“They’re coming for you, Barbra.”
The word “zombie” is never said once in George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. We hear “flesh eater”; we hear “ghoul”; sometimes we hear “those things.” Nevertheless, Living Dead is one of the most important zombie films ever made, its flaws notwithstanding. It cemented the lore in such a way that it would come to define the subgenre. Before Living Dead, we didn’t know that you had to shoot zombies in the head, or burn them. Romero (and his co-writer Jeff Russo) approached the zombie lore with an almost anthropological eye. The result is pretty outstanding, especially considering the film’s fly-by-night production.
The best thing that this film has going for it is its stark, black and white cinematography. We open on a car making its way through winding country roads, before passing a blood-spattered sign reading CEMETERY ENTRANCE. It’s all of a piece with Living Dead‘s initial setup; this is underscored by the film’s music, an olio of themes taken from The Fugitive, The Lone Ranger, Teenagers from Outer Space,and elsewhere. Johnny (Russell Streiner) and Barbra (Judith O’Dea) have driven three hours from Pittsburgh to lay a wreath on their father’s grave. Only one will make it out of the cemetery alive.
Before long, Barbra is attacked by a zombie; Johnny comes to her aide and is killed in the process. The introduction of this initial zombie is one of the film’s better set pieces. We see him first in the distance, and he’s presented as perhaps just another mourner coming to pay his respect. When he gets closer we see that there’s something with his gait. And his face. The zombie makeup looks laughably dated now, but it’s unsettling nonetheless. Barbra flees and take refuge in a nearby farmhouse.
The farmhouse is a terrific set. It’s all angles and shadows, and gives Living Dead the look of a German Impressionist film. It was undoubtedly a choice made out of budgetary concerns, but the film wouldn’t look the same without it. We feel like we’re looking at a nightmare. The house is both claustrophobic and labyrinthine; this could be done as a stage play, and indeed it was, in 2003. Soon Barbra, nearly catatonic from trauma, is joined by Ben (Duane Jones), who quite literally takes over the film.
Originally written as a coarse trucker, Ben became something altogether after Jones, a well-known stage actor, auditioned for the part. Jones was a cultured, erudite academic, and plays Ben the same way: smart, resourceful, but using those qualities to obscure a simmering rage. He takes action while Barbra sits silently, boarding up windows and buttressing doors. Jones commandeers the movie, which up until now had sorely missed its presence. O’Dea plays Barbra as almost too catatonic, and as a result she comes off as a nuisance.
This is a terrific way to do a zombie movie on the cheap. It feels like a siege movie, and we’re always aware of the zombies’ presence. What undoes some of the tension is not unique to Night of the Living Dead, but is a problem with basically all of Romero’s work. Smart zombies are never less than cheesy, so it produces not gasps but eye-rolls when the undead know enough to knock out a car’s headlights, or use table legs as clubs to bash a door in. Romero never wants his characters to be too inconvenienced (in Dawn of the Dead, they had water and electricity, and even used table settings); to wit, both the radio and the television are still broadcasting a steady stream of exposition into the farmhouse. To the film’s credit, it’s pretty eerie to hear Bill Cardille, an actual reporter, use his matter-of-fact dialect to deliver lines like “The unburied dead are coming back to life and seeking human victims.”
Almost everyone involved in Night of the Living Dead wore multiple hats during the production. Two of its producers, Karl Haldman and Marilyn Eastman, play a bickering married couple (Haldman was also the film’s makeup artist, sound effects engineer, and still photographer). The farmhouse was lent to Romero by a man who wanted it destroyed anyway. Al this is to say, it’s incredible not only that this movie exists, but that it was so transformative to the industry. Much like Halloween, it became an accidental classic of the genre.
The zombie assault on the farmhouse at the film’s end is impressive. It’s chaotic, and tense, and the body count piles up. Soon Ben is the only survivor, which leads to the film’s impressively bleak ending. As a zombie-hunting militia approaches the farmhouse, Ben makes his way to the window, only to be shot in the head almost instantly. Over the credits, we see sickening photos of the posse dragging his body out with hooks. It’s the best ending Romero would ever conjure, not only because it invites discussion and interpretation due to Ben’s race. Night of the Living Dead came out in 1968; racial tensions were still high in America, and that same year saw a horrific riot at the Democratic National Convention. It sounds trite now, but Living Dead asks who the real monsters are. Just because we’ve heard that question before doesn’t mean that it isn’t audacious to hear it for the first time.
10/1: Hellraiser / The Invitation
10/2: Splice / Banshee Chapter
10/3: Jennifer’s Body / Raw
10/4: Dominion: Prequel to The Exorcist / Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2
10/5: Kill List / A Field in England
10/6: Halloween II / Halloween III: Season of the Witch
10/7: A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge / A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors
10/8: Ginger Snaps / Creep
10/9: Cube / Creep 2
10/10: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) / The Ritual
10/11: Hell House LLC / The Taking of Deborah Logan
10/12: Re-Animator / From Beyond
10/13: Beetlejuice / Sleepy Hollow
10/14: Idle Hands / The Lords of Salem
10/15: The Ring / Noroi: The Curse
10/16: I Know What You Did Last Summer / The Monster
10/17: Night of the Living Dead / Train to Busan
10/18: The Devil’s Backbone / Southbound
10/19: Event Horizon / Dreamcatcher
10/20: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari / The Bad Seed
10/21: Eyes Without a Face / Goodnight Mommy
10/22: The Strangers / The Strangers: Prey at Night
10/23: In the Mouth of Madness / The Void
10/24: The Amityville Horror / Honeymoon
10/25: Gerald’s Game / Emelie
10/26: The Monster Squad / Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon
10/27: Veronica / Jacob’s Ladder
10/28: High Tension / You’re Next
10/29: The Innkeepers / Bug
10/30: The People Under the Stairs / Vampires
10/31: Saw / Saw II
About Author
