Talkhouse Film Contributors Remember George A. Romero

In the following post, Talkhouse Film contributors and other filmmakers share their tributes to George A. Romero, the father of the zombie movie and the man behind such great movies as Night of the Living Dead, Martin and The Crazies, who passed away yesterday, aged 77.

Larry Fessenden
Over the years I have often cited George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead as my favorite horror movie. It served as a fulcrum between the old black-and-white horror films produced by Universal, featuring iconic monsters like Frankenstein and Dracula, and the more modern, despairing, angry and confrontational cinema of the ’60s and ’70s. I saw Living Dead on TV late one night and as a kid, I couldn’t tell when it had been made because it was still black-and-white, but I knew something was different. I knew the genre had grown up. Later, I was enamored with Martin, another film that grappled with the tension between movie monsters, in this case black-and-white vampire movies, and the very real, disturbing psychological violence of the young protagonist. And with The Crazies, Romero gave us a parable about mass hysteria and government overreach. Even when I could see the filmmaking was awkward and on the cheap, there was an energy and a fierce intelligence to Romero’s films, and their scrappiness felt like an invitation to aspiring filmmakers to just go out and do it. Of course he did make Creepshow, which had a budget and a cast and offered him the opportunity to celebrate his love of the DC comics that had influenced him as a kid. Romero was among a band of horror purveyors who came up in the ’60s and who ushered in a more brutal tone to the genre: Craven, Carpenter, Tobe Hooper — but distinct from his contemporaries, Romero seemed to resonate a conscience even as he relished in extreme gore. It is remarkable that a medium that is so collaborative still tends to convey the personality of the director, and in his films, you can feel George’s humility, thoughtfulness and sardonic anti-establishment sensibility. I often think about how Romero lamented he never really had a Hollywood career, never had it easy making films, no matter how influential and beloved he was. It has stood as a reminder that the embrace of Tinseltown is not the only measure of success in cinema.

Read the full article here…

In a 2016 interview with Indiewire, Romero reflected on the legacy of “Night of the Living Dead.”

“When we made the film, I thought that we were talking about miscommunication — people who, even when faced with impossible and improbable situations, still argue among themselves about petty things rather than facing the problem,” he said. “I find that this is still going on today. That’s all I really care about.”

Fessenden nabs Best Performance at the Develop Awards 2017.
Now available for PS4, Super Massive’s Until Dawn: Rush of Blood.
Competition was stiff:

Text of the press release:

Guildford, UK – 12 ^th July, 2017: BAFTA-winning independent British developer Supermassive Games picked up the award for “Best Performance” at the Develop Awards 2017.

Larry Fessenden’s performance in Until Dawn: Rush of Blood was voted top out of nine distinguished competitors including Doug Cockle in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Blood and Wine and John DiMaggio in LEGO Dimensions Adventure Time Level Pack.

Pete Samuels, Managing Director of Supermassive Games said “Working with talented actors to bring believable performances to the characters in our games is hugely important to us, so we were delighted to collect the Best Performance award for Larry’s portrayal of Dan T in Until Dawn: Rush of Blood. We love working with Larry, both as an actor and writer, and look forward to future collaborations.”

“It’s a thrill to be in the company of these other nominees, and I would never have imagined carrying the day,” Larry said. “I would like to thank Supermassive Games for giving me the opportunity to bring Dan T to life, and I’d like to thank the animators there for giving my performance a little extra jolt.”

About Supermassive Games:

Supermassive Games are a BAFTA-winning, independent game developer with a reputation for innovation in both storytelling and VR. The studio has released a number of successful titles and are best known for the critically acclaimed PS4 hit Until Dawn. Supermassive Games recently announced three new titles coming for 2017 – Bravo Team (PSVR), Hidden Agenda (PS4) and The Inpatient (PSVR).

About Larry Fessenden:

Larry Fessenden is an actor and producer and the director of the art-horror films No Telling, Habit, Wendigo and The Last Winter, as well as he TV films Skin and Bones and Beneath. He has operated the production shingle Glass Eye Pix since 1985 with the mission of supporting individual voices in the arts.

writer/director Chris Skotchdopole’s GEP-produced short
The Egg and the Hatchet will screen at the Marfa Film Festival.

CROWLEY THEATER
Friday 7/14

The Shudder Labs team included Glass Eye Pals
Peter Phok, Jenn Wexler, Clay MacLeod Chapman,
Colin Geddes, Travis Stevens and of course our host Sam Zimmerman.
From Indiewire:

How Shudder Is Fostering a New Breed of Horror Directors

As luck would have it, I was settling in for a Larry Fessenden double feature the same night that Twitter—or, at least, the small corner of the platform occupied by film writers and cinephiles—was working itself into a tizzy about an article in The Guardian postulating a new subgenre of “post-horror.” The basic thrust of the Guardian article is that recent films like It Comes At Night and A Ghost Story are changing the horror paradigm by adding talky drama elements to genre narratives, which is exactly what Larry Fessenden was doing in the ‘90s. His 1991 debut feature No Telling combines a Cassavetes-esque relationship drama about a marriage in decline with the bare-bones structure of the Frankenstein myth, as an obsessive medical researcher turns to neighborhood pets after he finds himself unable to procure the animals he’s convinced he needs to complete his research. The result is rather like a naturalistic take on Re-Animator cut together with scenes from A Woman Under The Influence, as strange as that may sound.

That particular film also touches on themes of animal rights and environmentalism, displaying a social consciousness that was developed more fully in Fessenden’s follow-up film, 1995’s Habit. Like this year’s Colossal, Habit uses an alcoholic protagonist as a metaphor to tie in with the film’s fantastic elements; in this case, it’s Lower East Side resident Sam (Fessenden), who’s been a complete drunken mess ever since his girlfriend broke up with him and his father died within a few months of each other. Meeting the enigmatic Anna (Meredith Snaider) at a Halloween party ignites an obsessive affair unlike anything Sam has ever experienced in his life, but as their nightly rendezvous grow more intense, Sam starts feeling, well, ill. Blending classical vampire imagery—Anna is allergic to garlic, and can’t come in to Sam’s apartment without an invitation—with the pervasive fear of AIDS that hung over every sexually active person in the ‘90s, Habit is not only a metaphorically rich horror-drama hybrid, but a time capsule of the last gasp of bohemia in downtown Manhattan.

Both of these films are available in Shout! Factory’s Larry Fessenden Collection boxed set, and No Telling is also currently streaming on Shudder.

Read the full article…

Bundle Up With These 18 Horror Movies Set In The Freezing Cold

#3 The Last winter

Things start going very, very wrong for a group of Arctic oil drillers in Larry Fessenden’s cult thriller — but is it due to a natural causes… or supernatural ones? Inevitably, the survivors begin to turn on each other with increasing fervour as the Earth itself seems to start claiming lives, but intriguing characters (played by Ron Perlman, James LeGros, Connie Britton and others) and a unique plot make The Last Winter an especially effective terror-in-isolation tale.

Check out the full list

From CHILLERtv.com:

Glass Eye Pix classix I SELL THE DEAD (Glenn McQuaid) and THE LAST WINTER (Fessenden)
celebrated in Tony Timpone’s list of 13 Unsung Independent Horror Flicks.

Also listed: Jim Mickle’s feature MULBERRY STREET which features Fessenden torn apart by rats,
and ZOMBIE HONEYMOON by Dave Gebroe, executive produced by Fessenden.