BØRNING (2014)

The car chase has been part of the action genre since nearly its inception. Names like Bill Hickman, who oversaw the car stunts in legendary films like The French Connection and Bullitt, and more appropriately Hal Needham, who remains probably the most famous in the Hollywood Hills for having directed and constructed the stunts of the Cannonball Run and Smoky and the Bandit films, were pioneers in what would soon become a new art.

Like car chases, films are a rush. When expertly constructed and smartly maneuvered, a film can sneak up behind you, take you by surprise, and before you know what hit you, it's already gone, fading into the distance, nothing but a blurry set of taillights disappearing around a curve. Marry them together in a fairly balanced way and you've got the makings of a film that never lets up, whether or not the cars are still in park.

Roy Gundersen (Anders Baasmo Christiansen) likes to go fast, and in doing so, has built himself a family of both honest-to-gosh blood relatives and lifelong like-minded enthusiasts with whom to share his need for speed. While out on a leisurely drive with his very pregnant wife (and at her urging), Roy engages in a street race with local gear head TT (Trond Halbo), and not only loses the race, but loses control of the car, driving it off the road and flipping it on its roof. As a result of the crash, Roy's wife's water breaks so he rushes her to the hospital, where their daughter, Nina, is born sickly and with jaundice. Roy is promptly arrested soon after by Officer Philip Mork (Henrik Mestad), who will make it his mission to see that Roy either curb his street-racing tendencies, or go to prison for it.

Cut to fourteen years later, and Roy is working in an auto-body shop trying to stay out of trouble, when once again he crosses paths with his old rival TT. After a war of words, Roy challenges TT to a race - and not just to a street race, but a cross-country haul-assin' to the North Cape, a distance away of 2,208 kilometers (1,376 miles). Soon, two dozen cars are lining up to take part in an attempt to win the ceremonial $100 pot per racer, and Roy's all ready to go...until his now ex-wife drops fourteen-year-old Nina (Ida Husøy) at the shop, leaving her in his care for the week. With no other choice, Nina accompanies her estranged father on his run across Norway, where, in the midst of car-on-car mayhem, law enforcement outsmartment, and a decades-long rivalry, father and daughter will slowly begin to reconnect after years of silence, all while driving really, really fast.

Present a film about caravans of muscle cars taking to the streets and modern audiences will inevitably think of The Fast and the Furious. Though that's to be expected, Børning owes everything to Hal Needham's legacy, beginning with story construct - a country-wide, every-man-for-himself car race - and continuing with its tone - which begins with car-chase thrills before introducing bouts of loony humor and, when you least expect it, some heart. Watch as Roy's Mustang haphazardly careens down hillsides set to banjo-jangling rockabilly and try not to picture Burt Reynolds or The Dukes of Hazard in their ten gallon hats and their "aw shucks" smiles. With shades of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World thrown in for good measure, Børning presents a collection of characters all taking part in a mad-dash across the Norwegian countryside for their very own reasons. Some are doing it out of pride, some for the rush, and some because they're dying, and it's the last chance for them to experience the beauty of their country.

Børning is, not surprisingly, fast-paced, and is beautifully shot to fully convey the impressiveness of the car stunts on hand, and very little of it relies on CGI to maintain that '70s era feel. But it's also refreshingly character-based, allowing for moments of effective humor and genuine heart. Christiansen's Roy comes dangerously close to veering off the road of redemption but thankfully circles around just in time, and young Ida Husøy as Nina not only charms the pants off her audience, but partakes in a scene involving a gas station sandwich that will break your heart. One cinematic device perhaps more overused than the car chase is the the estranged parent and child overcoming their years of absence and finding a way to reconnect. Though Børning offers a new environment for its own parent/child reconnect to take place, the audience isn't necessarily seeing something it hasn't already seen countless times before. Despite that, Christiansen and Husøy work very well as the father/daughter dynamic, and even though it may be a well-worn clutch, the audience can't help but get caught up in their new-found bond. There's also a suggested romance between Roy and fellow body-shop worker Sylvia (Jenny Sklavan) that remains a bit too ambiguous, and for most of the film it's barely acknowledged, leaving the audience wondering if their relationship carries any weight beyond the sexual, or if they're supposed to care about their union. Though the ending would suggest a future between them, its potential for further emotional retribution is too little, too late.

Supporting characters offer the same amount of solid work, but the ailing Nybakken (Otto Jesperen) steals every scene in which he appears, milking his illness (the fictional Schreiner's syndrome) for all it's worth, not to mention proffering the biggest laugh of the film. You'll know it when you see it, and it's impossible not to love.

The car chase thing has been done to death, and it's built multi-billion dollar franchises, but in the middle of all the spectacle, something is being left behind. Børning director Hallvard Bræin seems to have figured out just what that is. (He's also turned it into a so-far three-film franchise.) While the engine's roar and the glistening chrome may present an intense and thrilling time at the cinema, it's always going to be more interesting for the audience to learn about - and come to care for - the people behind the wheel.

SCARY STORIES TO SLASH IN THE DARK

These are so goddamn terrific. The artist known as Watchful Eye has re-imagined the slasher genre's most iconic mass murderers using the infamous drippy artwork style by Stephen Gammell for the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark series. 

Buy prints.

RUNAWAY TRAIN (1986)

Well, here it is: Cannon Films’ lone, extremely rare, legitimately good film. Don’t get me wrong, I’m an adorer of the Cannon legacy and much of their output, but I know when to call a duck a duck. Original one-sheets for Death Wish 3 and Invasion U.S.A. will be thrown into the crematorium with me when I finally check out of this place, but I could never with a straight face say that either of them are “good.” Runaway Train is, even if “a Golan-Globus production” just happens to precede it. With a script originated/inspired by Seven Samurai’s Akira Kurosawa, two powerful performances from its leading men (Jon Voight and Eric Roberts), and a great deal of thematic weight attached to what otherwise would be viewed as a high-concept and broad action/thriller, Runaway Train strived to be more than just a piece of shallow entertainment, achieving nominations for three Academy Awards, as well as for the Palme d’Or for director Andrei Konchalovskiy.

To modern audiences, Runaway Train will feel like a case of been there/done that, even though it was one of the first to do what it did. (1974's The Taking of Pelham One Two Three takes that honor). Though 2010’s Unstoppable, starring Denzel and directed by Scott, claims to be based on a true story, the similarities between the two films can’t be denied — right down to the threat of the train derailing at a nearby chemical plant, threatening to spread toxic waste radiation across a circumference of alarming square mileage. Both even maintain the old and somewhat broken down man (Voight, Washington) caught up in the conflict with a young, somewhat cocky punk (Roberts, Pine) forced to work together, lest they become train goo. But where Unstoppable's leading men eventually become partners and equals, each walking away from the conflict with a mutual respect, that ain’t the case in Runaway Train. Because, again, it wants to be more than just a slice of escapism. It wants to be more than audiences wondering, “How will they stop that train??” (I’ll also throw out that Denzel and Scott additionally collaborated on the Taking of Pelham remake — these guys love trains!)

On the most basic thematic level, the runaway train on which Oscar “Manny” Manhem (Voight) and Buck McGeehy (Roberts) find themselves doubles as their fate. Former inmates of Stonehaven Maximum Security Prison, the freshly escaped cons with freedom in their eyes may have eluded their captors, but they have not eluded their fates. The choices they’ve made in life set their course into action — whether behind the walls of Stonehaven, or within the cars of their runaway train, their fates are inescapable, and it’s there they’ll have no choice but to confront the men they are and the lives they chose to lead.

Good performances in film aren’t rare; excellent performances are; but when an actor disappears, chameleon-like, into a role, all while leaving the audience unsettled and intimidated, that hardly ever happens. Look at Daniel Day-Lewis did it in Gangs of New York, Tom Hardy in Bronson, Robert Carlyle in Trainspotting (hey, trains!), but before all of them, Voight did it with Runaway Train. Oscar Manheim is a son of a bitch. He’s such a son of a bitch that Stonehaven’s warden ordered him permanently welded into his prison cell for three straight years. He’s such a son of a bitch that this same warden tries to off him via another prisoner saddled with a shiv. And Voight sinks his brown and metal teeth into the role with a dedication and fierceness seldom seen, nearly unrecognizable with his droopy eye and southern-fried fu manchu.

And then there’s Eric Roberts in an early effort which sees him in a rare role where he plays a good guy, albeit a prison escapee. He’s mouthy, energetic, and somewhat frantic — like a wild pup getting a taste of freedom after being kenneled for too long: manic and unrestrained, wanting to go everywhere and sniff everything. With only three months of time left yet to serve, his last-second decision to accompany Manny on his prison escape says a lot about the kind of person he is. He’s impulsive and brash, but also kind of a romantic, which to audiences translates as an innocent.

Unfortunately where Runaway Train loses momentum is with the inclusion of the character played by Rebecca De Mornay, who according to the credits plays “Sara,” even though I’d swear her name is never spoken aloud. It’s less that her performance comes off weak (even though it does), especially when sharing scenes with Voight and Roberts, and it’s not just that she’s saddled with the worst dialogue the film has to offer (“There’s a miracle coming, I feel it in my heart!”), but her character ultimately proves pretty useless. The name “Sara” notwithstanding, she’s actually an on-screen representation of the audience. Her job is to either provide exposition for whomever in the theater seats might be running a little behind, or to echo the thoughts that audience members are likely having. She’s there to whisper into their ears so they know how they should be feeling about the dynamic between the characters. And in a kind of ham-fisted way, her presence — that of “innocence” — is supposed to manufacture conflict for those personnel in the train station (Kenneth McMillan; The Thing’s T.K. Carter) with whether or not they should be trying very hard to make sure the train doesn’t derail. Had her character been wiped entirely from the story, leaving just the two cons behind on the train to face each other’s personalities, all while the train personnel grappled with whether or not the lives of two prisoners (i.e., bad guys) are worth it, both the duality of nature and the additional complication of the choice of crashing or saving the train would have felt more intimate and suspenseful: let the men die and avoid catastrophe, or take the risk and save their lives, even if they are “bad” men.

That aside, Runaway Train is still an excellent ride, anchored by excellent performances, wonderfully hectic and documentary-like cinematography by Alan Hume, and, somehow, direction by Konchalovsky that comes off both assured and chaotic. John P. Ryan, who played an array of bastards both villainous and heroic during his period as a stable actor for Cannon Films, turns in a sinister supporting performance as Warden Ranken, offering an additional threat on top of the one the cons are trapped within, and which is hurtling 90 miles an hour toward doom.

Cannon Films may not have made many “good” films during their tenure, but they’ve made at least one that was certainly excellent. For all the Wildey Magnum bullets that Paul Kersey fires into punks, or rocket launchers that Matt Hunter aims at Russian commie terrorists, none of them pack the punch of Voight’s performance, Konchalovsky’s direction, or an out-of-control Runaway Train.

13 HOURS: THE SECRET SOLDIERS OF BENGHAZI (2016)

A Michael Bay film about the Benghazi attack and subsequent death of Ambassador Chris Stevens sounds like one of those things that shouldn't work. In a satirical skit about the dumbing down of America, a character would joke about wanting to go see Michael Bay's new film, "9/11: The Movie," in which a CGI American flag destroys every evil terrorist from sea to shining sea. And while that's perhaps a bit unfair, it's also kind of not, because this is the reputation Michael Bay has created for himself, all while working for the same Hollywood system that's entirely open to taking a real-world tragedy and turning it into profitable exploitation. We've had Twin Tower films, Osama Bin Laden assassination films, hijacked 9/11 plane films, and with 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, we have the Benghazi film – the worst terrorist attack the United States has suffered since September 11, 2001. And the mere idea of Michael Bay announcing such a film was the stuff of cynical eye-rolls and immediate dismissals.

In Hollywood, there’s an understanding that directors with prestige are, and generally should be, the ones to bring such real-life tragedies to life; i.e., Steven Spielberg with Schinder’s List or Paul Greengrass’s United 93. Though whether or not such true-life horrors becoming fodder for movie theaters is a tasteless move is constantly up for debate, but if they’re going to be made, it’s best they’re helmed by people with a history for quality output and adept at presenting real human drama.

Using his money-printing Transformers series as clout, Michael Bay – the director of five films (so far) about robots turning into other robots and fighting evil robots from outer space (all while destroying Chicago) – elbowed his way to the front of the line to helm 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi. Though it does contain the same kind of violent, operatic destruction for which Michael Bay has been known since his directorial debut, it also contains something a bit unexpected and absolutely welcome: a bit of restraint from the director of Bad Boys 2, as well as a bit of maturity.

Make no mistake – though screenwriter Chuck Hogan (The Strain) was the one to adapt the nonfiction book by Mitchell Zuckoff and the Annex Soldiers, the script still manages to fall victim to the usual Michael Bay-isms. Though based on very real men, characterization falls by the wayside. Played by lesser known actors (which works to the film's benefit), each soldier is given a modicum of background and some personality quirks to differentiate who everyone is, but except for lead soldier (as presented by the film) Jack Silva, played by The Office's John Krasinski, the men's identities are tough to distinguish. 'Boon' (also The Office's David Denman) reads books. 'Tanto' (Pablo Schreiber) cracks jokes. 'Rone' (James Badge Dale) seems to really like war. These could very well be close to the real men, but their translation to the screen filters out much of their needed characterization. Bay, to his credit, does manage to include a handful of scenes in which the men either talk about or communicate via Skype with their wives and children (one of these instances, taking place at a fast-food drive-thru is actually one of the best and most human moments Bay has ever directed), but once shit hits the fan and everyone is covered in soot, it's legitimately confusing at times to see through the black faces and heavy beards and figure out just who is who at any moment.

And again, being that this is a Michael Bay film, scenes striving toward drama can border on the overwrought, overly patriotic, and emotionally manipulative. Silva hasn't been at the annex for five minutes before he's sitting alone on his bed and thinking about his family in flashback form. We can fault a somewhat clunky script (which sports no less than six sarcastic uses of the word "fun") containing some truly heinous dialogue, as well as an odd amount of jokes that never seem to gel with the very serious conflict in which the soldiers soon find themselves engaged. (I wasn't there so I can only speculate, but if the real soldiers made at least half these jokes during the actual firefights, then I am speechless.)

Still, the shortcomings of the script are counteracted by Bay's extravagant yet restrained – and at times, downright graceful – direction. His quick-cutting style is severely dialed down, replaced by gorgeous sweeping exterior shots of the conflict as it's unfolding. He also resurrects his “bomb POV” shot from 2001’s recklessly stupid Pearl Harbor, in which the camera tracks with a bomb released by its aircraft and follows it down, watching it whirl through the air until landing near its intended target. It’s less Bay cribbing from himself and more his acknowledgment that whether here or abroad, war has to begin and end somewhere – and that includes conflicts we understand, like World War II, or those still mired in questions and controversy, much like our unending wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The cinematography by Dion Beebee eschews Bay's normal living painting style in favor of ground-zero witnessing, relying on scurrying handheld cameras to put the audience directly in the middle of the fight. It's been done before, of course, but not by Bay, and seeing him employ its use forces you to examine him as not just a director, but a filmmaker.

Did you see what I just said?? 

It's a shame that 13 Hours didn't do well financially at the box office, as not only was this a film that more people needed to see, but it just seems like one more nail in the coffin for directors leaving their comfort zone to make something "important" before heading back to their franchises and brand names that print money while killing brain cells. Better than your typical Michael Bay fare, but not in the same league as other relevant modern films The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty, or United 93, 13 Hours presents a refreshingly Michael Bay-lite take on a very true story. As to be expected, the action scenes are phenomenal (while thankfully managing to skirt political agenda), a somewhat clunky script and uneven tone are what holds back 13 Hours from the kind of prestige its colleagues have gone on to earn. Removing the mindset that this was a true and horrific thing which really took place and examining it only as a piece of entertainment, 13 Hours makes for a thrilling, visceral, and unrelenting experience and perhaps even one of the best action films of the 2010s.

APT PUPIL (1999)

Stephen King has seen more adaptations of his written body of work than any other writer living or dead, except maybe for Bram Stoker, whose novel, Dracula, has been adapted for a literal, accurate, and confirmed figure of ninety bajillion times. As such, among these King adaptations, some are classic, some are decent, and some are best forgotten. His 1982 four-novella collection, Different Seasons, contained the original stories that would later be adapted into Stand by Me, The Shawshank Redemption, and then Apt Pupil. The fourth story, The Breathing Method, is in the works under the direction of Sinister’s Scott Derrickson, so the Different Seasons adaptation game is looking like a clean sweep. Not bad for one book. (The jealous author in me weeps bitterly.)

Until Derrickson’s adaptation sees release, Apt Pupil remains the dark horse adaptation of the book. Having been released to mixed-to-positive reviews back in 1999 (and mired in controversies/production difficulties), and directed by a post-Usual Suspects Bryan Singer (the X-Men series, Valkyrie), Apt Pupil has always remained just under the radar in the King world. Headlined by Brad Renfro (The Client), who died at the age of 25 in 2008, and whose death was overshadowed by the passing of Heath Ledger one week later, Apt Pupil presents a young, well-to-do high school student and all-around sociopath Todd Bowden, who deduces that an elderly member of his community, Arthur Denker (Ian McKellen), is a former Nazi living in hiding under an alias. Bowden, fascinated with Nazi atrocities (or perhaps just atrocity in general), first blackmails Denker before cautiously befriending him, wanting nothing more than to hear all of Denker’s vile holocaust stories. And Denker, at first backed into a corner, slowly begins to spin the arrangement to his advantage, until the two get to a point where both are manipulating each other. As such, only one will likely walk away.

As can be expected by a King work, Apt Pupil is very dark – not in terms of gory visuals, but more its tone and its subject matter. There’s no blacker stain in the world than the atrocities of Nazi Germany during World War 2; even without the grainy black and white photographs of stacked bodies and emaciated figures, the mere discussion of it is still upsetting enough that Apt Pupil presents as a somber and by-design upsetting experience. Singer and screenwriter Brandon Boyce don’t back away from the darkness of the story’s subject matter, although it does update certain aspects, such as its much more explosive finale (to be expected in 1999’s immediate post-Columbine era).

Ian McKellen is chilling in his role as the runaway Nazi, whose villainous turn almost laughs in the face of his more well-known, and by comparison, lovable, take on the X-Men series’ Magneto (ironically, a survivor of the holocaust). But in a way, it’s Renfro as Bowden who walks away as the film’s bigger sociopath, and that’s because he wears the façade of a sixteen-year-old kid in a varsity jacket and has a pretty girlfriend on his arm, who society would dictate has the perfect life, and hence, is no one to worry about. Renfro finds a way through all that and presents an angry, confused, and severely psychotic kid for whom more teachers would write a letter of recommendation than recommend him for psychological counseling. (Sadly, Renfro battled with drug addiction throughout his 20’s, nearly obtaining the lead in Freddy vs. Jason before a bizarre incident in which he stole a yacht cost him the role.)

On the triple tier Stephen King adaptation scale, Apt Pupil rests comfortably in the upper-middle ranks. The lead performances and Singer’s direction are top notch, while the screenplay can sometimes meander, with its neutered ending sacrificing much of the impact of King’s original story. Still, it’s certainly one of the better King adaptations, with immense talent on both sides of the camera. Sadly, it’s also more relevant in the modern climate than it’s ever been before.

SYNCHRONICITY (2015)

There is one thing that all time travel movies have in common, and that’s this: none of them actually make sense. That’s the paradox of the time travel film: though each goes out of its way to carefully explain the rules and possible ramifications of time travel, at the end of the day, none of them make sense. Putting aside that time travel, in reality, doesn’t actually exist, and therefore can’t be held up to any existing rigorous scientific criteria, each one featuring an individual traveling back or ahead in time in order to fix a conflict or know the unknowable is, honestly, just making shit up as it goes. It’s examining what is necessary to its own plot, making sure it’s arguably sensible in narrative form, and jettisoning the rest. And honestly, that’s fine. Even the most historically accurate film leans on fiction. Biopics fudge a detail now and then. Dinosaurs have been brought back to life, people. WITH FROG DNA. It’s fine. If those films are allowed to play with reality, the time travel film is certainly allowed the same consideration. But it’s when the time traveling and its ramifications get lost in its own plot that it can get a little frustrating.

From a technical standpoint alone, Synchronicity is beautifully made. Heavily influenced by Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, right down to the incredible synth-based score by Ben Lovett, but also containing bouts of TRON, Dark City, and other titles of the cyberpunk era, no one can say that Synchronicity isn’t audacious as hell. Certainly the first cyberpunk time-travel film-noir romance of its kind, Synchronicity has been brought to life with a very assured and very confident hand by writer/director Jacob Gentry (The Signal—2007, not 2014). From the opening sequence alone, the audience is immediately transported into a time and environment in which they have had zero previous experience. In the same way Blade Runner opens in a very foreign cityscape, replete with merging cultures and disturbing amounts of futuristic gadgetry, Synchronicity, too, plummets the audience directly into the thick of an unusual and dangerous experiment. Who are these three men? What are they doing? Is this sanctioned or have they gone rogue? What’s with this awesome music?

Chad McNight as Jim Beale does admirable work as a man obsessed—first with his potentially world-changing experiments, but later on with the mysterious and beautiful Abby, who enters into his life seemingly at random until that randomness is called into question. He spends much of the film frantic, backed into a corner, and doubting everything—this mostly works for him, but sometimes it doesn’t. Brianne Davis, however, as the noir-required femme fatale, doesn’t quite grasp what she’s supposed to be doing. Her performance as the untrustworthy siren of Jim’s growing infatuation is largely inconsistent; her abilities to emote simply through facial expressions certainly helps in establishing the mystery of her character, but this is too easily counteracted during most of her dialogue scenes, where her hesitance with the role is all too palpable. AJ Bowen, Canada’s version of a young Vincent D’Onofrio, does expectedly fine work as Jim’s co-experimenter, Chuck, who finds himself swept up in Jim’s increasingly complicated life (lives?) as he struggles to save his friend.

Plus this thing’s got Michael Ironside!  He can make your head explode just by WILLING it! I’m not even talking about Scanners, but in REAL LIFE.

Synchronicity stumbles the most (but not doing any permanent damage) in its handling of the actual time travel aspect—considering this is being sold as a time travel film, that understandably sounds alarming. Synchronicity throws a lot at its audience, expecting them to grasp as many breadcrumbs as it can as the film barrels through its narrative. Once one timeline becomes two, which is which, who is who, and wtf all become lodged in your brain, making for a daring but frustrating experience.

Despite these flaws, there is something impressive and impulsively thought provoking about Synchronicity that to outright dismiss the film because of these flaws would be an utter crime. There’s a vagueness, perhaps purposely so, to many of the film’s aspects—like Klaus Meisner’s mysterious company, the future time period in which it’s taking place, the location of the city where it all unfolds—leaving a wake of haze wafting over everything like it’s a dream. The more scientifically minded viewer is going to want to break down the plot’s events to determine who is who at that time, what has changed in this scene being depicted for a second time, what possible implications are to come, but I’m not so sure Synchronicity was designed for that.  Like so many other genre films, time travel or not, the crux of the story is based on Jim and Abby’s growing relationship. Does she love him? Can she be trusted? Will Jim wise the fuck up? Around this dynamic the rest of the film has been wrapped, and whether or not the timeline of events and the science of time traveling makes sense becomes window dressing.

It’s simple, really: if you become engaged by Jim and Abby’s plight, then Synchronicity will prove a rewarding experience. If you’re here for the time travel, then you might find yourself checking your watch.

Taking a page from the book of Blade Runner (and it's five million versions), Synchronicity is impressive to look at. As is demanded by all future-set science-fiction films, the landscape of Synchronicity is cold, sterile, institutional, and impeccably clean. The film leans on blue hues and bright whites because of this, but while also adhering to the dark and shadow of classic film noir. And yeah man, I love this music. The synth-based score by Ben Lovett lovingly skips back in time to the golden age of Carpenter and Vangelis, driving Synchronicity forward, perhaps even atoning for its storytelling flaws in the same way that Daft Punk's masterpiece of a score for TRON: Legacy aids in propelling it from mediocrity to an incredible visual and audio experience.

Synchronicity gets a cautious but still enthusiastic recommendation, if for nothing more than its ambitiousness. How its story will grab you is tough to predict. It's a wonderful technical experience, providing beautiful visuals and an equally beautiful if slightly melancholy musical score. For those longing for more San Angeles ambience, look no further: it's easy to believe that while Deckard is hunting down replicants in the rainy night, just a few blocks over, the events of Synchronicity are unfolding in not just one but two separate timelines. And like Blade Runner, perhaps it will take some time before Synchronicity's story can be truly appreciated.

TEASER: DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978) ON NETWORK TELEVISION

 

I've been playing around with video editing during lockdown and this is my newest harebrained idea. 

File under fan edit - an opening to George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead (1978) as it may have looked if it premiered on network television in the late '70s or early '80s, similar to NBC's premiere of Halloween and CBS's airing of The Exorcist. I'm planning on creating the entire broadcast using a VHS rip of the movie and "original" commercials and TV spots - kinda like a standard definition grindhouse experience.

One question remains, however: if I embark on assembling an entire broadcast, do I make it as genuine looking as I can by...gasp...editing it for content? Silencing the profanity and, more egregious...cutting out the gore effects? Could I really do that to something as majestically splatter-filled as Dawn of the Dead?

Questions like these plague my very existence.