31 Days of Horror: Night of the Living Dead (1968)

“They’re coming to get you, Barbara!”

Filmology Rating: 3.5 out of 4

'Night of the Living Dead' is about as classy as they come. 

The film begins and zombies exist. A bunch of people barricade themselves in a house and hope to survive... Yup, that's it. 

It's very convenient that 'Night of the Living Dead' was released fifty-one years ago two days ago. This was George Romero's first film and before this he just made commercials. One day, he wanted to make a horror film. Though the idea of re-animated corpses was done in film before, Romero is cited to have created the first ever "zombie film." He was heavily inspired by Richard Matheson's 'I Am Legend' novel. He took the idea of blood-sucking vampires and just made them eat flesh and walk slower. 

After three completely different drafts of the script, this low-budget independent film was set to be made for one-hundred thousand dollars. 

The film opens with Barbara and her brother, Johnny, driving to a graveyard. Upon paying their respects to a loved one, Johnny jokingly teases Barbara when he sees a stranger limply walking towards them; "They're coming to get you Barbara." Little does Johnny know, it's a zombie! While intervening, Johnny gets knocked out cold by the zombie while Barbara flees to the nearest house where she locks herself inside. People slowly trickle into the house as the narrative progresses. 

It's almost impossible to imagine anyone sitting through this film who grew up with 'The Conjuring', and not complaining about it being boring. Guess what? It's a film from the late 60s. 

This is possibly one of the most influential horror films ever. Not only did it create a new sub-genre of film in the form of zombies, but the structure of a bunch of people barricading themselves in a house to survive is such a raped premise at this point. 

This film doesn't really have a plot that pushes the film along. The entire film is just Barbara, Ben, and a few others trying to figure out how to escape the house or survive. The conflict and drama comes from literally everyone disagreeing about everything. 

At first, it does seem like Barbara is the protagonist, but it ends up being Ben because he's the most forward-thinking and calm person in the entire house. Everything he says makes one-hundred percent perfect sense.

The casting of Ben was also very controversial, at the time. Duane Jones is an African American playing the lead in a horror film from the late 60s. Keep in mind, this was less than five years after Martin Luther King's 'I Have a Dream' speech. This film is credited with having the first black lead in a horror film and everyone credits Romero for being progressive and ending the film in a bold statement of social commentary. 

Romero has said dozens of times that he wrote the character of Ben as a caucasian man, but Duane Jones just had the best audition. It's very strange how deep everyone looks into Romero's earlier films. Ending the film with Ben being shot by white men, means people then link that to the MLK assassination. Then people say, "That's such a bold statement to make in a film." Even though Romero had no idea MLK was assassinated until the film was released. Or how others say that the zombies represent the silent majority in America at the time. Romero said he just wanted a spooky thing in his film. Even later in 'Dawn of the Dead', people credit his social commentary on zombies in a mall being like modern consumerism at the time. But Romero just said he was in a mall once and thought it would be a cool location for a zombie film. Literally, all of his earlier commentary is coincidentally, accidental.

It's the same way with Stanley Kubrick. A bunch of crazy literalists watch 'The Shining' and say that because a soup can was facing the camera at a forty-five degree angle, that means that 'The Shining' is about the massacre of the Native Americans or something. No, there is no grand master of cinema. He's just a guy who made a movie about a man going crazy and trying to murder his family. 

Anyways, the zombies in the film are very boring actually. The makeup on then isn't all that great. But the film is in black and white- so you often can't really distinguish much detail on them anyways. Because they were shooting in black and white, nobody bothered to buy fake blood because it was too expensive. Instead, they just poured chocolate syrup on people. 

This is so quaint compared to horror films today. The reason this film became so successful and remembered so fondly is because horror was very different before this film. Before this film, horror was just a bunch of people running around in Halloween costumes like Dracula- with the exception of something like 'Psycho.' And the idea of grounding horror in reality made 'Night of the Living Dead' so believable. And the reason zombies, especially slow ones, are scary is because they are literally "the walking dead." It doesn't matter where you hide or how fast you run, death's slow pace will eventually get to you. That's much more scary than something screaming at the camera and running around. 

Romero himself is a very independent filmmaker. All of his films are very nuts and bolts from a technical perspective. He isn't some pretentious auteur making a work of art. He's just making movies because he likes to. He is the working man's filmmaker and this film shows his fierce independence from the Hollywood system. Rest in peace George Romero. 

There are plenty of influential horror films and this is certainly one of them. Romero helped popularize a new sub-genre and set the standard for every zombie film after his.

Rating: See It

-Nolan