Though we’ve covered the film in passing in various other articles in our month long celebration of the film Leon, we think Le Dernier Combat is of particular note in the Besson catalog of films. Being his first feature, written and directed by the auteur at the young age of 24, the film takes place in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. The world, by and large has been decimated, and many of our natural resources along with it. What’s left of humanity is forced to eek out an existence, scavenging for food and fighting one another for dominance. Though “the event” is never described, it has inexplicably robbed every living being of their ability to speak. As such, Combat is as much an anomaly for being a visually impressive low budget action film, as it is a black and white silent film.

For those of you who only know Jean Reno through films like Godzilla, The DaVinci Code or, of course, The Professional, it’s easy to think the actor has a decidedly limited range. After all, the 6′3″ gravel voiced thespian more than fits the part of a stoic bulk. Had he worked his way up the Hollywood food chain, he might have had a decidedly limited career based entirely on his scarred, hang-dog visage. I imagine him regularly accepting roles as “that guy”, playing characters named “Henchman”, “Thug 2″ or “Luca Brasi”.

Filmmakers go to drastic lengths to create enduring cinema. To create a film that is truly timeless is an art unto itself. I believe Léon accomplishes just this. Unfortunately behind the scenes documentaries often breath a startling amount of context into the time in which the film was made. HBO’s making of documentary is no exception. Behold a younger, startlingly less rotund Luc Besson, an oddly bespectacled Gary Oldman and a young Natalie Portman looking like a newly wedded sister-wife.

For the completist, “The Bronx Trilogy” is the unofficial title for a trio of Italian films by Enzo G. Castellari, director of the original Inglourious Bastards, inspiration for Quentin Tarantino’s film. The films include 1990: The Bronx Warriors, Escape from the Bronx and The New Barbarians. The films are most often described as The Warriors meets Mad Max, and the description is apt. Released from 1982 -85 the films take place in a post-apocalyptic version of the future-past where the Bronx has been quarantined and contained (Just like Escape from New York). Gangs fight for control of the limited territory.

The Warriors had a definite impact on punk cinema, even though the movie wasn’t explicitly about punks. The gangs’ unique styles, camaraderie, and general anti-establishment stance (by creating theirown gang code) inspired many movies, all trying to capture that Warriors essence. As punks began toinvade the cinematic landscape, there was one movie that took the highly stylized gang warfare of The Warriors and transported it to a much scarier location… a high school.

Mix equal parts of Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samouraï’s reductive cool with the economic low-tech visual flourish of other auto films like Vanishing Point, and you’ll have the essence of The Driver. Even on first viewing, it’s readily apparent the unheralded impact the visual style of the film has had on everything from the “Grand Theft Auto” games to films like The Transporter, The Fast and the Furious and Death Proof (almost assuredly and admittedly a direct descendant of Hill’s work here).

On his commentary for the director’s cut of The Warriors, director Walter Hill mentions a small competition of sorts between his film and another film about youth gangs shooting in New York at the same time. As it turns out, that film is none other than The Wanderers. If the name doesn’t strike a bell then maybe the director Philip Kaufman will. The very same director of films like The Right Stuff and Quills, who also co-created the character and story of the first Indiana Jones film, Raiders of the Lost Ark, with George Lucas.

Another month over, another movie to lay to rest. We hope you’ve enjoyed our foray into the wild world of Gojira as much as we have.

To wrap it up this month, we want to leave you with some additional recommended viewing, both our favorite Godzilla films and some of the media the giant monster has inspired.

Filled to the brim with interviews (including the legendary Godzilla series composer, Akira Ifukube), behind the scenes looks and trivia, this fantastic Godzilla documentary produced by the BBC dates back to 1998. While we can’t be sure, allegedly this was the Beebs attempt to cross promote the American Godzilla film. Finally, something good has come from that horrible debacle! Some kind soul was nice enough to upload the entire thing to YouTube in four separate pieces.

Watch and enjoy! Just be sure to skim the last few minutes if you’re not interested in a lot of schilling for the 1998 film.

For our last post of the month, we wanted to recommend some further viewing for Dawn of the Dead fans. But what to recommend? If you’re here reading this, you probably don’t need any recommendations on zombie films. So we decided instead to provide you with some films recommended by the zombie master himself, George A. Romero.

Mention Day of the Dead to horror fans and you’re likely to be met with a dismissive, “I liked it” or “Oh yeah, that’s a good one.” The truth is, many horror fans (and particularly zombie fans) can’t say what they really feel: Day of the Dead is no Dawn of the Dead. They’re absolutely right about that.

Sometime in the early 80s, George A. Romero famously migrated from his proud filmmaking home of Pittsburgh to the Sunshine State, Florida. While there, George concocted another sweeping screenplay for what many believed would be the close to the thematic trilogy that began with Night. It’s easy to forget that two decades passed before yet another dead film, Land of the Dead, brought luminaries like Dennis Hopper and John Leguizamo into the fold. Allegedly Romero was offered 7 million to produce a hard R rated version of Day, but when he pressed to release the film unrated (as Dawn had been, to great success) the budget was halved to 3.5 million.

Josh had one request when we set out to cover Dawn of the Dead this month: that we should “stay far away from The Serpent and the Rainbow stuff, talking about the ‘real’ Haitian voodoo zombies,” because it had “been done to death.” Pun not intended, as far as I know.

But White Zombie is just too classic and too awesome not to mention, so I’m breaking the rules. To my mind, the film belongs aside Dracula and Frankenstein as one of the founding pillars of the horror genre.