Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Day 1 of Brainsmoke's 31 Days of Halloween in 2013

All right my favorite month of the year has finally arrived! This post and subsequent posts in the Brainsmoke's 31 Days of Halloween 2013 is simple really. I plan on watching a horror movie each day in October. There may or may not be a certain significance for choosing a movie for a specific day. If there is a significance, I'll explain why. I also plan on wearing a horror and/or Halloween-themed t-shirt for each day in October that I'll post a pic of. In addition to this, I'll also post a song choice for each day, Halloween or horror-themed, of course. This should be fun. So without further ado, here is...


DAY 1
Movie:
Night of the Living Dead


I picked George Romero's classic to watch today, as it first opened theatrically on Oct 1, back in 1968. Watching the opening shot, with Johnny and Barbara driving to the cemetery reminds me that I need to seek out that NOTLD soundtrack LP that's been floating around. I remember seeing it advertised in the pages of Fangoria back in the '80s. I've always loved Romero's choice of "library music". It compliments the atmosphere of the movie perfectly.
I also happen to love Tom Savini's 1990 remake of NOTLD. I thought it was really well done. The casting was great, Tony Todd as Ben and Tom Towles as Harry nailed there parts nicely. The lighting and cinematography were also well done. There were some cool zombie gags too, like the cemetery autopsy/zombie and the zombie that gets run over and twisted around at the waist.It's just too bad it came out when it did in 1990. There was a big crack-down on "splatter" and "slasher" films, with the MPAA being more restrictive at that time. I know there were quite a few gory bits cut out or trimmed to get the "R" rating. I used to have a bootleg VHS, that I purchased from Ultraviolent Video back in the early '90s that featured a lot of the cut scenes but it was a work print. If those original film elements still exist, then someone should release a definitive "uncut" edition, at least by 2015, which would be the 25th anniversary.



DAY 1
T-shirt:
Night of the Living Dead
I happen to have an NOTLD t-shirt, so that was an easy choice for Day 1, since that was also the movie I watched. I don't have a shirt for every movie I plan to watch in October, but it will be a horror and/or Halloween-influenced shirt each day, of course.







DAY 1
Music:
The Misfits - "Night of the Living Dead"

Since it is such a seminal film, and one of my favorites, I might as well keep the NOTLD theme for Day 1. Here's The Misfits with "Night of the Living Dead", originally released on 7" vinyl in 1979.

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