Night of the Living Dead
I wonder if when a director makes a movie that they realize that what they make can be groundbreaking? I know most are not, but I have to say George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead was groundbreaking in so many ways. One of the first zombie movies that had flesh eating zombies. It was the first movie to have an African American man as lead. Night of the Living Dead paved the way for the zombie movies we have today (and yes I know, the market is way over saturated with zombie movies.)
Photo Credit: Image Ten
Released: 4 Oct 1968
Runtime: 96 mins
Director: George A. Romero
Writer: George A. Romero, John A. Russo
Actors: Duane Jones, Judith O'Dea, Karl Hardman
PLOT
An assortment of people gather in a Pennsylvanian farmhouse one night trying to survive against a gathering horde of flesh eating zombies.
MY THOUGHTS
They're coming to get you, Barbra!--Johnny
For a zombie movie there were few kills. We have eight deaths. I’m not counting all of the reanimated bodies. Surprisingly enough we go through the first hour with only one death and that’s of poor Johnny who cracks his head on a tombstone. Then we get a truck blowing up with a couple on it. Though, I think they kind of deserve it. There was no sense of urgency getting out of a truck that was on fire. I liked the couple, they just didn’t have self preservation skills.
Not really sure how I feel about Harry’s death. He was such an asshole. He gets shot in the gut by Ben and then eaten by his re-animated daughter. I kind of feel he should have suffered a little more. We get the iconic scene where Helen is stalked and killed with a trowel by her daughter.
As far as acting goes, pretty decent. Obviously Duane Jones stands out as Ben. His character and acting seem very believable. Considering someone else was supposed to play Ben, I’m glad they went with him instead.
What can I say about Judith O’Dea? I have to admit the character annoyed me. I understand being traumatized with what is going on, but it was too much. When you think she’s the lead or will be the final girl, I was disappointed. There wasn’t any character arc or anything. She just devolved into sitting there occasionally saying ridiculous stuff. When her brother (I’m assuming her brother is the one that drags her outside) drags her outside to her death I’m okay with it. I think Judith O’Dea was great, just didn’t like the helpless character. (I know I keep forgetting this was the sixties, so that might explain why she was so helpless.)
We start off Night of the Living Dead in the afternoon with Barbara and Johnny visiting a graveyard. While there a strange man wanders in and attacks first Barbara and then kills Johnny by pushing him to the ground, slamming his head into a gravestone.
Barbara gets away in a car and promptly crashes the car. (Sigh. Insert female driver joke. LOL) So she makes her way to a nearby farmhouse that appears deserted. She’s near catatonic, so when Ben, an African American man, shows up she seems helpless. He’s trying to get information out of her but it’s useless. While Ben is barricading the house, Barbara gets hysterical and hits Ben, causing him to hit her, knocking her out.
While Barbara is knocked out, Ben listens to a radio program that explains there are wide spread outbreaks of violence and murder. That the people seem to be in a trance-like state. Barbara wakes up, seeing people come out of the basement. She screams and Ben shows up and confronts the people. Now we have Barbara, Ben, a couple, and a married couple with a sick child. They were hiding in the basement the whole time.
This is when Ben and the married man start arguing about whether they should stay upstairs or remain in the basement. He thinks it’s the safest while Ben and the one younger man think it’s safer upstairs in case they need to escape.
Ben has a plan where they can all escape if they can refuel the truck. The young couple offer to help. But unfortunately an accident happens, setting the truck on fire causing it to explode and kill them. Ben makes it back to the house but the older man tries to lock him out. Ben kicks his way back in, but things are tense.
Eventually things come to a head with the man taking the only gun and turning it on Ben. Ben gets it back and shoots him in the gut. The man goes downstairs to be near his sick daughter. Unfortunately for him she has died and has re-animated. When the wife/mother comes downstairs she finds her loving daughter eating her husband and then comes after her with a trowel, stabbing and killing her.
Meanwhile upstairs Barbara is trying to help until she sees her brother and he pulls her outside into the crowd of zombies, killing her. Ben is alone and makes his way downstairs and stays there until he hears gunfire and people the next morning. He starts to come out when the group of men see him and shoot him, (maybe) thinking he’s one of the dead.
============================================================
I wanted to take a quick break to let you know I found these great deals on Amazon for The Dead Trilogy merchandise. I’ve applied to Amazon’s affiliate program and if I can get three purchases I will be accepted into the program. This will be of tremendous help with starting my small business.
============================================================
For a movie of its time it’s really good in my opinion. Even though George Romero said it was just a coincidence that there were racial undertones in the movie, it was definitely throughout the movie. Having an African American lead with a white blonde woman was just unheard of for the time. And add in that Ben is killed in the end by a group of white vigilante men, just hammered the racial divide in the sixties. Intentional or not, it was very powerful.
As far as zombies go, Night of the Living Dead did start the whole craze with flesh eating, re-animated dead, and having to shoot them in the head. But it still had signs of the voodoo style zombies as well with the way they walk and the trance-like state they were in.
Overall a good movie that is, in my opinion, a must see for a zombie fan, Romero fan, or any type of horror fan.
And now for your Forever Final Girl Exclusive…Did you know?:
This is one of the most profitable independent movies ever made. Made for $114,000 (equivalent to $941,800 in 2022), it grossed approximately $30 million (equivalent to $247.8 million in 2022) - over 263 times its budget.
There is no on-screen copyright notice, nor any of the usual legal disclaimers typically found in movie credits; this is the main reason the film has been in the public domain since its release.
When the zombies were eating the bodies in the burnt-out truck, they were actually eating roast ham covered in chocolate sauce. The filmmakers joked that it was so nausea-inducing that it was almost a waste of time putting the makeup on the zombies as they ended up looking pale and sick anyway.
When the writers decided to base the film on zombies, they brainstormed about what would be the most shocking thing for the zombies to do to people and decided on cannibalism.
The US movie rating system was instituted on November 1, 1968. This film, released October 1, 1968, is one of the last films released in the US without a rating.
The word "zombie" is never used.
The main house did not have a true basement but a dirt potter's cellar, and, thus, had no long staircase leading down to it. As a result, the basement scenes were filmed in the editing studio's cellar in downtown Pittsburgh.
One of the first films to graphically depict violent murders on screen. It is also one of the first films to have a Black person as a main character.
George A. Romero said that the moment they finished editing the film in Pittsburgh, they put the reels into the cans, threw it into the trunk of the car, and drove straight to New York City that night in hopes of having it screened at any willing theater.
George A. Romero saw very little profit from the film. Due his lack of knowledge regarding distribution deals, the distributors walked away with practically all of the profits.
George A. Romero originally hired Tom Savini to do the makeup effects for this film. The two were first introduced when Savini auditioned for an acting role in an earlier film that never got off the ground. Romero, remembering that Savini was also a makeup artist (He'd brought his makeup portfolio to the audition.), called Savini to the set of his horror movie. Savini was unable to do the effects because he was in the US Army, serving as a combat photographer in Vietnam. Savini later appeared in Dawn of the Dead (1978) and directed Night of the Living Dead (1990).
Bosco chocolate syrup was used to simulate the blood in the film.
The zombie hand that Tom hacks up with a kitchen knife was made of clay and filled with chocolate syrup.
The body upstairs in the house was made by director George A. Romero, who used ping-pong balls for the eyes.
The social commentary on racism some have seen in this film (e.g., an African-American man holding up in a house with a white woman, a posse of whites shooting a black man in the head without first checking to see if he was a zombie) was never intended. According to the filmmakers, Duane Jones was simply the best actor for the part of Ben.
The filmmakers were accused of being "Satanically-inspired" by Christian fundamentalist groups for their portrayal of the undead feeding on flesh and of the Coopers' zombie child (Kyra Schon) attacking her mother (Marilyn Eastman).
Russell Streiner's mother owned Barbara and Johnny's car. The cemetery scenes were shot over 2 days. Someone ran into the car during a break in filming, leaving a dent that was easily visible on camera. George A. Romero rewrote the scene so the car came to a stop after crashing into a tree.
Though the radiation of a detonated satellite returning from Venus is theorized to be the cause of the dead rising and attacking the living, according to the filmmakers, the actual cause is never determined.
Much of the dialogue was improvised.
Though Silly Putty and other basic, special effects techniques were used, most of the body parts the "zombies" are eating were real internal organs and bones from animals, and a lot of the actors playing the flesh-eater roles were friends in advertising and clients who John A. Russo and George A. Romero were in contact with. "They were all commercial clients of ours that we considered staid people ordinarily, and it just stunned us that they chomped into these organs," says Russo.
While filming the final zombie attack scene, George Romero did not inform Duane Jones (Ben) that Kyra Schon (Karen) would sneak up and grab him from behind, which resulted in an authentically shocked reaction from the actor who was not expecting the child zombie. Similarly, Romero also did this to Ken Foree (Peter) during the filming of Dawn of the Dead when the child zombies attacked Peter at the airport office.
While this is considered the first film in the Living Dead hexalogy, preceded by Dawn of the Dead (1978) and Day of the Dead (1985), the films are only connected to each other thematically and are not a continuous story.
The character of Ben was originally supposed to be a crude, but resourceful, truck driver with no specification to race. After Duane Jones, in real-life a self-serious, erudite academic, auditioned for the part, director and co-writer George A. Romero rewrote the part to fit his performance.
After Duane Jones set the chair on fire, Gary Streiner, Russell Streiner's brother, was supposed to extinguish the flames and set the chair on fire again to preserve continuity, ensuring that smoke would be emanating from it near the end of the film. At one point, Gary's sleeve caught fire. As he ran in terror, S. William Hinzman (in full zombie makeup) tackled him to the ground and helped extinguish the flames, saving him from major injury.
In his final interview before his death, Duane Jones admitted he had never seen any of the other "Dead" movies, nor any other George A. Romero movie.
Though the cast and crew had nothing but positive things to say about Duane Jones, Marilyn Eastman would later refer to him as a tortured individual, due to American racial tensions during the late sixties. Karl Hardman became good friends with Jones, and Jones' death in 1988 affected him greatly. He would often become emotional when talking about Jones and believed he received a raw deal in life due to the nation's racial tensions.
Bill Cardille, who played the television reporter, was a local Pittsburgh TV celebrity. He hosted a horror movie program on Channel 11 and occasionally reported the news.
John A. Russo appears as the zombie who gets killed by Ben with a tire iron. He also allowed himself to be set on fire for real when nobody else wanted to do the stunt. George A. Romero approved of his co-writer's "zombie walk." "I was probably hung over," Russo stated.
Check out my other reviews here: Forever Final Girl
Let’s get into the rankings:
Kills/Blood/Gore: 2/5
Sex/Nudity: .5/5 Just for a zombie with butt cheeks
Scare factor: 3/5
Enjoyment factor: 10/10
My Rank: 4/5
IMDB: 7.8/10
Rotten Tomatoes: critics: 9.6/10 audience: 8.7/10
Letterboxd: 4/5