Knightriders

I had no intention of viewing Romero films two weeks in a row, but Knightriders happened to catch my eye as I was browsing through the Science Fiction section of my local Hollywood Video. A movie about a traveling Renfaire on motorcycles written and directed by the father of the modern zombie? Yes please, I am a fan of the absurd, and Knightriders looked absurd enough to go beyond bad and back into good.

I will admit, I was utterly wrong in this assumption. Knightriders is not 'so bad its good.' Its just good.

Knightriders is the first movie I've seen in years to actually make me care about what happens. Its also the first movie I've seen in a similar amount of time where I didn't spend the movie operating under the assumption that good will triumph over evil, the lead male will get the girl, and everything will be happily ever after. Partly because I wasn't entirely sure who was good and who was evil. With the exception of the big city publicist. Publicists are always evil.

The movie elicits a good mix of emotionsl. I laughed, I didn't cry (but I definitely heard some heartstrings go 'twang'), I cheered, and I really hoped those stunt men were okay.

Land of the Dead

Land of the Dead is one of the more disappointing zombie apocalypse films I've come across. Thinking, communicating zombies should be scarier than their mindless counterparts, but Romero's, sad to say, just don't cut it. They're capable of learned behaviors and organizing themselves, but they do next to nothing with it and accomplish nothing with their newly found intelligence that normal zombies could have accomplished. Where the common zombie would simply bash its way through car windows to access the prey cowering inside, these thinking zombies will wander off in search off in search of something with which to torch the vehicle, denying themselves the food withing. Score one for the mindless. The greatest flaw of these intelligent zombies is that they simply do not use their intelligence. They act exactly like the mindless version, only now they have weapons. There is no "clever girl" moment. The zombie horde just keeps shuffling forward to victory.

The zombies use their intelligence in a different, and far more absurd way: they are apparently psychic. Zombie telepathy is the only way I have been able to even come close to rationalizing the end of the movie. The zombie horde initially sets out from its peaceful little town when the town is raided for supplies and a few zombies die violent re-deaths at the guns of 'Dead Reckoning', a heavily armed and armored vehicle used by the humans. The zombies are out for vengeance, not food, and they get it. But not against Dead Reckoning. Or the guy who designed built Dead Reckoning. Or anyone who was operating Dead Reckoning. Instead they kill/eat everyone they can catch in the city, which is a surprisingly large number given that people are capable of running, the zombies aren't, and the horde is moving in a straight line. Among the slain is the evil human overlord of the city, which triggers the zombie horde to retreat, satisfied. On their way out of the city they come across Dead Reckoning and a number of survivors. One would expect that seeing the object of their hate in front of them might incense them just a little bit, but no. The lead zombie stares into the eyes of the Dead Reckoning's creator, who is standing in Dead Reckoning's door, over the smoldering dismembered corpses of dozens of zombies which have just been annihilated by the rockets mounted to the roof of Dead Reckoning, then simply walks away. At which point the creator utters, "They're just looking for a place to go. Same as us," the movie ends, and I gently cry myself to sleep.