Movie Review: Night of the Living Dead (1968) directed by George Romero
Daylight Savings Time can screw with your head. Here it is, already 8 P.M. and it’s still daylight. Even so, this old graveyard in rural Pennsylvania (about 200 miles from Pittsburgh) is plenty spooky. Johnny teases his sister Barbra about her childhood fears that the dead would rise and attack her. “They’re coming to get you, Barbraaa.” Except that this time, “they” really are coming to get Barbra.
This was the directorial debut of George Romero, and is an excellent example of how to use a tiny budget to make an effective movie. Local actors, black and white film, limited locations, production crew also having bit parts, all contribute to a economical movie. And saving special effects for when they were absolutely needed made the story just that much scarier.
Johnny dies fighting off a shambling (but fast shambling) attacker to protect Barbra, who manages to get to the foot of the hill before crashing the car. From there, she manages to find an apparently abandoned farm house. Inside, she’s repeatedly startled, including by the partially skeletonized corpse of the previous occupant. More of the “creatures” are outside, and only the appearance of Ben (Duane Jones) saves her from a grisly death for now. Ben’s a man of action, and soon hatches the idea of barricading the farmhouse until rescue can arrive. The radio gives some clues to what’s going on, but the newscasters just let our protagonists know the shambling murderers are a widespread phenomenon across the eastern third of the United States.
Once Barbra is safe from immediate attack, she suffers an emotional breakdown and is useless until near the end of the film. And as soon as Ben has done the major work of barricading the doors and windows, we learn that there have been five other people in the house all along! Harry Cooper (Karl Hardman) convinced his wife Helen, injured daughter Karen and young couple Tom and Judy to stay silent in the cellar until all the noise upstairs stopped. Mr. Cooper is cautious with his own life and those of his family to a fault, and immediately clashes with Ben on the right method of dealing with their situation.
The farmhouse survivors manage to get a television working (the telephone is dead) and gather more information, including a new possible destination if they can only figure out a way to get there. So naturally that’s when things start taking a turn for the even worse.
Good: This is absolutely a brilliant movie that deserves all those “Top Tens” you’ve seen it on. The suspense builds and you can see where Ben sincerely believes his poor decisions would have worked if he’d had a slightly more competent/cooperative group of survivors to help him. There’s just enough not-really-explanation to be plausible in a horror setting, and no one breaks out the Z word. (“Zombies” wasn’t attached to the flesh-eating undead until the sequels.) The flesh-eating creatures have just enough wit and tool-using capability to be a threat to the poorly-prepared protagonists, while no match for heavily armed and organized opponents.
Ben’s race is never mentioned, nor is anyone else’s, but casting a black man as the action lead in a movie in 1968 allows the audience to extract as much metaphor as they want from the things going on in the Civil Rights movement and Vietnam War at the time. Especially given the ending. This is one time “we picked the actor with the best audition” really paid off.
Less good: All the female characters are pretty much useless except when they’re an active threat to the group’s survival. On the male side, even Mr. Cooper is a little help when he can be shamed into it.
Content notes: The vintage black and white might make you think this movie is going to be genteel about its violence, but it is actually shockingly gory past the 2/3rds point. Also, one of the creatures woke up naked and we see its butt a couple of times. Parents of sensitive children might want to pre-screen this movie.
Night of the Living Dead is in the public domain, so it’s easy to find legal ways to watch it. Highly recommended to fans of flesh-eating undead people.
