"They're coming to get you Barbara."
Night of the Living Dead (1968) is an independent horror film that was directed by George A. Romero and written by Romero and John A. Russo. This is the first "modern" zombie film and has since influenced countless other films and media.
An outbreak of flesh-eating, re-animated ghouls bring a bunch of strangers together to an abandoned farm house where they must survive through the evening without killing each other or getting killed by the monsters outside.
This film has really good characters. A lot of movies can't do characters as good as this film does. They're all super simple, yet they all have original personalities and feel unique (like real people). And with not much backstory or super explaining necessary either! This film would be a good study of how simply you can introduce a character that is completely unique and original with very little effort, most of them require just a couple of lines and then let the characters' dialogue and actors' interaction do most of the work.
The acting is pretty hit or miss in this film, the result of casting friends on an independent production. I really love Duane Jones as our lead Ben, and his counter Karl Hardman make's a very convincing mid-life, white-collar (somewhat) racist with a napoleon complex as Mr. Harry Cooper. However most of the female leads are horrible: I feel like the Barbara character could have been a bit more worthwhile with a better actor playing her and the Judy character is just plain laughably bad. Even Johnny (played by Russell Streiner), Barbara's brother is particularly good. It's rather unfortunate that he gets so little screen time compared to Barbara.
I like how this film actually does explain the disaster. I feel like the film just would be missing something if they didn't attempt to explain this strange phenomenon at all. The flip side of this is that when viewed today this explanation actually dates the film quite a bit. An attempted government coverup involving radiation? Yeah that puts this film right in 1968. Fortunately for Romero though, he builds off of this, in that he takes this trend and runs with it in his following Dead films (or at least the first three) and in each film offers up a separate "theory" for why the dead would be coming back to life. Pretty smart.
The reason this film stood out back in the day and I believe really still stands out is its social commentary. This film attacks a lot of the different politics of the day and uses this strange horror story phenomenon as a magnifying glass to look at American society as a whole in the 60s, just like what all great science fiction stories do. This film has a (then unheard of) black protagonist who struggles against a white man for power, there's social commentary on marriage with Cooper and his wife: "We may not enjoy living together, but dying together isn't going to solve anything," and of course the ill-equipped government mentioned above.
For all of the good that this film does at tackling politics of the day, it misses one major one: Women's rights. This film can be viewed as incredibly sexist when watched today, I'm sure this wasn't on purpose and was probably just a product of its time but it definitely doesn't help all that other stuff it was trying to tackle, mentioned above. Most of this revolves around the character Barbara, who after starting out as our entry character we're following in this world, she ends up just losing her shit and becoming a babbling invalid for the rest of the film. Some of this (to me) is understandable because she can't deal with the situation at hand and also loses (or at the very least abandons) her brother early on in the story. I personally, know plenty of people today that I feel like would act this way upon the collapse of society and our conventional way of life, male and female. So to me this would almost be acceptable if it weren't for the way that Mrs. Cooper and also Tom's girlfriend Judy are treated during the film.
There's also plenty of out of focus or poorly lit shots throughout. Some of this is due to novice filmmaking but it'd hard to say that any of it really takes away from the film.
One of the most magnificent things about this film is the legacy that followed. This film was never intended to be more than a one shot thing. But the quality of this film and it's originality and ingenuity have made it stand out in history and inspire a whole new sub-genre of horror films. That being said it's worth noting that this wasn't the first zombie film to ever be made, that title would go to the much older film: Bela Lugosi's White Zombie (1932). There was also plenty of zombie films that followed that one, all based on the "Haitian" voodoo zombie lore that is far different than our contemporary flesh-eating zombies. But strangely, very much like White Zombie both of these films involve a political look at the social class system of the day. More than a coincidence I would think...?
The direction in Night of the Living Dead is really solid. You watch this film and there's no question to how this film really jump-started George A. Romero's long career. I love so many scenes in this film, but I've got to mention the Graveyard scene with Barbara early on, this is so great on its own and as an introduction to this problem and as a first act of the film. The integration of the TV and radio broadcasts through out the movie is masterful. And I love the "daughter slaying" scene at the end of the film, it's such a direct hat tip/homage to Hichcock's Psycho (1960) that I can't help but love it.
(Spoilers to follow) The film actually ends on such a bittersweet and almost pessimistic note. Which is interesting because of how optimistic of a tone the film keeps for most of the story (something which seems very unusual for how the tone of most zombie films are today!) And yet it works very, very well. Really have no idea how a film where the whole point is a bunch of characters trying to survive, kills off all of it's characters and doesn't feel dissatisfying at all!
And lastly I need to mention how perfect of an idea this film was just from an independent filmmaking perspective. Almost the entire film was set in one location at the farmhouse and it has simple, yet compelling characters trying to survive through one night together. I wish I could come up with such a simply perfect idea like this!
5/5 Stars.
Happy watching!
Check back tomorrow for a sequel to this film (that may not be the obvious follow-up), only on the 31 Nights of Macabre Movies.
This film is in the public domain now, so there's really no reason for you to have not seen it. You can watch it or download it here, free of charge thanks to the Internet Archive.
Creepy and dark, it never fails to get under my skin. And the ending is just so sad and bleak.
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