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The classic movies you should see

Chelse McKee, staff

With the end of the year quickly approaching, these films will have you reaching for the shotgun. With a variety of ways for the world to end, which is your favourite?

Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959)

Director: Edward D. Wood Jr.

Remember those bad films you see portrayed in shows like The Simpsons, where there are crew members walking on-screen and sets are falling apart? This is that film. Cheesy effects, bad acting, and failing set design. At one point, you can actually see the strings holding up the tiny spaceship.

Edward D. Wood Jr. was infamously titled the worst director in the history of cinema. It’s a delicious cult hit and basically visual junk food. The film revolves around different alien characters who invade the world wearing tight spandex.

Nevertheless, one must give some credit to Woods for his refusal to give up on the film project. After one of the leading characters, Bela Lugosi, had died, Wood continued to shoot the film in his posthumous absence. With the help of Lugosi’s screen test, a Californian chiropractor named Tom Mason, and his own acting skills, Wood was able to complete the picture. However, in the film, the difference between all three people is obvious. When Mason graces the screen, he covers his face with his cape, while Lugosi’s shots usually consist of him coming out of the woods spreading his cape and walking back. You could almost make a drinking game trying to figure out which is which, but you’d end up pretty wasted.

If Wood directed how the world was going to end, it’d be all fishing line and continuity errors.

Night of the Living Dead (1968)

Director: George A. Romero

Zombies, zombies everywhere, and not a brain to spare. Moving past the racial divisional undertones and the incestuous references, how does zombies taking over the world sound?

The film focuses on a group of strangers trying to outlive the undead in an abandoned farmhouse. Soon the house comes under attack from zombies and the living must fight each other and the undead to stay alive.

Although White Zombie is the first official zombie film, Night of the Living Dead is certainly one of the most famous for bringing the cannibalistic desires of the undead to the silver screen. Writers Romero and John A. Russo came up with cannibalism after trying to decide what would be the most terrifying thing that zombies could do.

The film is gritty and raw in its black-and-white original form and at times feels more like a documentary of horrific events rather than a movie. Ironically, the word zombie is never actually spoken in the film, but maybe it would be if the world ended.

Last Night (1998)

Director: Don McKellar

OK, so not quite a classic yet, but it will be. The celebrated Canadian version of the apocalypse by director Don McKellar takes a more realistic approach to the possible end. The dark comedy, which began as a challenge to do a film about the millennium, became a film focused on the end of the world. McKeller wrote, directed, and starred in the film alongside Canadian cinematic royalty Sandra Oh, Sarah Polley, and a wonderful cameo by David Cronenberg.

Rather than approaching the apocalyptic conclusion with American veracity (huge explosions and deaths galore), McKellar focuses more on character development and interactions in the hours leading up to the end. The film focuses on what people would do if they had no more days to live, like a man trying every sexual deviancy in the book to playing a first and final concert at an historic hall.

Last Night is more than an apocalyptic classic, but a Canadian classic. It’s a unique idea swimming in a cinematic world over-saturated with special effects. McKellar’s film recaptures the realism of “the end” and delivers it with resounding success.

Of all the apocalyptic scenarios, this one is definitely the nice one of the bunch.