Why Wasn’t George A. Romero’s ‘Knightriders’ a Genre-Defining Hit Like His Zombie Films?
While George A. Romero might be remembered as the “father of the zombie film,” he had another genre-defining swing that ultimately didn’t land—despite it being awesome in its own right.
'Knightriders'
Forever beloved by horror film fans from now until the end of time for his work pioneering the horror film genre, and in particular launching zombie films onto the masses, George A. Romero’s legacy is unquestioned.
Yet, despite his huge genre-defining success with his zombie films in the Night of the Living Dead series, as well as a prolific career with many other horror (and even non-horror) hits like The Crazies (1973), The Amusement Park (1975), Martin (1977), and Creepshow (1982), there is one film which many often forget that could have been just as big and genre-defining as his zombie flicks.
Today we’re looking back at Knightriders, an insane action drama that showcased some of Romero’s greatest filmmaking feats, yet failed to launch anywhere near the scale of Romero’s zombie breakout hits.
The Legacy of 'Knightriders'
As a fan of '80s and '90s action movies who discovered this era of the genre mostly by sifting through old VHS tapes priced to sell during Blockbuster Video store closures, seeing the cover of the 1981 film Knightriders under a stack of random action flicks was quite exciting.
The cover itself is perhaps one of the most unique ones you’ll ever see, at least in terms of what it shows and how different it is from all of the other generic action covers, which all, more or less, look like similar versions of the same few movies.
Knightriders, though-and-through, is a wholly unique film that, like the zombie films Romero conceived before, is unlike anything else of its time. Yet, despite its uniqueness and, honestly, quite well-conceived storytelling and even-handed direction, it isn’t too surprising that it didn’t launch the way Romero's zombie classics did.
Why Wasn’t 'Knightriders' a Bigger Hit
Sadly, for many films of the era or even today, a movie is defined as a success or a bust, often for many variables that have nothing to do with the film’s quality or the love and care that goes into it.
A movie can have the wrong stars, or just come out at the wrong time. Marketing budgets and decisions can play a large role in a film’s success, or sometimes a film can just be too new, too unique, and too different for audiences to catch up to the originality.
And that’s what I feel like is the most reasonable explanation for Romero’s Knightriders not being a bigger hit. It was just too different from everything else at the time, and it still is today, quite honestly.
A Medieval Motorcycle Classic
While you could make much of the same points about Romero’s OG zombie classic Night of the Living Dead being completely new and unique when it came out in the late 1960s, for whatever reason audiences in the early 1980s just weren’t ready for a film that could best be described as a medieval motorcycle action drama.
Despite great performances from a cast led by Ed Harris, a ton of fun stunts, and a masterfully constructed story about a medieval reenactment troupe struggling to maintain its family-like dynamic amid undue pressure from local authorities, the film just didn’t catch on with the zeitgeist.
And while this could be a cautionary tale, I’d argue it’s more of a look at batting averages in filmmaking and how, despite some misses, so to speak, Romero was never afraid to swing big and try new things, which ultimately is why his legacy is so great, even if not every film hit with the masses in the same way.
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