Editorials
RIP Romero – A Personal Rememberance
George A. Romero has passed away at 77. When I first saw the news pop up in my email, I froze. It was hard to wrap my head around what I was reading. It still is. Romero’s name has been popping up quite a bit within the realm of horror news lately. George Romero Presents: Road of the Dead is currently seeking funding and will hopefully continue to move forward despite his loss. While details are scarce, we can assume that Romero has been battling cancer for some time. With that in mind, it’s easy to imagine Road being crafted as a way to ensure his Dead legacy carries on. My deepest condolences go out to those closest to him.
As I alternate between feeling numb and shedding tears, I wish us to focus on the legacy Romero has left behind. I’ve already shared a lot of love when I wrote about my excitement for Road of the Dead, but there aren’t enough words in the world to express the gratitude I have for the films he’s made. As I write this, I’m watching Day of the Dead with commentary from Tom Savini, actress Lori Cardille, production designer Cletus Anderson, and the mastermind himself, George Romero. Even after years of working in the zombie business, you can still hear what a passionate and jovial man Romero was. He lived doing what he loved.
Personally, Romero was a huge inspiration to me as an aspiring writer/director. The way he presented conventional B-movie plotlines with all the gore and thrills one expects from a Saturday matinee, yet used them to tell a socially conscious story, has always filtered its way into my own work. In fact, the very first screenplay I ever wrote as a teenager was Suburb of the Living Dead. I haven’t read it in many years, and I’m sure it’s pretty terrible. Nonetheless, it was a full blown homage to the entire Dead trilogy. It was a love letter to the years of amazing cinema we’d been gifted from the Master of Horror.
My love for Romero and his undead hordes started at an extremely young age. While I’m sure I’ve shared a version of this story before, it bears repeating at this time. I was probably around eight or nine. My mother had begun renting classic films from the library in an attempt to fill my ferocious appetite for horror cinema. The classic Universal Monsters were always on heavy rotation. One day, she brought home Night of the Living Dead. I was instantly struck by the label on the VHS. It stated the movie was rated “NC-17”. Being a good little Christian boy (oh, how times have changed), I pointed this out to my mother. I was afraid the contents of this tape were much too extreme for my innocent eyes. She brushed off my concerns, stating it was “just an old black and white movie.”
Off I went to my bedroom and plugged the cassette into my VCR. I loved every second of it. The opening scene with cries of “They’re coming to get you, Barbara,” struck me right away as something iconic. While at the time, I had no idea of who Romero was or any knowledge of the trilogy of films that followed Night, I knew I was witnessing something special. As the tension rose throughout the runtime, I squirmed and hid my head under my pillow. When Barbara gets pulled through the broken window and becomes just another meal for the living dead, my jaw dropped. Suddenly, it became clear to me that horror could be truly dangerous. The good guys don’t always win.
For those who’ve somehow avoided seeing this film all these years, stop reading now! It’s a public domain title, so you can find numerous sites streaming it for free. You owe it to yourself to witness the birth of zombies as we know them today. Back to young-me glued to the television, I wasn’t prepared for how the ending played out. After barricading himself in the basement and surviving the incursion of zombies upon the house, our lead, Ben, hears the calvary rallying outside. As a viewer, you’re relieved. It appears he’s being rescued. As he pokes his head around the corner of a windowframe, a redneck outside mistakes him for one of the dead. “Hit him in the head. Right between the eyes.” Just like that, a bullet is fired and Ben is put down. “That’s another one for the fire.”
Witnessing these final moments of Night of the Living Dead as a child were earth shattering. I sat in front of my TV, frozen in shock. I didn’t move to stop the film as the credits began to roll. When the tape reached the end and cut off by itself, I jumped up from my room. I ran crying to my parents in the living room, “They killed him! They killed him!” They had no clue what I was speaking of and didn’t seem terribly concerned to understand. I was alone to try and work through would I had just seen. I was distraught, but I finally settled on the realization that horror could be a powerful tool. It can stir emotions from a viewer that they might not be prepared to deal with. It forces us to face our mortality. We all die, but did you live your life trying to do what is right? It’s a heady takeaway for a nine year old, but I was hungry for more.
It wasn’t long after this viewing that I discovered Dawn of the Dead and the legacy of George A. Romero. I’ve loved almost every single entry into his filmography. Bruiser is a woefully underrated revenge tale. Monkey Shines is filled with insane moments and weaves a twisted story of love and dependence….with a monkey! Few directors would touch such a subject, let alone manage to deliver it with such panache. Romero’s skill eschews the seemingly inherent campiness of it all. He quickly rose to the top of my list of favorite directors, and his style has always seeped into the DNA of my own work.
The outpouring of love for Romero across the horrorverse tonight has been deeply touching. In fact, when news broke, you guys actually crashed our servers as you piled on to share your own thoughts and condolences. He will be missed by us all. We may never known just what else he had in store for our beloved genre or, more specifically, the sub-genre he helped create, but we will always have his body of work to inspire us, frighten us, and keep us questioning just how close we are to becoming the monsters we fear. With great sadness I say, “RIP, Romero.”
College kids, strippers and vampires—those were Donald P. Borchers’ only requirements when he approached Richard Wenk about writing and directing a movie for New World Pictures. As requested, Wenk cooked up Vamp (1986), a tailor-made blend of the decade’s teen movie craze as well as its horror boom.
Grim and earnest stories were still very much a part of the ’80s horror landscape, yet Vamp is something of a comedy. One difference between it and, say, Saturday the 14th, though, is the former avoids using schtick. Wenk’s movie proves that horror comedies also don’t have to subtract thrills from their recipes. Of course, it takes a minute before reaching that point; college antics and culture shocks preface this one macabre misadventure.
Vamp‘s initial setup is apt for a typical college-set, sex-driven comedy; to bribe their way into a fraternity house, two pledges (Chris Makepeace, Robert Rusler) go looking for some adult entertainment. Without wasting time on any further exposition, the characters embark on an all-in-one-night trip that quickly detours into terror.
To procure their elusive MacGuffin—a stripper willing to gyrate for some frat boys—Keith (Makepeace) and AJ (Rusler), plus a third wheel named Duncan (Gedee Watanabe), trade the safety of their remote college campus for the seediness of some unnamed city. The setting is recognizably L.A. by day, but as soon as night falls, downtown, along with the characters, slips into a kind of surreal universe. Director of photography Elliot Davis gave this early entry on his prolific résumé an unusual yet distinctive look; that Mario Bava-esque, magenta-green lighting is omnipresent, so much so that it’s almost its own character.
Chris Makepeace and Robert Rusler in Vamp
The faint comparisons to Martin Scorsese’s After Hours are merited, although not just because of Vamp’s distinguishing nighttime aesthetic. Save for the primary characters, the supporting roles in Wenk’s movie are also quite colorful and transactional in their behavior. The difference here, though, is the additional urge to ruin Keith and his friends at every turn. Some of that harm is humorous and tolerable enough, whereas the moment Vamp dishes out its first fatality, it’s abundantly clear how this movie qualifies as horror.
Vamp falls into that category of horror movie that reveals its genre with a scream rather than a series of whispers. The opening scene can function as a hint of what lies ahead—things are not at all what they appear to be—but otherwise, Wenk is more than happy to hold off on the horror. When that time does come, though, it catches the viewer off guard. In addition to the pure shock value is that sudden decision to upend the movie’s foremost feature. Or so it would seem.
If afraid of major spoilage, those new to Vamp would be wise to stop reading here. There’s just no skirting around the fact that the central fellowship in this buddy movie hits a serious snag when AJ is killed. That development causes the story to become more of a “long, bad night” journey for Keith and his romantic interest. So while Wenk scores points for subverting expectations, there is also a touch of sadness in his decision. Because if Vamp does anything well, it’s making the characters likable.
Something that comes easily to Vamp—and other teen horror movies from this same era—is its ability to invent young characters worth caring about, or at the very least, are interesting and not so immediately off-putting. More impressive is how Wenk did all this without actually fleshing out those characters. Still and all, Keith and his kind are a grade above cookie-cutter, and in some cases, aren’t completely devoid of growth.
Grace Jones in Vamp
Vamp appeals with an assorted cast of characters. No two are the same, nor are they operating on the same wavelength. The cinematically extroverted AJ, whose actor conveyed charm and vulnerability in near equal amounts, comes alive when he’s at his most undead. Makepeace then makes the chronically cautious Keith a sympathetic fellow, even as he’s more and more affected by the night’s bizarre events. Meanwhile, Duncan is indeed the designated loser of the whole bunch, but Watanabe still manages to humanize him. As a bonus, the role didn’t require him to pull a Long Duk Dong.
As for Dedee Pfeiffer, she is plain adorable as the mysterious After Dark server nicknamed “Amaretto”. She spends all night fixing her dress strap while at the same time trying to get Keith to remember how he knows her. As their offbeat romance grows, it becomes another highlight of this movie. Whether or not Pfeiffer’s character is really a vampire also creates some welcome tension in the story.
Like a lot of its contemporaries, Vamp went on to become a bit of a cult classic. That current status is determined by several factors, but without a doubt, the casting of Grace Jones is the most considerable. The image of her writhing on that unique-looking chair, a Keith Haring original, springs to mind whenever this movie is brought up.
Chris Makepeace, Billy Drago and Paunita Nichols in Vamp
Prior to that first display of unequivocal horror, local vampire queen Katrina (Jones) took to the stage and delivered a strip show like no other. One would expect nothing less from that renowned model and performance artist. By now reports of Jones’ tardiness on set are no secret, yet it’s also hard to deny her commitment to the part of Katrina. It was, in fact, Jones who took charge of her character’s appearance—on top of Haring painting her body and that now-iconic chair, she had Andy Warhol handle her costuming. And not too many actors could seize a room’s attention without saying a single line of dialogue.
In 2022, Vamp received a retrospective novelization from Encyclopocalypse. This literary union of preexisting source material—Wenk’s original screenplay—and new ideas from author Christian Francis amounts to a more comprehensive visit to the After Dark Club. The basic story there is no different than what’s shown on screen; however, Francis gets creative with the characters’ origins and designs, and he enhances a number of key scenes.
The novelization expands on the urban and social decay of the main setting, and supplies a background for the After Dark Club. Sandy Baron’s character, Katrina’s emcee and familiar, is given ample motivation for sticking around; up until the fiery end, he is loyal to his friend and former business partner “Squeak”, who looks like he was “fed through a combine harvester, and left as nothing more than a heap of mangled remains”. Then there is Billy Drago’s character Snow, the leader of a street gang called The Dragons. His reason for menacing Keith and AJ is more altruistic than in the movie; he and his peers act tough to scare off any potential food for the vampires.
Lisa Lyon in Vamp
If not for all the backstories, Francis’ Vamp would be a hell of a lot shorter. Instead, this tie-in read dives into how AJ met Keith—the orphaned Anthony Joseph hailed from a broken home back in Brooklyn—and how their friendship flourished over the years. Keith’s archership is no longer just an assumed part of his entire being; it’s a confidence-building extracurricular for a boy who got picked on before coming into the protection of the new kid in town. These supplemental, in-depth looks at the protagonists, plus their close connection, are maybe unnecessary. The movie already did a fair and concise job of addressing their platonic intimacy without the need for flashbacks and insights, specifically in that scene where AJ lays it all out as he sacrifices himself.
Where the novelization gets off course is its approach to the minor characters. Intermittently backstorying the likes of Katrina’s indentured servants, Seko (Leila Hee Olsen) and Vlad (Brad Logan), ends up disturbing the flow of the writing. Was it absolutely essential that readers know Vlad was the Grand Duke of the House of Romanov, or how Snow’s accomplice Maven (Paunita Nichols) became so dentally challenged? No, not really. However, one’s mileage with these random biographies may vary.
The novelization is a more substantial experience, but for a movie like Vamp, less is more. And as plentiful as they are, it never simply coasts on its campy charms, either. The character work sits comfortably in that realm between cursory and meticulous, the script is sharper than first realized, and Greg Cannom’s vampire makeup is straightforward yet effective. Most of all, the movie didn’t squander its out-of-the-box concept. Richard Wenk made his vision of a “comic nightmare in which just about anything that can go wrong does” come true, and it is very enjoyable.
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