both players start off with twenty life points and by using mana-producing land cards to cast creature cards, spells and artifacts, they attempt to lower their rival's life total to zero for the win.  Since there are now over eleven-thousand  different cards to play with, the deck combinations you can construct or encounter is virtually limitless.

Like war games and D&D before it, M:TG was a full-blown gaming phenomenon that I just couldn't avoid.  In May of 1995, gaming magazine Inquest referred to Magic players and collectors as "rats on cocaine." Amen, brother. This was my first lesson that games could be COLLECTIBLE (Read: “financially draining”). 

At this stage in my life, games had very nearly fallen by the wayside, replaced at first by the blissful chaos of university followed by a gut-wrenching jump into the deep end of the pool of life. Magic reminded me that games, fun and escapism would, and should, always have its place in my world no matter what. 

Here's a fully-playable pre-made deck from the 2010 Core Set:

Despite being a bit of a money pit, I can't deny the elegant brilliance and staying power of this game.  In fact, just a few days ago I caught myself buying a few new single cards to make what I hope is the ultimate "killer deck".  I can't wait to pit my new brainchild against a willing opponent to test my hypothesis.

Magic deserves it's six pips out of six rating:

The Collectible Card Game fad was so popular in the mid-to-late 90's that it extended to every licensed product imaginable.  As if Magic wasn't tempting enough, this friggin' thing appeared from out of nowhere:

"Okay, let me get this straight. It's like Magic fused with Star Wars? And exactly how much money can I get for donating a pint of blood?" Another hard lesson learned; I have binders filled with these damned things and I don't think I've ever played against an opponent who didn't bear an uncanny resemblance to me.  

This was a sprawling, ridiculously detailed game that eventually collapsed under it's own weight. The cards and images were all handsomely produced and it had plenty of "chromey" bits to keep fans amused. Regrettably each new expansion came with a new rules sheet instead of introducing these concepts on the cards themselves to make it simpler.  Because it's such a daunting game to teach people and (in my opinion) doesn't really capture the spirit of the movies, I can only give it three pips outta six:

The next major revelation in board games came in the form of this juicy little number, which some people may have seen sitting around in Chapters, Indigo and Toys R Us:

Bless (or it that curse?) that now-defunct Inquest magazine.  Even during the height of the Collectible Card Game craze, they ran board game reviews. One such column in the February 1997 issue gave a very flattering nod to this abstract-looking but eye-catching German game. In the words of the reviewer Jeff Hannes: "The next time you're at your local game store, put down those costly booster packs and pick up a copy." 

Thanks, Jeff, wherever you are. I owe him a debt for turning me on to a completely new, elegant, inventive genre of games: "Euro" or "German" boardgames.  

In Settlers of Catan players vie for dominance on a completely randomized island of varying terrain types.  At the start of every players turn, dice are rolled to determine what areas of the island produce resources.   From this players build towns, roads, armies, cities and developments to try and score ten victory points for the win.  

Games like Settlers are often referred to as "gateway games", because they tend to appeal to people who think board games begin and end with sad, crappy old Monopoly.  Needless to say, if I wanted to illustrate the appeal and potential of modern board games I'd sit you down for some Settlers instead.  

Although I've played it to death, Settlers of Catan is like the board game equivalent of putting on a pair of comfy slippers.  It rates six pips out of six.  

I'll end this segment with a game that turned so many of my clique into slavering board game...uh, zombies.  

I gotta come clean here, folks.  As played right out of the box, Zombies!!! ain't the best game in the world. In fact, in the intervening years since it's first publication back in 2001, zombie game technology has improved, giving us better options.  Having said that, nothing seems to bring folks together like a randomly-generated town rife with shambling undead! Add a healthy "screw-you" factor to the game and you've got an experience that, in my humble opinion, outshines a LAN party any day.  

True story: the day after I introduced this game to four other people, our local FLGS (Friendly Local Game Store) sold each participant a copy when they independently went into the store on four separate occasions to get one.   Cripes, I need to start earning commission on this sort of thing...

That's it for now, folks.  Next time I'll give you more modern examples of how one of my favorite hobbies has truly reached the high-water mark and give you some recommendations on where to start if you want to dive in.  Until then, keep on rollin' in the free world!

EPIC: Amazing source for quick and entertaining modern board game reviews:

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=UvulaBob#g/u

FAIL:  Just a few examples of the poo-flavored landmines that have given board games their needlessly bad rap...

http://www.x-entertainment.com/articles/0863/ 

Also, due to a medical emergency last week, I didn't get around to doing a comic.  Hopefully this will make amends: