(1968)
Dir - George A. Romero
Overall: GREAT
Fifty-two years and some days ago, George A. Romero and a devoted collection of Pittsburgh natives all chipped in, (and without realizing it at the time), changed the horror film forever with Night of the Living Dead. Is there anything left to say after all these decades later concerning possibly the most written about and critically examined movie that the genre ever produced? It is cherished and beloved. It is hugely influential. It is culturally significant as much today as it was during the era of civil unrest and the Vietnam War in which it was produced. It is one of the most inspiring and successful independent movies ever made. Really, if you have not seen it by now, why would you even be reading this or be on a blog like this in the first place?
There are many aspects then to Romero's undead masterpiece, (and truly one of the best American movies of any kind to emerge from the 1960s), that make it remarkable. Romero and his company The Latent Image was formed along with friends John Russo and Russell Streiner, both of whom appeared in the film. As well as being the co-screenwriter on the finished product, Russo shows up as a random zombie; Streiner as Johnny aka the "They're Coming to Get You Barbara" guy. Having tooled away making commercials and even Mister Rogers' Neighborhood shorts, they eventually acquired a 35 mm camera for the job of an elaborate, Fantastic Voyage spoof for Calgon soap. With this new piece of fancy gear at their disposal, the crew got restless and wanted to attempt making an actual full-length movie with it. They quickly abandoned an Ingmar Bergman-esque, introspective period drama called Whine of the Fawn which Romero had penned a script for and instead went with the more crowd pleasing genre of horror.
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There can be no modern zombie culture without...soap!
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A new production company called Image Ten was then formed with the Latent Image guys along with Karl Hardman, (Mr. Cooper), and Marilyn Eastman, (Helen Cooper). After various other investors came on board, (many of whom also appeared in the finished film), a budget of a hundred and fourteen thousand dollars was eventually raised. Small potatoes indeed to put a movie together, primarily with non actors and no legitimate studio backing. It got made on sheer will power alone it seemed, with nearly everyone on screen also serving some other behind the scene duties to get the job done.
By the time that it was completed and shopped around for a distributor, everyone passed on it or if not, Romero passed on them for wanting the ending changed to something more conventionally uplifting. Sticking to their guns and almost having wasted their time and resources with no one willing to get it shown in theaters, the Manhattan-based company Walter Read Organization finally agreed to distribute it, but again under a condition. Thankfully, this one ended up being for the best as they wanted to change the more misleadingly schlocky title of Night of the Flesh Eaters to the comparatively more eerie Night of the Living Dead. Of course in the process they also forgot to add a copyright indication to the new title on all of the prints, thus ensuring that the movie remained in the public domain until this day. That is another story entirely though.
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The less that's spoken about the 30th Anniversary abomination that only exists because any asshole can legally add their own footage to Night of the Living Dead, the better.
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When finally unleashed upon an audience, the initial critical response was lukewarm since the film was pared with hokey B-movies for the drive-in crowd, as was common of such low-budget fare of the day. Before too long and particularly due to the more positive recognition it received in Europe though,
NOTLD was re-released back home and truly began making its undeniable mark and finding its audience in the process.
No hyperbole is necessary in considering it a legitimate game changer. For the most part, the horror film up until this point had changed with the times as far as cultural interest, but they were still formulaic in their approach. Whether dealing with Gothic literary and folklore tropes based around vampires, ghosts, werewolves, mummies, or man-made monsters, all the way to the more atomic age of the 50s and 60s where giant, behemoth-like creatures or Communist stand-in aliens from neighboring planets besieged the human race, nothing like what was show in Night of the Living Dead resembled anything of the sort. Certainly the outcome of the film was far more desolate and bleak than any Godzilla or Universal monster movie had been.
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Behold, true bleakness in its most cinematic of forms.
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The "zombies" here are not referred to as such, only as "ghouls". This was because the traditional film zombie was a resurrected body under mystical, voodoo hypnotism with some diabolical master pulling the strings. In Romero's film, people inexplicably come back to life and even more inexplicably seek to CONSUME life by attacking and eating any living specimen that they can get their hands on. The monsters in this case are regular, once normal people. They are not under a curse, bitten by a supernatural being, existing ethereally between two worlds, sent from outer space, caused by radiation, or made in a lab; they are just the recently dead who no longer are going to stay that way. There is a simplicity there that is unnerving. Romero offers no explanation because none was necessary. The void left by giving any such details to the audience is in turn far more frightening and concerning than anything that a screenplay could have divulged to us.
The fear of the unknown is a prominent component to most of the best horror stories out there and certainly to this one. Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, (released six years prior), likewise presents its threat as a random occurrence, simply throwing its characters in the midst of unexplainable chaos for the duration of two hours. Perhaps in both films, a Biblical parallel can be drawn. Mankind has lost its humanity and as the equally brilliant sequel Dawn of the Dead would proclaim as a possible "answer", there is simply "no more room in hell".
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Always room for fat juicy bugs though amiright?
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Romero deliberately wanted to present his ghoul-outbreak from ground zero, yet he wastes no time in getting right to the good stuff as the industry executives would say. The opening scene in an unassuming cemetery in broad daylight begins innocently enough, sans for the stock, scary music that signifies in a subtle yet assured way that something is already awry in what we are seeing. Within minutes, that concerned feeling we already have is justified as a man randomly begins attacking the only two speaking characters we have thus far met. One of them is presumably killed in an instant; so much for that guy being a main player. This leaves Barbara who just in the minuscule amount of dialog that we are given, is already proven to be on-edge by being sensitive to her surroundings that once scared her as a kid. Now the scary stuff is real; now it is unexplained. It will remain that way for the rest of the movie.
The bulk of Night of the Living Dead takes place in an abandoned farmhouse, one that the crew were able to rent on the cheap as it was fit to be demolished soon afterwards. This proves not to be a detriment since Romero even as a twenty-seven year old, first-time filmmaker was already primarily interested in presenting social commentary to go along with the horror. It is an ideal location for such a thing. With the utterly random realization that the dead are no longer going to stay dead let alone leave the living alone, there is also the realization that society itself will collapse along with it in such a claustrophobic environment no less.
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In many ways, creepier than any haunted mansion would ever be.
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The characters cooped up in that farmhouse are from all different walks of life; Barbara is an immediately traumatized, young attractive white woman, Ben is a strong-willed, practical oriented black man, Mr. Cooper is a scared, bald, stubborn suburban dad with an uneasy relationship with his frustrated and equally frightened wife, Tom and Judy are a young, optimistic couple from the country. None of them are proven to be right or wrong in their actions. Some may have more likable or benevolent qualities than others, but Romero and Russo's script wisely make them all flawed to some extent. These characters are as textbook as anything else in the movie, meaning they are not textbook at all. They are presented as real, unremarkable people who are caught in a very real, unexplained, and horrifically deadly scenario. They mean well, but they also make that scenario worse and in the process, the dead keep on coming.
The film's relentless quality then is made more so by all the people on screen not being able to get along. No matter what they agree on, disagree on, no matter what they do or refuse to do, the rules have changed and none of it matters. It is a grim film in every respect though arguably, it is never more grim than in its final moments.
After enduring the night of the title only by frantically giving in to the one reality that he violently riled against Mr. Cooper about the whole film, (that the cellar really was the safest place to hide out), Ben emerges the next morning in a daze, yet still cautious. The ghouls have dispersed. The audience knows what Ben does not know though; that a militia of local good ole boys strapped to the gills with firearms and what would otherwise be drug-sniffing dogs are taking out all of the walking corpses that they can find, adding them "to the fire" as they do so. We see what is coming and after the ordeal that we have just witnessed and then briefly feeling optimistic for Ben's future as the one character who is going to survive, it is even more visceral how that optimism is broken. Especially for audiences of the time, their brains were wired not to expect the worst. Ben's emergence from the cellar to a house full of no zombies clearly indicates that he is going to be OK and there is now some semblance of hope right? Of course we know the answer to that and Romero and company had no intention of ending their tiny, "little engine that could", indie horror movie on any such buoyant note.
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That combination look of "Oh shit" and "I've been up all goddamn night listening to dead people wanting to eat me".
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As a piece of social commentary, Night of the Living Dead is viably potent. Romero and Russo chose not to change any part of their script concerning Ben being an African American. Actor Duane Jones was simply the best candidate for the part. Much praise has been given to the movie and rightfully so over no mention at any time by any character as to the fact that Ben is black. Once again, it does not matter. In this universe, this earth-shattering, safety-shattering, conventional horror film shattering world, no one makes it out alive, their skin color be damned. The only ones that are shown to have been spared becoming flesh-eating ghouls are the hillbilly "saviors" with riffles who do not even bother to make sure that Ben is not all dead and all messed up before they shoot him. He is shot anyway and the film ends with the titles shown over disturbing still photographs of his body being dragged away and the rounding up of the undead continuing as just a new thing to be taken care of. There is no emotion to these images. They are instead presented matter of factly.
In 1968, the first ever televised war was the one in Vietnam. Pictures from both that and the race riots in major metropolitan areas were being shown across the country. The final, unapologetically relevant images at the end of the movie present this fictional world as a mere stones throw away from the actual one of the time. On that note, to hell with the "of the time" nonsense. In 2020, these images still hit home as they did at the end of the 1960s. Much has changed, but clearly much remains the same. War and racial inequality are still very much a thing and perhaps the only saving grace that Romero's landmark film leaves us with is that well, at least the dead have not come back to eat us alive. Yet.
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| Another saving grace is that at least we know to shoot 'em in the head now. |
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There would be more Living Dead movies under Romero's direction in the decades to come. One of them was on par with its predecessor here, one was flawed yet still damn enjoyable, and the last three, well, Romero is no longer with us so let us not speak ill of the actual dead. In any event, Night of the Living Dead begat what is now the conventionally regarded film zombie. What started as an intentional deviation from the previously established, cinematic walking corpse in turn came to define it. This was a movie that made no apologies for its unforgiving finale and whose relatively crude production qualities, cinematography, and performances made it seem less like a popcorn-ready product and more like an unflinching glimpse into a disheartening world, as far as possible from the kind that Hollywood was frequently presenting. It ushered in new possibilities for what the horror film could do and set an unreachable hallmark for regional filmmaking.
The American New Wave found its first poster boy for the horror genre here. Just as unexpected as the actual goings on in the movie itself is how unexpected it was that such a film came out of Pittsburgh of all places by a Bronx native with a TV commercial background who scrapped up enough cash with his friends and eager local business men and women to make it. It is one of the best and enduring examples of how the studio system can be avoided with the right film at the right time made by the right people with the right agenda and frame of mind. Romero and his band of misfits may have innocently just wanted to make a horror movie because they could do it affordably and it would be a nice little bit of fun, but the perfect storm of ingenuity, conventional cinematic defiance, and luck paved the way for an entire new crop of filmmakers to break more rules. Everything that came in its wake owes it a considerable amount of gratitude. It will stand as a paramount work so long as humanity can crumble into a storm of flesh-eating chaos and so long as unsuspecting people just trying to visit a graveyard at a cemetery can get freaked out by that guy walking kind of strange towards them in the distance.
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It is bad enough that they had a three hour drive back, now they gotta do it with a broken window. Sigh.
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