Night Of The Living Dead (1968, 96m, R, Horror)

Originally published at http://www.themariontheatre.org/.

Duane Jones
Judith O'Dea
Karl Hardman
Directed by George A Romero

"They're coming for you, Barbara!"

Zombies scare the hell out of me. They always have and I'll tell you why: At some point in all zombie movies there'll come a point where you will either have to kill your loved ones (sure, they're already dead but you're splitting hairs) or they will, literally, tear you apart. Coming from an environment where my father consistently told us as children that our parents would never hurt us and the only people you can always depend on were family, this is truly disturbing. Zombie movies have survivors but no winners.

Johnny and Barbra are visiting their father's grave in rural Pennsylvania. Johnny, doing what older brothers are supposed to do, begins creeping out his sister when a man appears and grabs her. Johnny struggles with the man and is knocked unconscious. Barbra flees to an abandoned farmhouse where she meets Ben who's pretty much in the same situation.

A key factor in horror is isolation. It preys on a common fear (or is it a fact) that we're at our most vulnerable by ourselves. Once they're in that farmhouse, they know how bad they have it... but not how bad everyone else has it. Even if they could get out, how far could they go and how worse does it get? For better or worse they aren't alone and when the inclusion of other survivors should increase their chance for survival, it quickly lessens as it becomes every man for himself. Trust no one.

Duane Jones is the lead actor and this is groundbreaking for several reasons. In 1968, for the lead and the hero to be African-American and not named Sidney Poitier was unheard of. Shaft (1971) and the Blaxploitation genre would still be three years away. Not to undermine Poitier, Jones wasn't playing the docile African-American male white America tolerated and maybe even liked. Jones is playing a very hard, take-charge character that has no problem telling everyone in the house what they were going to do. Imagine that scene in In The Heat Of The Night (1967) where Sidney Poitier's Virgil Tibbs smacks that guy in the greenhouse... that's Ben the entire movie. Ben isn't a stereotype. He is articulate, calm and smart; qualities rare in African-American males in horror movies forty years later where they are generally played as streetwise thugs or arrogant jocks.

I always viewed Night Of The Living Dead as a microcosm of class after the Civil Rights Movement. The younger couple ready to move forward regardless of who is their leader, the older couple (specifically the male) hesitant to give up his authority and in the end none of this will matter because their undoing will be by someone not thinking clearly in the first place.

Romero made three sequels to Night Of The Living Dead (they're listed below) and the upcoming Diary Of The Dead (2008). People will tell you they are commentaries on society but sell that to the tourists, I'm not buying that. Romero never struck me as that cerebral a filmmaker. The sequels descend into excessive gore in less claustrophobic (read: threatening) environments with progressively worse acting and implausible situations (even for a zombie movie). Maybe zombies in a mall is an allegory to American consumerism and maybe it's just zombies stumbling up escalators for cheap laughs. Training a flesh-eating zombie to be your pet in an underground military bunker you stocked with overacting mercenaries is just silly. I am a fan of Land Of The Dead (2005) mostly because there are believable actors and do believe it's about class.

One last thing: There were zombie movies before Night but nobody really cares. This is the one that mattered. It's interesting that Romero establishes rules that other people have adhered to in the genre (head shots, brain eating, etc) when even he doesn't follow them. In the sequels you'll see the zombies evolve. They go from being afraid of fire in the first film to being able to fire guns in the fourth (don't ask, it's just works better than you would think). I always like the idea that unlike horror slashers, vampires and what-have-you, Romero was always trying to make his ghouls scarier... and nothing is scarier than zombies...

...except running zombies.

FIVE THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD

1. The film is #93 on the American Film Institute's 100 Years, 100 Thrills.
2. The word zombie is never used in the film.
3. Writers George A Romero and John Russo had conflict over the direction the sequels should take. Romero wanted to continue making horror films and Russo wanted to make them as comedies. A lawsuit later a court decided Romero could have the actual rights to the Night Of The Living Dead sequels while Russo retained the rights to the phrase "Living Dead" to use in an "alternate line" of sequels. The Russo comedy sequels are The Return Of The Living Dead (1985) and the four sequels that followed it. Not coincidentally, the first Russo sequel appeared less than one month after the assumed end of Romero's Dead trilogy (Day Of The Dead (1985)). His next film would be Land Of The Dead twenty years later.
4. The film was never properly copyrighted and has lapsed into public domain. There have been two remakes (the 1990 version sanctioned by Romero and a 3D version in 2006), a re-edited 30th Anniversary Edition with new footage (shot by co-writer John Russo) and almost thirty versions available on DVD. To further confuse things, there has been a remake to the second sequel (Dawn Of The Dead (1978/2004) and the third sequel (Day Of The Dead (1985/2007) and although they are not sequels to each other but both star actor Ving Rhames playing different characters. My brain hurts.
5. George A Romero was approached to direct the film version of the videogame Resident Evil (2002). He had his assistant play the entire game, videotape it and used the tape as the basis for his screenplay. His draft was subsequently rejected and he left the project.