Night of the Living Dead 1968

Cast:
Duane Jones – Ben
Judith O’Dea – Barbra
Karl Hardman – Harry Cooper
Marilyn Eastman – Helen Cooper/Bug-eating zombie
Keith Wayne – Tom
Judith Ridley – Judy
Kyra Schon – Karen Cooper/Upstairs body

Before “Night of the Living Dead”, zombie movies were mostly movies that relied on its atmosphere and not necessarily its horror or gore and were mostly set at exotic, far off, locations. Zombies weren’t flesh eating monsters, they’re were slaves that were controlled by a master, as showed in classic zombie movies such as “White Zombie” and “I Walked with a Zombie”. George A. Romero completely threw this existing genre elements overboard and almost completely reinvented the genre. Sometimes I miss the old zombie flicks but George A. Romero introduced us to a totally new and great world of horror movies, that influenced many later movies. Copied a lot, never surpassed.

Night of the Living Dead is a true classic and without a doubt Romero’s best and most influential film. Of course, being simply influential alone would not simply allow this movie to get a full-fledged star rating if it didn’t pull through with it some quality at all, which it does in spades. In Night of the Living Dead, there is good pacing, surprisingly good acting from a list of no-name actors, and the most important part that sticks with the film to this day, the sense of dread in the film. In this movie to this day you get that feeling of hopelessness, people get attacked for no reason and nothing can save them. Whether it’s family-togetherness, love between a couple, or even the law-enforcers at the end, this was all tapping into the uncertainty level people were having at the time and still today it has meaning. Finally at the film’s current times, there is a great subtle final nail in the coffin attack with the sad fate of the character Ben. Being the only sole voice of reason is shot, which, at the time of filming brought harsh realities of such other African-American leaders who were brought down unfairly such as Malcolm X or Martin Luther King, even if this wasn’t the original idea Romero had.

Perhaps the best thing about the movie is that its low-budget but that this mostly doesn’t show on screen. With creepy zombies and simple locations, George A. Romero creates a creepy, as well as realistic (and maybe because of that creepy) atmosphere. The movie could had easily gone over-the-top and became a real campy one. Considering the resources they had, they did an extremely good job with this movie. The movie is shot in atmospheric black & white. Perhaps this was done to tone down the graphic moments of the movie? Or just because it was the cheapest thing to do? But whatever the reason is, it works well for the movie and its atmosphere and it reminded me of some old ‘30/’40’s atmospheric horror classics. George A. Romero definitely knew his classics.

The story is kept very simple and chooses not to really explain anything. It focuses on just a few characters and mostly chooses not to show anything else that is happening to the world at the moment. It makes you feel close to the characters and their fears. It’s one of the reasons why “Night of the Living Dead” works well as a creepy horror movie, although it nowhere ever gets really scary or real tense. The movie is mostly predictable, which is also due to the formulaic, stereotypical horror-characters that we’re all accustomed to but in the ’60’s still were quite renewing and became later genre-defining.

Still the movie is a bit too amateur like for my taste at times. The directing and editing is really off at times and the acting is just plain bad. The two main character played by Duane Jones and Judith O’Dea pull off quite alright but everyone else is terribly overacting and clearly has no talent for the movie business. It was like watching an Ed Wood movie at times but luckily the moments and atmosphere of the movie compensated for this.

Share This

Dawn of the Dead 1978

Top 20 Best Scary Movies

25 Scariest Scenes from Horror Movies (16+)

Shaun of the Dead 2004

Evil Dead II 1987