What a fuckin’ year, eh? Let’s celebrate Halloween with three visions of the end of the world: George A. Romero’s First Dead Trilogy.
This is your notice to watch the films if you haven’t already, though I suspect most of you will have already seen at least two of them. Watch all of them. Not only will I be spoiling everything, but they’re fantastic, and if you disagree you are incorrect. I’ll even prove it!
Trilogy of Terror VI will consist of longform analyses of the following films:
Night of the Living Dead (1968) – coming Oct. 17
Dawn of the Dead (1978) – coming Oct. 24
Day of the Dead (1985) – coming Oct. 31
All three films are available in their entirety, for free, on YouTube.
I’ll see you soon. I have more to say but frankly I’ve managed to impress myself that I have the energy to do a Trilogy of Terror this year at all.
Please do tune in. I’d love to hear your thoughts on all three. And, hey, if it goes well, maybe I’ll do Romero’s Second Dead Trilogy as well.
At some point.
If I really start to hate myself.
Hey Phil, semi-longtime reader, first time commenter.
Just want to say, I’m stoked for this. Your Trilogy of Terror reviews (and Rule of Three as well) are fantastic, and I love all three of these movies, so I can’t wait to see what you have to say about them.
I appreciate that! More than I can express right now. Thank you.
Heck yeah, best news I’ve seen in awhile (even though I’m seeing this a week late.) We’re on #6 already? I’ll have to go watch those, I haven’t seen any of them yet.
I’ve never seen you review any television show or cinima piece that doesn’t make the original experience at least 50% more fun, no exaggeration (and the video game reviews/everything else is just as good, idk what the percent-of-fun added on those would be since video games cover longer experiences) and that these release on a weekly basis always leaves something to look forward to. Not to suck up. It’s like a mini-film class or something.
Looking forward to reading those, have a good one!
I strongly considered giving Trilogy of Terror a miss this year on the grounds that… [gestures broadly]. It means a lot that folks are popping up to tell me how much they enjoy it. I was willing to believe nobody would miss it! Thank you. Genuinely.
Of course! If you needed to cancel it or postpone things in favor of your own health (speaking very broadly here, this year has been brutal on a lot of people) then that comes first, but it is really pleasant and fun to return here and find those essays. It sort of gives me something to build into my schedule to look forward to (in a certain way this and maybe other writing series on here sort of remind me of that Pagliacci the Clown and the Doctor quote that’s in Watchmen and in several other works.)
Also on the topic of series you could maybe tell yourself that people wouldn’t care much about if you stopped, if/whenever you bring back Steve Zissou Saturdays, *that* would be kind of awesome, I would totally read any new additions all the way through. I usually steer into watching or looking at anything you’ve blogged about (with, idk, moral oral, venture bros, all of Wes Anderson’s stuff, all of the Breaking Bad stuff, ALF probably doesn’t count cause I steered clear of watching it but your coverage gave me enough of the experience I think, I bought like 3 Thomas Pynchon books from Goodwill but have barely cracked them so those probably don’t count, and several other examples, it either would have taken me a much longer time getting to those or I never would have looked at them if not for their mention here…) That’s probably a series you’d have to get back into the right mindset for, but I would be excited to see it get a return; it’s been long enough since I’ve last seen the movie that I don’t want to look back and pull quotes before a rewatch (because I’d almost be watching the film again with fresh eyes) but your interpretation of the cartoon whale by the porthole as well as your diagnosis of the film’s beginning really stuck with me.
Anyways, yeah, thanks for putting these out here. This will probably give me a good reason to look back at the old Trilogy of Terrors too, I think last year’s might be the only one where I watched all three movies for it (and I’ve recommended those to others several times since.) Thanks again!