KNIGHTRIDERS (1981)
Friday, October 27, 2017 -
George A. Romero, the legendary horror director who died this summer at age 77, made a movie in the early 1980s about a troupe of medieval reenactors who dress up as knights, perform tricks on motorcycles, and joust with wooden lances and rubber axes.
For a filmmaker best known for reintroducing the zombie as a staple of the American cultural imagination through such movies as Night of the Living Dead (1968), Dawn of the Dead (1978) and Day of the Dead (1985), the Renaissance Fair-acrobatics of Knightriders(1981) may on its surface seem like quite the thematic departure.
And yet, no movie in his filmography better captures the stubborn idealism, artistic ambition, fierce independence, and persistent social criticism that defined Romero’s five decades as a filmmaker.