1990s American Horror Part Eighteen

THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM

(1991)

Dir - Stuart Gordon

Overall: MEH

 

Director Stuart Gordon and frequent screenwriter collaborator Dennis Paoli's The Pit and the Pendulum, (The Inquisitor), is straightforward, witch trial horror that goes through the motions as many other films of its kind had before it.  The title of course comes from the famous Edgar Allan Poe story, one that has been adapted in name only to the screen numerous times throughout the decades.  The story here is interchangeable with any other set during the Spanish Inquisition, where terrified and innocent peasants were tortured with the kind of laughably disturbing "damned if they do, damned if they don't" logic.  Also, the main Inquisitor once again falls in love with one of these accused beauties which goes about as well as it does in any other such movie from the 70s that uses an identical plot devise.  Assuredly lacking in originality then, Gordon is a solid enough filmmaker to at least make such an excursion darkly entertaining.  Lance Henrikson is an efficiently hammy, one-note villain and familiar genre faces such as Mark Margolis, Jeffrey Combs, Tom Towles, Frances Bay, and even Oliver Reed in a sweaty cameo all do an equally admirable job.  It is by the books to a fault, but innocently so.

SAFE
(1995)
Dir - Todd Haynes
Overall: GOOD

Notable for featuring one of the first leading roles for Julianne Moore who delivers a delicate, transformative performance as a San Fernando homemaker who succumbs to multiple chemical sensitivity and its pseudo-science, New Age treatment program, Safe doubles as filmmaker Todd Haynes most chilling examination of psychological detachment.  One in a long line of films that takes dark inspiration from society's growing complacency and reliance on frivolous domestic concerns, it specifically looks at the emotional trauma that is suffered by those who struggle with their newfound ailment, even if it can be fairly described as detrimentally influenced by those who wish to "cure" it.  Haynes manages to stage everything with deliberate distance, avoiding closeups and putting the viewer in a fly-on-the-wall seat where we can only witness what is going on without being spoon-fed any direct answers as to what Moore's frail protagonist is truly suffering.  This emphasizes that the point is not what she is going through but how it is effecting her, turning her from one form of a sheepish existence into another where she has traded her clean and superficial housewife persona for one as a debilitated victim amongst a commune of others who both support and enable her.

THE RELIC

(1997)

Dir - Peter Hyams
Overall: MEH

This textbook reptilian/monster/nature horror movie from Peter Hyams was an adaptation of Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child's novel Relic, with the adjective "The" added to the cinematic version here presumably just to give the theatrical poster artists more letters to work with.  Besides the derivative and uncompelling narrative that is all too easy to tune-out of, another problem is one that was probably is the consistently dark cinematography which not only obscures the murderous, half CGI/half puppet creature, (party for the better as the digital effects are primitive and lousy), but also many, many other shots that are unnecessarily pitch-black.  The frenzied editing job is another typical feature coming from late 90s, sufficiently budgeted action films and it also goes a long way in making the movie just as frustrating to view as the "What the hell am I even looking at?" lack of lighting.  The cast is not bad, but they are also interchangeable as any character actor could have handled yelling the tough-guy dialog or screaming at the scary thing that are chasing them.  It is a mediocre effort all around; dark, loud, and wet with some explody-ness to keep its popcorn-munching nature in line.

1990s American Horror Part Seventeen

TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE: THE MOVIE

(1990)     

Dir - John Harrison

Overall: GOOD

 

Unofficially belonging in the Creepshow franchise as both Stephen King and George A. Romero were involved with either contributing stories or screenplays and itself based on the television series of the same name that Romero created, Tales from the Darkside: The Movie is a knowingly fun anthology outing that is more consistent than most.  Another connection to the Father of the Zombie Film is in director John Harrison who worked as either a composer or actor in Dawn of the Dead, Knightriders, and Day of the Dead.  Behind the lens here, Harrison maintains a lighthearted, generally amusing tone throughout every segment until the final "Lover's Vow" which is a modern, Western adaptation of the Yuki-onna legend in Lafcadio Hearn's collection Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things.  The consistently recognizable cast is fun, with a young Steve Busemi as a slimy graduate student and David Johansen as a slimy hit man being particularly hoot-worthy.  An adequate amount of gore and unpleasantness goes a long way too, with a cat crawling into a guys mouth and a young boy trying to delay being cooked in a conventional oven by a suburban witch being just two examples.

 

BRAINSCAN

(1994)

Dir -  John Flynn

Overall: MEH

 

Occasionally awkward and uneven, Rolling Thunder and Out for Justice director John Flynn's lone horror film Brainscan boasts a premise that can only exist because the 90s.  Well, even though it has a CD-ROM video game advertised in Fangoria that promises the ultimate experience in horror, a bunch of grunge and metal pops up on the soundtrack, and a flannel-clad, perpetually high looking Edward Furlong is the lead, it all still plays off the same tired, Satanic panic tropes of lonely, horny, adolescent boys being negatively influenced by monster movies and obnoxious music that had already been a cliche for a decade prior.  Also typical of the era, it has a ham-fisted villain non-cleverly called The Trickster who just as easily could have popped up in any untold number of increasingly ridiculous sequels, yet inexplicably never did.  While the tone suffers from clumsy humor at times and the story is anything but unpredictable, it offers up some innocent if disturbed fun.  The dated special effects are amusing, Frank Langella is uncharacteristically understated as an emotionally cold police detective, and everything wraps itself up nice and tiddy like.  It is certainly not anything to blow many minds with originality or by challenge its audience, but it is mild, likeable schlock all the same.

END OF DAYS

(1999)

Dir - Peter Hyams

Overall: MEH

As Arnold Schwarzenegger's would-be come-back from the movie that killed the Caped Crusader's franchise Batman & Robin, End of Days is a pretty abysmal effort front to back.  Several directors and actors were attached to the project at one point or another, (including Sam Raimi, Guillermo del Toro, Tom Cruise, Kate Winslet, and Liv Tyler), and apparently James Cameron had some sort of role in getting the director job to Peter Hyams, (2010: The Year We Make Contact, Timecop, Sudden Death, The Relic).  In any event, it is front loaded with mountains of both horror and action film cliches from every kind of antichrist-ushering, demonic apocalypse, broken down tough guy with a heart of gold, comedic sidekick-paired, save the girl movie that came before it.  For a Schwarzenegger vehicle, it is pretty low on one-liners and intended schlock, but it makes up for that with an all around pedestrian presentation and plenty of groan-worthy, unoriginal dialog to laugh at.  Because it is all played too seriously for its own good, unfortunately that means the future Governor of California's thespian shortcomings are more noticeable than usual and he is rather uncomfortably stiff here.  It is a pretty stupid, loud mess and easily one of the most forgettable films of its kind with so many cookie-cutter elements making up its DNA.

1990s British Horror Part Four

DARK WATERS
(1993)
Dir - Mariano Baino
Overall: GOOD

The curious entry Dark Waters, (Dead Waters), from Italian filmmaker Mariano Baino also serves as his to date only full-length movie.  As one of the first non-local films to be shot in the Ukraine after the collapse of the Soviet Union, it is equal parts unforgivingly baffling and macabre as well as cinematically clumsy at irregular intervals, creating an odd atmosphere in the process.  The pacing issues and perhaps unintentionally goofy moments are difficult to come to terms with since the movie also seems assuredly serious.  Music by Igor Clark and unearthly sound design which features indistinguishable growls and moans throughout, (as well as nearly incessant rain), generally go along memorably with a hodgepodge of nonsensical yet confidently evil visuals like gratuitously candlelit catacombs, blind, ancient looking nuns, people eating raw things, burn victims, creepy kids, disturbing paintings with album-cover worthy demons on them, bubbling gore, and almost everything on screen looking wet, cold, and on fire all at once.  Good luck trying to stay invested in the actual story, but with such a barrage of uniquely strange horror movie eye candy to gawk at, the film certainly leaves an impression.

THE HAUNTING OF HELEN WALKER

(1995)

Dir - Tom McLoughlin

Overall: MEH

 

Yet another retelling of Henry James' The Turn of the Screw, The Haunting of Helen Walker inescapably does not compare to the original, 1961, Jack Clayton film version The Innocents, but it is as mediocre as any other such adaptation.  Originally airing on CBS in December of 1995 and shot in England with a cast including Diana Rigg, Michael Gough, and Valerie Bertinelli in the lead, genre director Tom McLoughlin never gets it past the Lifetime movie presentation to create anything all that visually or otherwise remarkable.  While the seasoned adults are surely competent, a smirking performance from child actor Aled Roberts gets rather annoying even if he is playing a brat who is possessed by a creep.  As far as psychological horror goes, it forgoes creating a slow, brooding atmosphere sans a small handful of somewhat creepy set pieces and in place of that, some wordy exchanges rush the plot a bit to its finish line.  Speaking of a finish, the ending is laughably weak and one that is entirely due to characters reaching conclusions that they only could have reached because they read the script.  It is fine for what it is of course, but the pedestrian presentation as well as familiarity of the source material does not really go too far.

TALE OF THE MUMMY

(1998)

Dir -  Russell Mulcahy

Overall: MEH

 

A few months after Stephen Sommers' mega hit The Mummy dropped, prolific, Australian music video director Russell Mulcahy, (also of Highlander fame), delivered his own ode to Hammer monster movies with Tale of the Mummy.  Though it received a theatrical release and its production schedule could be seen as a mere coincidence, it nevertheless comes off as the lower-rent, straight-to-video mummy movie from that year.  The cast is mostly recognizable though hardly A-list, with brief appearances from Gerard Butler, Shelley Duvall, and Christopher Lee, all of whom appear for about a grand total of maybe six and a half minutes of screen time.  In any event, the schlock is laid on massively thick, with cliches in every scene, macho performances, frantic editing, and textbook early digital effects that are wretchedly embarrassing.  That said, the practical effects and set design are acceptable enough.  As far as the movie's title villain goes, there is not a more lame mummy in all of cinema history as most of his scenes simply revolve around dirty, CGI toilet paper whipping around and making people scream to death.  Eventually he does take on a conventional form, but by that point the ham-fisted presentation is laughable enough to undo, well, the whole movie.

1990s British Horror Part Three

THE REFLECTING SKIN

(1990)

Dir - Philip Ridley

Overall: MEH

For his full-length debut, English artist/novelist/filmmaker Philip Ridley was inspired by American prairie lands, American Gothic artwork, American films, and American literature to make The Reflecting Skin.  Ironically shot in Alberta Canada then, it is a stylized piece of Americana cinema all the same and one that portrays some horrific elements through the imaginative eyes of a young boy while the sun shines brightly, the birds chirp, and the farmhouses are decorated in plain colors of yellow, brown, and white.  While moments in it are certainly bizarre and it follows a sort of childlike, nightmare logic at times, it is so lushly photographed and even whimsical in nature that it makes for a bit of a clashing experience.  The characters are not easily relatable and some are even downright off-putting, but the movie gets by on Ridley's somewhat eccentric vision or at least it tries to.  Ultimately, the story is not particularly engaging enough to work though, save for a few interesting ideas scattered about.

 

MARY SHELLEY'S FRANKENSTEIN

(1994)

Dir - Kenneth Branagh

Overall: MEH

 

Two years after Francis Ford Coppola artistically and commercial updated Dracula for the big screen, Shakespeare enthusiast Kenneth Branagh attempted the same thing with the other big, classic cinema monster in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.  While it is likewise far more faithful to its source material than virtually any other version before or since and goes for the same over the top, melodramatic flare that Coppola did, (at least on paper), Branagh misses the mark in a pretty consistent manner.  Cranked up to eleven, it is incessantly loud with hardly a solitary moment of subtlety.  For a two hour long movie, the story is bulldozed through in a typical, blockbuster-style, ADD manner.  Since it never stops to catch its breath then, instead it bombards the screen with Romantic era set pieces, grime and nastiness, things being both soaking wet and laughably combustible, dutch angles, rapid-fire editing, and characters overacting to the very best of their abilities, all of which are set to lush, dramatic music that never lets up.  Branagh does not show a quirky or even remotely avant-style; it is just a blaring, grandiose mess.  For straight-up monster movie fans though, Robert De Niro's turn as the creature and Helena Bonham Carter's briefly as his bride are relatively memorable and some of the artistic details can be seen as a nice addition to the Frankenstein mythos overall.

I, ZOMBIE: THE CHRONICLES OF PAIN

(1998)

Dir - Andrew Parkinson

Overall: MEH

 

Distributed by Fangoria Films and serving as the debut from writer/director/editor Andrew Parkinson, I, Zombie: The Chronicles of Pain is a simple yet ambitious walking corpse yarn.  Shot very primitively on 16 mm film which gives it a somewhat unfortunate SOV quality, it is not the most visually compelling movie in the world.  It does win points for its earnest attempt at being a far more tragic and thoughtful zombie film, one whose entire premise is exploring the slow, emotional as well as physical deterioration of its subject; an average Joe that is randomly bitten by a woman and then goes on to rot as he holds off his flesh-eating urges.  A unique idea on paper, but the execution is a bit dull beyond its poor look.  It is presented as a part documentary, but also one that is narrated by the main protagonist who is presumed missing by everyone the entire movie.  The concept is also a little TOO simple as it becomes predictably monotonous.  Ultimately, it is a rather depressing experience as well.  Probably better for zombies to turn as quickly as possible and then get a bullet in the head just as hastily than watch them mentally deteriorate and jerk off to their girlfriend.

1990s Italian Horror Part Two

THE MASK OF SATAN
(1990)
Dir - Lamberto Bava
Overall: MEH

A quasi-remake of Mario Bava's seminal Black Sunday from his son Lamberto, The Mask of Satan, (La maschera del demonio, Demons 5, Demons V: The Devil's Veil, La Mascara del Satan), is a somewhat charming though ultimately mediocre retelling of its source material.  It was made for the European television series Sabbath, debuting in the summer of 1990 where it inevitably got lumped in with Lamberto's own Demons franchise, becoming one of the several non-official sequels in it.  Fusing the loose, Black Sunday concept of a condemned witch in an iron mask coming back to wreak her vengeance with a contemporary setting where dumb-dumb, horned-up, attractive characters get possessed and run around laughing a lot, it cruises along at a solid enough trot to not become too concerned with the humdrum script.  Despite some inconsistent character behavior and a comparative lack of gore, it is well decorated and has a consistent, mostly non-schlocky tone until about the last five minutes at least.  The story really is not dense enough to keep numerous moments from growing repetitive though, especially the third act where it tries to get more psychologically ambitious and clever.

THE DEVIL'S DAUGHTER

(1991)

Dir - Michele Soavi

Overall: MEH

 

Another stylish collaboration between Dario Argento and Michele Soavi which acts rather as a Euro-Rosemary's Baby, The Devil's Daughter, (The Sect, La Setta), becomes inescapably messy, but has some charm to it nonetheless.  The story is not particularly strong, struggling as most Italian horror films do to maintain coherency while primarily being concerned with macabre set pieces that are often fun and ghastly, yet almost comically arbitrary as well.  In the lead, Kelly Curtis' performance is uneven as is the score by Pino Donaggio which gets a little too over the top at times.  That said, at least genre regular Herbert Lom delivers the creepy as a mysterious, hobo-esque Satan enthusiast.  Tone wise, Soavi plays it very serious, something which occasionally enhances the inherent bizarreness, particularly during a moment where a woman's face gets ripped off ceremoniously by hooks and then when Curtis is attacked sexually by a bird and forced to give birth in a pool surrounded by weird women egging her on.  Sadly though, the cumbersome running time and inadvertently laughable qualities do undermine its potential to actually be frightening, which it assuredly is not.  Interesting at times yes, but that is about it.

WAX MASK

(1997)

Dir - Sergio Stivaletti

Overall: GOOD

 

This quasi-remake of House of Wax doubles as a rare collaboration between Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci, indented as a directorial effort for the latter who ended up dying before shooting began.  Handed off to special effects artist Sergio Stivaletti to be behind the lens then with a story by Argento and a screenplay co-written by Fulci, Wax Mask, (M.D.C. - Maschera di cera), is a gory, fun, and sloppily plotted update of the standard, Italian-flavored variety.  Visually, Stivaletti's steampunk version of the horror classic has rusted medical equipment, brightly colored liquid bubbling in gigantic tubes, skeletal, Terminator-esque monsters, and elaborate needles and masks which seem old fashioned and futuristic all at once.  This all goes along with the usual ingredients of an ugly assistant, the secretly deformed mad genius, a dramatic soundtrack that plays incessantly and obnoxiously throughout, the dashing hero, women who cannot keep their boobs covered for very long, and a story that is as predictable as they come.  Its combination of mundane and inventive qualities somewhat cancel each other out, but it is briskly paced enough with just the right amount of schlock to comfortably please genre fans.

1990s Italian Horror Part One

NIGHTMARE CONCERT: A CAT IN THE BRAIN

(1990)
Dir - Lucio Fulci
Overall: MEH

A thoroughly bizarre, late entry in Lucio Fulci's increasingly inconsistent filmography, Nightmare Concert: A Cat in the Brain, (Un gatto nel cervello (I volti del terrore)), finds the director not only appearing as himself, but also top billed for the first and only time in his career.  A meta-film which desperately cobbles together footage from some of Fulci's older works as well as those from various other filmmakers, the linking story and entire presentation is rather lame and uninteresting.  It is not just the sequences of previous movies included that give it an out of date feel, but the liberal use of zooms, piss-pour dubbing, and the giallo-flavored story line are anything but contemporary.  To the film's credit, the mix mash of footage is not as consistently jarring as it could have been, though solo shots of Fulci simply reacting to things that are taken from different movies while never sharing the same screen space with anything in them is still pretty ridiculous let alone incredibly monotonous.  It might be the easiest entry in Fulci's repertoire to tune out of while watching and sadly, a pretty embarrassing one to nearly go out on.

 

CEMETERY MAN

(1994)

Dir - Michele Soavi

Overall: GOOD

 

Director Michele Soavi's first attempt at comedy be it of the dark, off-kilter variety was this adaptation of Tiziano Sclavi’s novel Dellamorte Dellamore, here also given the English title Cemetery Man.  It is a bizarre mix of genres, some co-mingling more inconsistently than others.  As the title character whose aim with a handgun is uncannily accurate, Rupert Everett seems all at once perpetually horny, easily love-stricken, cynical, cut-off from reality, and self-loathing in his desperately lonely job as a graveyard caretaker who also "takes care" of its inhabitants.  Meaning inhabitants that routinely rise up as zombies for reasons the script spends literally zero time explaining.  While it is often wildly unorthodox and bordering on incoherence because of it, this also serves as a large part of the film's charm.  The absurdness is more subtle than overtly over the top, almost as if its messy lack of plotting is unintentional, though this is likely not the case.  Throw in tone issues and inconsistent character behavior and it all makes for quite a unique, avant-garde finished product that is certainly headscratching, yet also entertaining enough for the same reasons.

THE MYSTERIOUS ENCHANTER
(1996)
Dir - Pupi Avati
Overall: GOOD

A return to the horror genre and probably the best work in it form Italian filmmaker Pupi Avati, The Mysterious Enchanter, (L'arcano incantatore, Arcane Sorcerer), is a different beast than his more well-known giallos.  That said, it does bare similarities to The House with Laughing Windows from twenty years prior as it takes place in a remote location, focuses on a character that is employed by an excommunicated monsignor, and features a diabolical twist.  Plenty of other bizarre details are scattered about as well, though it is essentially a mood piece, with Avati, cinematographer Cesare Bastelli, and composer Pino Donaggio creating a menacing mood out of the large, run-down, candle-lit estate that is home to an enormous library presumably full of mysterious, supernatural enchanting volumes.  As far as most Euro-horror which it is in part a throwback to, the story is more streamlined if not still intentionally ambiguous.  There is no emphasis on outrageous set pieces or logic-defying silliness in other words; instead it is genuinely creepy and subdued, thankfully with no pacing lulls despite the small cast of characters and isolated setting.

Night of the Living Dead

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD

(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.

 

There can be no modern zombie culture without...soap!

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.

 

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.

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.

Behold, true bleakness in its most cinematic of forms.

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".

 

Always room for fat juicy bugs though amiright?

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.

 

In many ways, creepier than any haunted mansion would ever be.

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.

That combination look of "Oh shit" and "I've been up all goddamn night listening to dead people wanting to eat me".

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.

Another saving grace is that at least we know to shoot 'em in the head now.

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.

It is bad enough that they had a three hour drive back, now they gotta do it with a broken window.  Sigh.