This week I am stretching an already generous deadline to the absolute limit, dragging my ass to turn in an essay on George A. Romero’s Day of the Dead, to be included in an upcoming home video release. (I’m sorry, Phil!) I’m beyond excited to have my name officially attached to a release of not just one of my favorite movies, but a movie which provided a formative cinematic experience. I love The Fly, and I love Re-Animator, but as I’ve written about at length before, seeing Day on opening night at a midnight screening with my dad was one of those moviegoing moments that I’ve carried around for 41 years. There are only a couple of films like that, and I am keenly aware that they’ve provided highs that I’ve spent the rest of my life chasing.
But how does one recapture that high, without overdosing on the movie that provided it? It’s kind of impossible, but like a hopeless junkie I keep trying. Here are some of the ways I’ve tried.
The dumb, obvious one: I tried revisiting my childhood faves while under the influence. I think this might have re-engaged me in the moment, but it was not a lens of deeper meaning or clarity, and none of those viewings stayed with me.
I’ve read, watched, listened and otherwise ingested every detail I could about some of my faves. This has deepened my appreciation for the films and often gets me looking at a hoary old fave in a new light. But that doesn’t recapture the magic; it possibly evaporated some of it.
Similarly, I’ve written thousands of words about these films, and what they mean to me. This always felt more like an exorcism than any sort of new experience with the film. Writing about watching a movie for the first time does not recreate the feeling of watching it for the first time.
I’ve visited the locations in an attempt to feel that magic again: Dawn of the Dead, The Exorcist, Psycho, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. These were special experiences on their own, but they did not take me back to when these movies first burned themselves into my soul.
I’ve put the films on a shelf for extended periods of time, and then attempted to watch them with fresh eyes. This doesn’t always go well, though in the case of Day of the Dead, which Letterboxd tells me I last watched a decade ago, this week’s rewatch shook loose a take on the film I’d never previously considered, and which became the basis of the essay I’m procrastinating on by typing all this.
Speaking of that 4K home video release: across six decades, the various format upgrades that the home video market has seen have maybe provided the closest thing to seeing a movie again for the first time. For the VHS generation, seeing a classic favorite restored to high definition can be a revelatory experience. The obvious one is The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, which in my lifetime has gone from a grubby, muddy VHS transfer to a crystal clear, ultra high def image — one that took away none of the film’s power, but revealed a level of craft that was there the entire time. (In a bizarre full-circle moment, Dark Sky’s release of the Chain Reactions documentary contains a transfer of the 1981 VHS I first watched Tobe Hooper’s film on.)
I am grateful for the opportunities I’ve had to make these attempts, even if none of them worked. The idea of seeing Day of the Dead (for decades calcified in my mind as a murky, almost impressionistic series of visuals) in sharp detail is an exciting one. But it’s never going to replace or restore the fading memory of sitting in the theater in 1985, my endlessly patient father sitting next to me (except to duck out three or four times for a smoke) as a movie I’d been giddily waiting years to see unspooled on screen. Once in a while when watching Day now, I’ll catch a fleeting whiff of my thoughts and feelings during that first viewing — wondering who these people were in that helicopter; feeling the first sad twinge of the characters’ hopelessness (bolstered by John Harrison’s score) in the scene where Sarah injects Miguel to get him to sleep; waiting with excitement for the Tom Savini FX set pieces I’d seen stills of in FANGORIA to play out — and maybe that’s enough. Maybe that first-watch high is the domain of the young. And that’s probably how it should be. But I’ll never stop chasing it.
