Night of the Living Dead (1968) ****

 

I'm embarrassed to admit that it took me this long to see this seminal horror film. George Romero's horror classic is THE definitive zombie film, even though the word zombie is never used in the movie.

The film starts with a pair of siblings, Barbra and Johnny, visiting their father's grave. Johnny gripes about how far they have to drive to the cemetery, how much the flowers cost, and how they are doing all this for a father they barely knew. Disrespecting the dead turns out to be very bad karma in this story. Before the scene is over, Barbra and Johnny are attacked by a shuffling, staring ghoul. Barbra escapes to a nearby farmhouse, where she is eventually joined by some other survivors, all of whom have their stories of being attacked by half-rotten, stumbling, speechless human beings. Through the farmhouse radio and TV, they learn that the creatures are recently-deceased people who have arisen with a hunger for human flesh, and that their animation may be related to a NASA probe recently returned from Venus. Soon, the farmhouse is surrounded by the walking dead, and the group must make it through a desperate night, surviving both the zombies and each other.

Romero and his writing partner, John Russo, were loosely inspired by the novel I Am Legend, which has been adapted to the screen 3 times in its own right (1964's “The Last Man on Earth”, 1971's “The Omega Man”, and 2007's “I Am Legend”). They mainly just drew inspiration from the concept of a human holdout surrounded by monsters. Otherwise, it's a completely different tale.

“Night of the Living Dead” was made for $114,000 (less than a million in 2020 dollars), and it's damned good! I recently wrote about another low-budget “classic,” 1979's “Phantasm,” which cost more than twice as much to film and is an incomprehensible mess. “Night of the Living Dead” requires some basic suspension of disbelief in terms of the underlying “science,” but otherwise the plot holds together. The story is well-paced, with decently-crafted characters who do the kinds of things that real people might do in this situation. Some of the acting is stiff and amateurish, but that doesn't ruin the film.

This wasn't the first zombie movie made (Here's a good article on the genre.), but it's the most influential. NOTLD established the basic rules of zombie lore that persist to today: Zombies are reanimated corpses. Being bitten or scratched by a zombie leads to illness, death, and zombie resurrection. Zombies are slow, but persistent. The only way to kill one is to destroy the brain. Pretty much every zombie tale since, right up to the TV show “The Walking Dead,” either follows these rules or is known for how it deviates from them. For example, when people talk about the 2002 film “28 Days Later,” they always describe the zombies as “fast-moving,” to distinguish them from the standard Romero-type.

If you like horror, then don't put off watching this one any longer. Be careful what version you get, though. Due to a bizarre copyright oversight, the movie is in public domain, and there are all kinds of cheap copies out there, as well as a colorized version and one in 3d. I recommend checking out Amazon Prime, which has the original, black-and-white version in the original aspect ratio, ready to stream. Now, more than ever, it makes sense to watch a movie about being stuck in a house, looking out at a world teeming with people who might kill you! LOL!

4 stars out of 5