15 Movies That Say More About Their Makers Than They Realise

2. Knightriders - George A. Romero

If you haven't seen Knightriders, then you're missing out: it's really something to behold, though not necessarily in a good way. Ed Harris leads a band of travelling Renaissance Fair performers whose main attraction consists of jousting one another on motorcycles. They make a meagre but fair living, moving from town to town until they run into trouble with a local sheriff and have to stand their ground. That's all strange enough, but once you throw in the factors of Harris' character having delusions that he's a genuine medieval knight, zombie godfather George A. Romero writing and directing and a 150-minute runtime, you've got yourself what should have just been a short, ridiculous B-movie being treated like a serious (not quite) action drama with a decidedly uneven tone and inscrutable final message. What is clear, however, is that Romero always sides with the underdogs, no matter how odd their lifestyle choices or batshit insane the characters themselves might be. It's never called into question that the jousters are the heroes of the picture, despite the really very sensible notion that they might all be better off doing anything but what they've for some reason dedicated their whole lives to. Bless Romero - he's never afraid of being sincere about anything.