Mike_Bracken's Full Review: Night of the Living Dead
Night of the Living Dead: Image Ten Productions/ Elite Entertainment Rating: USA: Unrated/ UK: 18/ Australia: M
If one were to gather a group of people, have them sit down and compile a listing of the most influential horror films of all time, certain films would inevitably appear on each list. Psycho, The Exorcist, and Halloween would definitely show up on almost every list. H.G. Lewis’ Blood Feast would likely appear on any splatter lover’s ballot. Bava and Argento would be represented on any list compiled by a Euro-horror fan. And while the picks would be diverse, and suited to the individual horror fan’s tastes, I’m willing to bet that everyone would include George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead.
Made in the late 60’s and produced with a micro-sized budget, NotLD stands today as one of the genre’s unmitigated classics. It’s a film that almost single-handedly redefined the idea of what a horror film was, and could be. And while it generated its fair share of controversy upon its release (it was a very gory film for its time), the underlying themes and allegory at work in the piece have earned it the respect of most modern day critics and film fans alike (even the ones who generally look upon the genre with disdain).
NotLD is yet another horror film that works because it keeps its premise simple. Seven strangers wind up in a deserted farmhouse—all chased there by the recently risen dead. In order to survive, they must work together to fortify the house and keep the undead at bay until either help arrives or they figure out a way to escape. Simple story, right? Anyone could have thought of it, but what really makes Night of the Living Dead work is the intelligence with which the material is presented.
Romero chooses to fill his film with a diverse range of characters: Ben (Duane Jones), a young black man who has a solid head on his shoulders, Barbra (Judith O’Dea) a flighty white woman who’s in shock for much of the film. Harry Cooper and his wife and daughter (Karl Hardman, Marilyn Eastman, and Kyra Schon), a family with a marriage on the brink of collapse, and two young adults—Tom and Judy (Keith Wayne and Judith Ridley). These characters, each representing a different segment of society and a distinctly different worldview, must overcome their differences in order to survive. These complex inter-relations between such disparate people provide much of the film’s drama—at least as much as the shambling undead hovering outside their door.
While the acting in NotLD is good (particularly Duane Jones and Karl Hardman), one can’t help but get the feeling that they’re not viewing people, but rather watching elaborately drawn archetypes. The house is nothing if not a microcosmic view of society as a whole—complete with an examination sexual, racial, and age relations. Men run the show here, deciding the best course of action—but only after fighting it out to determine who’s the most dominant. Women are relegated to minor roles—taking care of the injured daughter, being told what to do, or simply being too fragile to deal with the events at all. Race is never mentioned in the film, but it’s clear that Cooper doesn’t like Ben (and vice versa) and the underlying tension between them seems to stem from the fact that Cooper’s older and white—both of which make it clear to him that he should be in charge.
And what about the zombies, you ask? I’m inclined to believe that they’re symbolic as well. The film was made during the turbulent 60’s…a time when the country was undergoing an enormous amount of social upheaval. The undead are ultimately no less symbolic than any of the other characters in the film—only they seem to represent the forces of change, the breaking away from the status quo. They’re an outside force, waging an all out attack on the American way, and whether you take them to represent the communists or the hippies, well, that’s up to you.
Much like the follow-up, Dawn of the Dead, NotLd is an amazingly visionary film. Dawn would focus on our obsessive consumerism, and how it could ultimately lead to our undoing. Night spends a lot of time showing us the outside world—through a television set. The humans spend much of their free time hovering around a TV, watching news reports that continually update the situation, instead of attempting to escape. It clearly seems to mirror our own current TV obsessed lifestyle, as well as the one that would come into existence during the Vietnam war—one where families sat around watching war coverage while eating dinner.
Ok, I can hear you saying "c’mon Mike…this is just a zombie movie", and I agree with you. Part of the beauty of Night of the Living Dead is that it’s a multi-layered film. Subtext and allegory not your thing? Fine, watch the movie as an intense, nightmarish, claustrophobic exercise in apocalyptic horror. The film works either way.
NotLD features a fair amount of gore for a film made in the 1960’s. While it’s not on the level of the splatterific H.G. Lewis film Blood Feast (a 1963 film that’s largely responsible for the whole gore subgenre. If you’re interested, check out my review), it does feature a multitude of gruesome shots including a zombie munching on a rope of intestine. Although it doesn’t outdo Lewis’ kitsch classic in terms of onscreen carnage, NotLD stands out as being one of the first gore films to present grue in a serious light. Lewis’ films were drive-in schlockers that succeeded because they were so campy. Romero takes it to the other extreme, using the gruesome imagery to both disturb and repulse the viewer—an effect that almost every genre film ever since has tried to emulate.
In the end, Night of the Living Dead stands as both a monument to independent filmmaking and a movie that changed the genre. Romero’s depiction of flesh hungry zombies was revolutionary since it was one of the first films to take the creature out of the cliched voodoo setting and place them in suburban America in modern times. He’s single-handedly responsible for the entire Italian zombie film canon and probably one of the prime influences of the cannibal film subgenre as well. And while there have been some good films inspired by Night and Dawn (Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue and Fulci’s Zombie being among the best of the bunch), none have managed to outdo Romero. All three films in the trilogy (including the inferior Day of the Dead) feature the same nihilistic view that man is ultimately incapable of setting aside his differences to save himself. It’s a bleak, yet intriguing viewpoint—one that makes Romero’s films something more than simply horror movies. They stand as visions of what it means to be human, and what it might be like to lose your humanity at the same time—an interesting dichotomy, no matter how you look at life. Night of the Living Dead is a must see horror film that has earned its classic reputation—check it out if you’ve never seen it.
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