Classic Ross Amico

Tag: George A. Romero

Technicolor Moira Shearer, for Her Centenary, on “Sweetness and Light”

Dancer and movie star Moira Shearer was born on this date 100 years ago. The striking Scottish ballerina with fiery red hair first earned recognition through her work with the Sadler’s Wells Ballet, but soon achieved world fame through her appearances, in Technicolor, in indelible Powell-Pressburger classics such as “The Tales of Hoffmann” and “The Red Shoes.”

Once seen, who can forget the surreal sequence in which her life-like mechanized doll, Olympia, is dismembered and dismantled before our very eyes, mostly through the magic of practical effects? Zombie maestro George A. Romero, director of “Night of the Living Dead,” cited “The Tales of Hoffmann” as his favorite film of all time, and the one that set him on a career of making movies.

And then of course, there’s “The Red Shoes,” choreographed by Robert Helpmann, who seemed to devote his cinematic career to refining nightmare fuel, up to and including his appearance as the Child Catcher in “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.” Robert Helpmann and Hans Christian Anderson – what could possibly go wrong?

Join me for music from “The Tales of Hoffmann” and “The Red Shoes,” as well as selections from two of Shearer’s ballet triumphs at the Sadler’s Wells, “The Sleeping Beauty” and “Coppélia” (the latter based on the same E.T.A. Hoffmann short story that inspired the doll sequence in the Powell-Pressburger adaptation of Offenbach’s opera).

Strap on your demonic dancing shoes. It’s an hour of music for Moira Shearer on “Sweetness and Light,” this Saturday morning at 11:00 EST/8:00 PST, exclusively on KWAX Classical Oregon!

Stream it, wherever you are, at the link:

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

January 17, 2026
Romero’s Night of the Living Dead Horror Classic

Prior to “Night of the Living Dead” (1968), cinematic zombies were eerie, but mostly harmless. Generally, they did the bidding of Bela Lugosi or wandered like somnambulists through Val Lewton films. But that all changed overnight when filmmaker George A. Romero turned them into flesh-eating “ghouls” (as he called them; the word zombie is never uttered). Now, it seems, the zombie apocalypse is here to stay.

However, few films in the genre are so well executed. Romero’s lean and mean thriller has the simplest of premises and the lowest of budgets, yet good writing, editing, and direction, and a matter-of-fact tone make this one of the most convincing horror movies ever made. Especially since, as would always be the case throughout Romero’s zombie cycle (he made six “Dead” films in all), the chills are informed by real-world social and political subtexts.

“Night of the Living Dead” serves as both the last gasp of 1950s B-movie drive-in fodder and the dawn of contemporary horror. And people were indeed horrified. The film opened a month before the MPAA ratings system was implemented, and it was distributed to theaters as typical Saturday matinee fare. Critics were appalled and children were scarred for life.

We’ve become so desensitized, yet there’s a power to this film that will never die. Roy and I discuss George A. Romero’s implacable classic on the next Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner. Wander glazed in the comments section. Our intestinal fortitude will be on display as human flesh is on the menu, when we livestream on Facebook (and Twitter and YouTube), this Friday evening at 7:30 EDT!

https://www.facebook.com/roystiedyescificorner

October 20, 2022
Romero’s Zombies & Offenbach’s Opera

I just love the fact that the father of the modern zombie movie was inspired at the age 11 or 12 by Jacques Offenbach’s “The Tales of Hoffmann!”

George A. Romero, the animating force behind “Night of the Living Dead,” pays tribute to Powell-Pressburger’s bizarre masterpiece at the link. This is the same team that refined nightmare fuel with “The Red Shoes.”

Offenbach was a cello virtuoso who made his fortune as a hugely-successful composer of operetta. He wrote something like 100 of them, including “Orpheus in the Underworld,” which gave us this leggy earworm:

His only opera, “The Tales of Hoffmann,” is his magnum opus. Unfortunately, by the time it was accepted for performance at Paris’ Opéra-Comique, the composer was already in his grave. In fact, he died with the manuscript in his hand, only four months before the work’s premiere.

Debussy noted that the musical establishment of the day had difficulty coping with Offenbach’s sense of irony. Offenbach would no doubt have appreciated the fact that, like one of Romero’s zombies, he was, in a sense, reanimated after death. “The Tales of Hoffmann” has not been out of the repertoire since its premiere in 1881.

Happy birthday, Jacques Offenbach!

June 20, 2022

Tag Cloud

RECENT POSTS