In what is possibly the most intriguing “what could have been” moment in the horror genre, the documentary announced way back in 2022, GEORGE A ROMERO’s RESIDENT EVIL documentary is finally ready to sink into the eyeballs of Romero and Resident Evil fans alike.
The investigative documentary dives deep into the original film that was slated to be directed by the godfather of zombies, George A Romero. In 1998, Constantin Film set out to bring Resident Evil, the legendary horror video game, to the big screen. They enlisted Romero to adapt the project, but despite the perfect pairing of horror’s greatest minds, Romero’s vision for Resident Evil was never realized. Now, for the first time, Salisbury’s documentary uncovers the hidden story behind the project that captivated fans and the horror industry alike.
“George Romero gave birth to modern horror, the modern zombie, and ultimately Resident Evil,” says Salisbury. “I am honored to bring fans the untold story of his most important unmade project, to celebrate the legacy of the man that inspired me to pursue filmmaking as a career. I hope fans enjoy this ultimate experience in survival horror.”
George A. Romero’s Resident Evil delivers an immersive, stylized experience, weaving together archival footage, newly uncovered documents, and fresh interviews with key personalities. Taking inspiration from documentaries like Jodorowsky’s Dune, Salisbury crafts a compelling narrative that revisits the people and the creative vision behind this unproduced adaptation. Through candid interviews with industry insiders, George A. Romero’s Resident Evil brings to light the enduring mystery and the ambitious spirit that could have redefined the franchise’s journey into Hollywood.
“Uncork’d is honored to bring George A. Romero’s Resident Evil to fans who have long awaited the untold story behind this legendary, unmade project,” says Keith Leopard, President of Uncork’d Entertainment. “This documentary pays homage to Romero’s incredible vision and the power of storytelling that transcends what could have been. We’re excited for audiences to finally experience the mystery and legacy of his work in a whole new way.”
The GEORGE A ROMERO RESIDENT EVIL doc is on digital and On Demand release today (you can rent or buy it on Amazon at this LINK HERE.
It’s that time of year when I feel justified in diving deep here on NN into my dork-fest mind, where I can’t help but scour the backgrounds of some of my favorite films to find relics of my childhood hidden within the scenes. With the holidays here, it seems obvious that GREMLINS would be the premium choice as the center stage for scoping some vintage toys seen throughout the Kingston Falls department store. And as we all know, GREMLINS is the goddamn greatest Christmas movie of all time (IMO), so toys, Christmas, and Stripe running around with a chainsaw inside (what is actually a Montgomery Ward) make for perfect timing here.
Being as how most of the scenes filmed in the department store in GREMLINS are pretty dimly lit, this posed as a real challenge and I spent a lot of time pausing, zooming in, and even had to break out my high-powered glasses for to actually make out certain items hidden in the background chase between Billy and Stripe; and I would do it again in a heartbeat! That’s the fun in all this, and I’m happy to the nerdy Lord’s work for the Internets to appease nostalgic nuggets like myself. This is the kind of shit I want to see on my feed, so I can only suspect those who follow me feel the same.
Anyways, enjoy what I found!
80s ET Faux-Leather Doll
So we’re gonna start with the most obvious one here all fans of the movie have seen-The ET doll shown here along with some Looney Tunes plushies from Warner Bros. The green jacket or blouse can throw you off a bit without a keen eye for observation, but this is, in fact, an ET vinyl doll that was mass-produced back in 1982 by KAMAR. Obviously, this ET doll itself was sold without any clothes, so production just threw something on ET to cover his naked ass for filming. Also, it’s a nice Easter egg in the film as in ET, the alien hides among stuffed animals from Elliot’s mom and the scene here has Stripe hiding among plushies as well hiding himself from Billy.
If you’re interested in purchasing a relic from your childhood, there’s a rough-looking one here on eBay for the nostalgic fan.
All the damn walking robots!
If there’s one toy that maintained consistency throughout the 80s, it’s the flashing walking robot. This toy was made by so many different companies and while they all looked a bit similar, there were very distinct differences in various models like missle launching, rolling, walking with their feet, to rotating a full 360 degrees. On the far left here, right before you see Gizmo come crashing through the scene, you’ll see one here that resembles the Magic Mike robot (heyo- not Channing Tatum) that was highly popular during this time made by New Bright. It was also known as Sonic Sam in some areas. I don’t believe THIS one in particular is a Magic Mike, as I could not for the life of me pinpoint the exact model, but it’s pretty damn close!
In this scene where Billy cautiously walks around after getting attacked with a chainsaw, we have a pair of robots anxiously waiting for the second round of Billy Vs Stripe. The red guy in the back has an upper body that rotates a full 360 with blinking lights in its chest which I do believe to be the Rotate-O-Matic Super Astronaut Robot made by Horikawa- who produced dozens of models of these as early as the 1960s! The white one in front looks to be another version of a New Bright model mentioned previously.
The Mad Magazine Board Game!
Behind an army of Odies’ and next to the Survive! game is the long-forgotten board game of the Mad Magazine game made by Parker Brothers that debuted in 1979! The game, in pure MAD fashion, is outright bonkers and basically is played the complete opposite of Monopoly with the person going bankrupt as the winner. The game will also have you doing some off-the-wall shit when you pick up cards that say things like, “If you like this game, cross your legs, sit on your hands, cackle like a chicken and lose 1 egg; also $500” or “If you are good-looking, stand up and imitate your favorite animal, and lose $2000.” It was a pretty fun game back in the day.
Barbie Remote Control Super Vette Car
Midnight Barbie Horse
Barbie Bath Set
In the same scene with the robots, there’s an awful lot of Barbie merchandise hanging around! First up is the 1979 Barbie Remote Control Super Vette Car seen on the far right on the shelves. This was the first remote control car vetted for fans of Barbie!
Next up is Barbie’s Midnight horse that first came to market in 1980 and was part of a long line of horses Barbie apparently owned since 1970. I should also note that the mold here, known as the “Dallas” mold is the same mold used for Rainbow Brite’s horse Starlight in 1983!
Lastly, we have the Barbie Bubble Bath set from 1984 that literally ALL young Barbie fanatics either wanted or had. Throwing Babs around all day in the mud, we needed a way to bathe her properly dammit. And if you had the Dream House, you had to have the bathtub.
Garfield Plushies!
You basically couldn’t go anywhere in the 80s and not come across Garfield merchandise. Whether he was stuck to a car windshield or you had the infamous Garfield rotary telephone, he and his immense appetite for attention was inescapable- and we wouldn’t have had it any other way! Produced by Dakin toys, Garfield plushies were available in just about every department store, even making his way several times to McDonald’s’s as part of a Happy Meal or holiday portion in the form of dolls, action figures, and that one mug everyone had when we were kids at Grandma’s house.
You know the one…
If the next time you pop GREMLINS into your VHS for a rewatch and start scouring Kingston Falls Montgomery Ward for other toys not listed here, I feel like I’ve done my good deed for the day. If you got a kick out of this, check out the vintage toys I spotted in SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT!
The year was 1984. The very first commercial for the revolutionary Apple Computer premiered at the beginning of the year, foreshadowing an irreversible change in the way we live for an entire generation. While one can argue this may very well be, the most significant moment in ’84, (or hell an entire decade), most horror fans may dispute that. 40 years ago, one of horror’s biggest and influential icons was born from the mind of the late Wes Craven-Freddy Krueger. Robert Englund gave him a body, Craven gave him the brain- see what I did there- and unleashed Freddy Mania unto the generation that became the golden era for Slasher movies; and shows no signs of slowing up all these years later.
While I can’t speak for every single child of the ’80s, Freddy Fever rose high and rampant over the course of a decade, introducing an entire generation to the horror genre due to Springwood’s Slasher popularity. Nancy said it best, “Every kid knows who he is. He’s like Santa Claus.”
And even celebrated much more so by the horror fandom than the generous, jolly ol’ dude. With on-screen heroes emerging in the decade like Indiana Jones, Rambo, and pretty much any Arnold Schwarzenegger film, Freddy rose to the ranks as a hero of a generation of horror movie fans by being nothing more than the ethos of pure evil-slapstick comedy added later-which only BOOSTED all the diehard FredHeads (myself included) to put him on a higher pedestal; rounding out the Holy Horror Slasher Trinity with his buddies Michael and Jason.
I mean, you’ve really made it when MTV (when it was, you know, amazing) lets you VJ and just end up doing whatever the fuck you want. That’s some star power.
And it all stemmed from an idea inspired by real-life horrific events that dated back a decade earlier.
As most of you are aware by now, Craven was enthralled by a story he came across in the LA TIMES about a family who had survived the Killing Fields in Cambodia. They made it safe and sound to the United States, but their young son was soon terrorized by horrible nightmares and was eventually found dead.
“He told his parents he was afraid that if he slept, the thing chasing him would get him, so he tried to stay awake for days at a time. When he finally fell asleep, his parents thought this crisis was over. Then they heard screams in the middle of the night. By the time they got to him, he was dead. He died in the middle of a nightmare. Here was a youngster having a vision of a horror that everyone older was denying. That became the central line of Nightmare on Elm Street.”
All that being said, WHAT exactly had the youth of our generation so insanely captivated by, well, a brutal child killer? I can only speculate on watching Freddymania evolve throughout the ’80s, and ’90s, to today’s hardcore fan base that follows Freddy and Friends to the ends of the Earth via social media and horror conventions (I’m totally one of those people), and speaking with fellow FredHead buddies. And the answers are pretty quite simple: The children are the warriors of this horror franchise. They are the ones who recognize the evil while the adults stand around with their thumbs up their asses. THEY are the ones who stand together, (just look at Dream Warriors) and face their enemy head-on. So it’s only natural an adolescent would gravitate toward something they could possibly relate to. Society is often guilty of not listening to our youth, andA Nightmare On Elm Street made that loud and clear, folks.
Another reason, and this is personally true in my case being a female, is that each of the NOES films gave us the absolute, most ass-kicking heroines that any young girl would be proud to look up to. First off, let’s just get this right out of the way- Nancy is the goddamn Queen. Even though it was quite clear that she was slowly getting edgier as the film progressed- to be fair she was working on a week’s worth of almost no sleep while Fred was trying to murder her– she really had the most logical and sturdy head out of EVERYONE in that entire film. Including her parents. Not to mention, she went full Rambo on Krueger’s ass. I’m not going to sit here and try to argue how she managed to set all those booby traps, fall asleep, and capture Freddy all in twenty minutes of film time. Let’s just appreciate the fact that this girl went balls to the wall, going as far as tackling her predator to the ground WWF style in one giant FUCK YOU to his face. And then she turns her back on him and calls him “shit”.
Goddamn. GIRL FUCKING POWER.
Prior to Heather Langenkamp’s debut as a horror heroine, there really hadn’t been too many “final girls” who actually used their wit and a bit of critical thinking to overcome danger. Sydney Prescott said it best, “Some stupid killer stalking some big-breasted girl who can’t act who is always running up the stairs when she should be running out the front door.” Ironically, another character of Wes Craven-which is a big reason why I adore him and the strength he gave his female heroes.
The stupid girl trope in horror movies had always really bothered me until I got a dose of Nancy. The only other final girl that came remotely close to being a full-on badass that any young girl would admire prior to NOES, is Amy Steel’s Ginny from Friday the 13th Part 2. Nancy is Ginny turned all the up. And I respect the fuck out of it. We finally had someone willing to fight back with both her mind and skills she obtained. The strong female presence would continue throughout the franchise, and personally, I really think it made other horror films and franchises really think twice about the dumb girl victim angle. Post 1984, the main female characters in BOTH Friday the 13th and Halloween, respectfully, had a bit more fight in them. Think of Megan from Jason Lives, or Rachel from Halloween 4 who helped break the cycle. We can thank Nancy for that.
If someone wants to chime in about Jamie Lee Curtis, don’t make me remind you that just screamed her way through the first one until Loomis saved her ass; and then again in the sequel. A sequel where she literally laid in a parking lot where help was 10 feet away and waited to call out until they were gone.
I fucking love these movies to death, but I can never get past the stupidity of that.
Last but not least, A Nightmare On Elm Street has always been seen by me as a “comfort horror film”. Over the years, I’ve written several articles on how horror films actually soothe my anxiety- And the NOES films are exactly that for me. Comfort in times of stress and the harsh realities of the real world. I refer to films like these in a term I coined, “FANTASTICAL HORROR”. Films like Halloween and Friday the 13th (only the first, after that they became FANTASTICAL), were very much real to me. THAT SHIT COULD ACTUALLY HAPPEN. It’s very plausible an escaped lunatic could go on a killing spree or a deranged childless mother going apeshit on a group of kids. With NOES, mehhhhhhhhh, highly doubt a burnt-faced demon is gonna kill me in my dreams. This is not to say that one could never die in their sleep, or to take away the fact that the movie is really terrifying in other aspects. But, it’s not realistic to me. And that’s ok! In times of real-world tragedies, shitty adult issues, and when the world seems so ugly that you want to pack up and move to Mars, Freddy, and the gang are here to take us to Dream Land. To a place that takes us out of reality and into the world of Fantastical Horror.
You know, kinda like Harry Potter but cooler. Don’t you Hogwarts fans @ me.
Happy 40th anniversary, Freddy and the gang. And to all my fellow sons and daughters of 100 maniacs who keep the fandom of this movie as strong as ever. We are all his children now and forever.
