George A. Romero Presents: Deadtime Stories Volume 1 (2009)

Coming from the Horror pedigree of the legendary George A. Romero and Special Effects Artist/Actor Tom Savini, Deadtime Stories Volume 1 is a low-budget Horror anthology film that fails to live up to its creators’ reputation.

This film opens with a hokey greeting by “The Godfather of All Zombies” himself, George A. Romero. He reads stories in a similar vein to Masterpiece Theater, or more appropriately, Tales from the Crypt, and then transitions the viewing into the film.

In the first of the three stories in this film (“Valley of the Shadow”), the yellow raincoat motif is used by the character ‘Paul’, the boatman for the group. It’s worth noting that the literary device is used quite literally as the seaman’s slicker and one may argue if this raincoat should be counted among the rest since it’s not the traditional hooded raincoat we’re used to seeing in other examples.

We are first introduced to Paul when the group is fleeing their campsite. It has been attacked and they assume it is because one of their fellow researchers had found the legendary ‘Umbare’ – the fountain (fruit) of youth. No characters are shown signaling Paul during their retreat, yet there he is by the water at just the right time, waiting to take our heroes seabound.

The group sails down the river a bit, all conversing with their new member and bickering about where to go next. Half the crew decides they want to make a stop and the other half decides they want to continue voyaging downriver.

After taking a detour and stopping briefly to let Angela and Alan disembark, the rest of the crew is then attacked. David’s mouth is skewered by a dart, while Paul takes two darts to the back and keels over dead – almost as if his mission in the film was completed.

The crew runs inland to try to save David while they are stalked from the jungle by men with skull-like face paint – almost illustrating that the characters are literally on the run from death itself.

From this point forward, there is no other use of the yellow raincoat motif within this film. If we were to analyze what Paul’s raincoat represents within the film, it would obviously be that of the seaman, but there might be another meaning as well laden within the text that could show the genius that is akin to George Romero’s reputation.

Besides the yellow raincoat motif, Paul’s scene feels significant as it feels like Paul has influence over the other characters. When the characters gather together on the boat, everyone seems to be talking to Paul one after another. The seaman says nothing in rebuttal during his on-screen tenure – as if he is in full control of the scene. We can also visually see Paul’s influence over these characters as well. While Paul may be the boatman, Paul is shown in the middle of all the characters and is featured more prominently than the rest of the cast. This could be taken as odd since clearly Angela is the main character of the story, yet she yields the spotlight to this silent character for a short while (see image above). Paul’s jacket is also shown just in the corner of half of the crew when they speak their piece and it sort of makes it feel like Paul is ‘touching’ the other characters and the one holding everyone together.

Paul arrives to take the crew from one land of death to another. One could argue that Paul’s character is in much of a similar vein to the Greek mythological being, Charon the River Styx ferryman. Charon is a primordial daimon (a being considered both mortal and divine) and a descendant of the Greek entities, Erebus and Nyx. This ferryman is also considered a psychopomp, a guide to souls in the afterlife. Charon sometimes is depicted with a beard and robes and could be looked at similarly to Paul’s raincoat, but that is the biggest stretch those two characters have besides being boatmen.

In relating Paul with Charon, everyone seems obsessed with Paul beyond just being grateful for him picking them up. Ominously Paul also never answers anyone from the crew, Charon is never mentioned to be a mute but this silence makes the character stand out more than fit in. Also mentioned before is the fact that it seems like Paul’s influence is ‘touching’ the other characters with part of his jacket being in frame while David and Miguel are speaking. It could seem that Paul like Charon has a mission to bring the group toward death. Later, Paul eerily dies without saying a word and the characters never mention him again, almost as if they only knew of him when he was around and once he was dead, the character disappeared from their collective memory. Charon proper never had a death story (he was more the embodiment of death than one who suffered from it, including being an inspiration for the Grim Reaper) and was vocal to some travelers in Greek-based stories like Virgil’s Aeneid), but these strange behaviors make the human Paul seem more like a god than a man.

Deadtime Stories Volume 1 is a sad product of the decline of George Romero’s work and besides the Charon connection, there isn’t much else that can be gleaned from such a short entry. However, it does seem like there could be some subtext hidden even in such low-budget titles if one knows where to look!

This article was originally published on my blog, The Yellow Raincoat of Horror. Check out this article and others on my site!