Vanilla Ice Films List
Francoise Witsell
List of the best Vanilla Ice movies, ranked best to worst with movie trailers when available. Vanilla Ice's highest grossing movies have received a lot of accolades over the years, earning millions upon millions around the world. The order of these top Vanilla Ice movies is decided by how many votes they receive, so only highly rated Vanilla Ice movies will be at the top of the list. Vanilla Ice has been in a lot of films, so people often debate each other over what the greatest Vanilla Ice movie of all time is. If you and a friend are arguing about this then use this list of the most entertaining Vanilla Ice films to end the squabble once and for all.
If you think the best Vanilla Ice role isn't at the top, then upvote it so it has the chance to become number one. The greatest Vanilla Ice performances didn't necessarily come from the best movies, but in most cases they go hand in hand.
"There's Always Vanilla" is a bit of an oddity in Romero's filmography. It's the only romantic comedy in his oeuvre. Well, it's billed as a romantic comedy, but it plays more like a satirical drama. It even has occasional horror elements. One chase scene, in particular, would fit perfectly in Romero's zombie films. Horror and suspense were home to Romero, and his style shines through regardless of the film's purported genre. "There's Always Vanilla" is a film about disillusionment and eschewing conventionality. This fascination with counterculture is a throughline for Romero's work, but the movie is simply too aimless to rank among his best.
The National Guard is falling apart in the face of the zombie pandemic, and a small group of renegade soldiers robs its way across the countryside in search of a safe haven, ideally an island. When they learn of Plum Island from another survivor, they head there and find two warring Irish families: the O'Flynns and the Muldoons. The O'Flynns want to kill all the zombies they find, while the Muldoons want to keep their undead loved ones alive until a cure can be found. The "us vs. them" mentality that courses throughout Romero's work mutates again, and "Survival of the Dead" ends in a gorgeous final shot that underscores the futility of factionalism.
Much like "Survival of the Dead," Romero's foray into found footage, "Diary of the Dead," often feels like a retread of his earlier films rather than a fresh take on zombies. However, Romero mines the found footage concept for some interesting cultural commentary, which earns it a higher spot on this list than his final film. At the beginning of the zombie outbreak, a group of students shooting a horror movie and a news crew reporting on reanimated corpses find themselves fighting zombies and recording the entire saga.
George Romero reunites with "Dawn of the Dead" co-producer Dario Argento on "Two Evil Eyes." Each director gets half of the movie to tell a story based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe, with Romero's "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" constituting the first half of the film. Romero's segment is the better of the pair. If Argento's "The Black Cat" had been stronger, "Two Evil Eyes" likely would have ranked higher on this list.
Though there's less tongue-in-cheek humor, there's still a delightful "Creepshow" vibe to Romero's entry in "Two Evil Eyes." Part of that is owed to the cast (Barbeau, O'Malley, Tom Atkins, and E.G. Marshall appear in the film), and part is owed to the spookiness of Romero's approach to anthology horror. When he adapts other horror writers' material, he approaches it with an irrepressible love for the genre. He's clearly having fun, and that love for horror comes through on the screen.
Though George Romero had worked with Stephen King before, "The Dark Half" was his first time adapting one of King's novels into a feature film. The results are mostly good, though the movie falters near the end and could stand to be shorter. Romero was an expansive filmmaker who often let his stories unfold at a deliberate pace. Usually, that approach worked for him, but it doesn't coalesce as neatly when adapting King's novel. Still, "The Dark Half" is a fascinating story with an impressive dual performance from Timothy Hutton at its center.
Only George A. Romero could turn an educational film commissioned by the Lutheran Service Society of Western Pennsylvania into the bleakest and most frightening film of his career. "The Amusement Park" was intended to be a film about elder abuse, but rather than focusing on individuals responsible for such horrors, Romero and writer Wally Cook indict the entire country for their systematic abuse and neglect of the elderly. "The Amusement Park" is an absolute nightmare of intentionally jarring edits, uncomfortable warped close-ups, discordant tones, and ticking clocks that underscore the inevitability of its horrifying scenes happening to the viewer in the future.
"Season of the Witch" is George Romero's most openly feminist film. It tells the story of Joan Mitchell (Jan White), a neglected suburban housewife who lives with her husband, Jack (Bill Thunhurst), and her 19-year-old daughter, Nikki (Joedda McClain). Jack alternates between ignoring Joan and abusing her, verbally and physically. Joan longs for some sort of escape, and she finds it, first in an affair with Gregg (Raymond Laine), a student teacher at Nikki's college, and then, in the practice of witchcraft. Newly empowered, both literally and figuratively, Joan finds a way to free herself from Jack and become the person she was meant to be.
George Romero takes aim at issues surrounding the rights of the disabled, animal rights, and medical malpractice in "Monkey Shines." The film is slightly different from most of his other work. Again, part of the difference seems to be in adapting others' material vs. writing his own original screenplays, as the film was based on Michael Stewart's book of the same name. It's also a major studio film, which rarely meshes well with the indie outsider sensibilities of an auteur like Romero.
"Land of the Dead" is only the fourth best in Romero's zombie franchise, but considering the films it's up against, that's not a bad place to be. Years after the zombie outbreak began, feudal governments have popped up in major cities in the United States. In Philadelphia, the privileged few live in a high-rise called Fiddler's Green (a clear reference to Nero fiddling while Rome burned), while the rest of the survivors subsist on the streets. A group of fighters comes into conflict with the leader of Fiddler's Green, Paul Kaufman (Dennis Hopper), and, inevitably, his palatial fortress comes crumbling down around him.
If the premise of "Knightriders" sounds like a joke, that's because it is. Motorcycle-riding Renaissance fair performers travel the country, living and breathing the courtly life they play-act for paying crowds. King William (aka. Billy, played by Ed Harris) begins to see splintering factions in his group, with the largest one led by Sir Morgan (special effects master and frequent George Romero collaborator Tom Savini). Though there are suspenseful sequences, there's no horror in "Knightriders." Still, Romero's political fascinations are clear and present, and the narrative's interpersonal dynamics are fascinating and heartbreaking.
George Romero was rarely subtle, but he was always artful. "The Crazies" is a scathing critique of the U.S. military's actions during the Vietnam War, but in true Romero form, it's eerily prescient now. It's easy to draw parallels between the government's botched response to a viral contagion in the film and the COVID pandemic.
"Creepshow" is George Romero's most successful collaboration with Stephen King, who wrote this horror anthology film. Inspired by the EC horror comics of the 1950s, with their gleefully gruesome tales and bitterly ironic endings, "Creepshow" has a wicked sense of humor. Romero can be very funny, but the goofiness of this film is unrivaled by any other work in his filmography. In "The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill," a farmer (played by King himself) finds a meteor and daydreams of getting paid for it by the "Department of Meteors." In "The Crate," Professor Henry Northup (Hal Holbrook) daydreams about shooting his abusive wife, Billie (Adrienne Barbeau), as his friends and colleague look on and give him an approving golf clap. It's a very silly movie, but charmingly and hilariously so.
"Day of the Dead" has the best opening in George Romero's entire filmography. A rotting corpse missing its lower jaw, its tongue lolling, stands silhouetted against a tropical blue sky as the title comes up. Newspapers with the headline "The Dead Walk!" blow around an abandoned town as the best gore and effects in the "Living Dead" franchise take center stage.
It's very tempting to put "Martin" at the No. 1 spot on this list. It's George Romero's most arthouse film, though its roots are squarely in working-class Pittsburgh. Martin (John Amplas) is a young man who goes to live with his elderly cousin, Tateh Cuda (Lincoln Maazel). Cuda believes that Martin has inherited the family curse and is a vampire who must be destroyed if he kills again. Martin mocks Cuda for his superstitions, but he is a serial killer who preys on women and drinks their blood. It's a fascinating look at the darkness within the human soul, the impact of superstition on the human psyche, and generational trauma. If Martin hadn't grown up being told of this family curse, would he have had such a fascination with human blood and connected it in his mind with his burgeoning sexuality?
Though George Romero often downplayed the cultural significance of his first film, it's hard to overstate what a watershed moment "Night of the Living Dead" was. Not only did he reinvent the zombie movie by connecting the undead to radiation from a NASA probe rather than Haitian Vodou, but he also made a Black man (Duane Jones) the hero of his film in 1968. With its famously downbeat ending that tapped into contemporary concerns about racism and police brutality, "Night of the Living Dead" was a game-changer, pure and simple.
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