04/24/10 - Night of the Living Dead

Night of the Living Dead (1968, 96 min)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063350/

I'd seen a few of the Romero Living Dead films but I had missed out on the first which is usually regarded as the best. Anyway, I decided I'd check it out and take a break from all those cheesy slashers with a true horror classic.

The film starts off with a couple visiting a cemetery where after some dialogue they encounter a staggering man. Turns out he's a "ghoul" (the word "zombie" is never used in the film) and he kills the guy of the duo. This leaves Barbra (Judith O'Dea) running for her life. Eventually she holes up in a house where she meets Ben (Duane Jones). Later they also discover some more people hiding in the basement: Harry (Karl Hardman), Helen (Marilyn Eastman), Tom (Keith Wayne), and Judy (Judith Ridley). The entire group goes through the trials and tribulations of surviving (or not) a zombie attack.

First thing about this film is how quickly I got used to the black and white. Though made in 1968 when color was obviously all around, I never felt like I was missing out on much of anything with my limited color palette. I don't think it really added another layer of meaning or anything to the film, so I can't say it was the "correct" choice or anything like that. Perhaps it was chosen so as to hide the quality of some of the makeup effects due to the limited budget. I don't really know. Whatever the reason, it didn't come off as big of a hindrance as I thought it would.

Next, Night of the Living Dead is incredibly gruesome. Again, recall that this film was made in 1968. Yet there's decaying bodies, nudity, and violent deaths. Maybe this is another one of the reasons this film is so timeless. I imagine it grossed quite the number of people out back in 1968 and because of that we can watch it now and not laugh at how censored it was back then. It really makes the zombie threat that much more terrifying. They don't just come towards us and then kill us quickly but rather they devour the flesh creating a slow and agonizing death. As for the zombie threat itself, it's really handled well. Modern films use faster zombies (or "undead") more frequently now it seems but Romero is really capable of capturing the terror of this threat even with slow zombies. It really just boils down to a numbers thing. The people can hole up inside an abandoned house all they want but that will just give the zombies time to find the place and grow in number. The never relenting quality they have is done to great effect. Finally, the house itself adds a lot to this atmosphere. As a viewer, I was never comfortable in the house. There were far too many windows and entrances for the zombies on the ground floor. But if you go to the (probably) safer basement then you're cornered underground with limited food and supplies. But staying on the ground floor gave the group various means of escape. The dichotomy of "safety" versus "choices" and how it divides the group is really cool as well.

Moving on, I'd like to comment on the cast themselves. The great thing about the zombie genre is that it usually takes a bunch of stereotypes and throws them into a zombie situation to see how they all handle it. I don't know if Night of the Living Dead was the first to do this or not, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was. Not surprisingly, the film handles this aspect of the genre well also. There's assertive and determined characters, confused characters, weak characters, and stupid characters. They all play off of each other to create a new threat to the group: each other. To make the characters even more memorable there's the jaw-dropping finale where the lone survivor of our group of heroes is killed by the security group when they think he's a zombie as well.

Overall, I gave this film a 9/10. I was incredibly surprised how well it was and particularly how timeless it was. The themes of the film were handled as well now in 2010 as they were in 1968 which is great.