Review: Night of the Living Dead (1968)

I was about eight or nine years old when I first saw George Romero's Night of the Living Dead. I may or may not have been a reasonably bright kid, but I must confess that I didn't get it. Not at all. I couldn't understand: what was so scary about people being chased by...other, really slow, really pale people? I watched the whole movie, shrugged and went back to my Marvel comics and my GI Joes.

A year or so later, I saw Night of the Living Dead again. It was playing on a local UHF station, flickering out at me from a black & white portable TV my brother and I shared in a small room just off the kitchen. It's been said everything can change in the blink of an eye, so just imagine what a year can do for the mind of a young child. More intelligence. More experience. More awareness of the world. But there are prices to be paid for awareness: I now understood perfectly what Night of the Living Dead was about and, before it had even run its full length, I turned the TV off and left the room. Shaking.

That night I dreamed of them, the ghouls with disheveled clothing, shuffling step and moist, wide, starving eyes. And many nights since as well. Sometimes they even caught me, tearing me limb from struggling limb. Some say you can't die in your dreams, while others maintain that the "ability" to die in your dreams is indicative of a highly creative mind--not something you think about much when you're watching your arms and legs being carried off in various directions, food for the stumbling, undead masses.

Many years passed before it was possible for me to stay in my seat and watch, without covering my eyes or averting my gaze, every last frame of Night of the Living Dead. In fact, it took watching it with a friend who, to her credit, found a great deal worth laughing at in Night before I felt even moderately comfortable sitting all the way through the movie.

And to be honest, there's plenty to mock in Night: Most of the acting is amateurish (maybe because most of the actors were amateurs); the music is lifted from other movies, most noticeably Teenagers from Outer Space and The Hideous Sun Demon; there are a few outstanding continuity errors (day becomes night awfully fast--like in the space of one edit--and one zombie who has long hair at the start of the movie has clearly gotten a haircut by the conclusion); and the special effects aren't terribly special.

This movie doesn't even have a particularly original concept. Similar scenes of zombie frolic had been used in Invisible Invaders and in The Last Man on Earth, a mediocre Vincent Price movie based on Richard Matheson's legendary vampire novella, I Am Legend (which was later adapted again as the awful Omega Man with Charlton Heston).

The story of Night is pretty familiar now: Barbara (Judith O'Dea) and her brother Johnny (Russell Streiner, who was also one of the film's producers) go out to the country to visit their father's grave. While there, they're attacked by the first of many, many zombies, who kills Johnny and chases Barbara to a deserted house where she meets up with Ben (Duane Jones, easily the best actor in the film), a truck driver who's fought his way through the undead hordes. Other survivors pop out of the basement (including Karl Hardman and Marilyn Eastman as a bickering husband and wife), realistic radio and TV reports try to make sense out of the mayhem (at one point, it's proposed that radiation from a probe to Venus is somehow responsible, but this is dropped quickly and never referred to again), and the zombies attack in graceless waves.

What lifts Night of the Living Dead above its flaws and meager budget is the style, conviction and realism Romero and crew bring to the whole thing. The stark black & white cinematography is more suggestive of documentary than of fiction; the escalating tensions among the survivors--especially between Jones and Hardman--ratchets up the strain on the audience; and the lack of a happy ending hearkens back to the EC Comics Romero enjoyed so much as a child (and would later pay more direct tribute to in Creepshow).

Then there are the living dead themselves: ever-present, shuffling, decomposing, hungry for the flesh of the living. They never tire, never wander off, never give up. The pressure never ceases. And when they do actually snag some skin to munch on, the movie gets downright grisly--although, after so many years of sequels, remakes, spinoffs and ripoffs that were far more graphic and gruesome, Night can now play on broadcast TV with no edits whatsoever.

Night of the Living Dead remains the stuff that nightmares and still, after all this time, packs one hell of a punch. Watch it with friends--and leave the lights on afterwards.

(NOTE: Because Night of the Living Dead has been in the public domain for so long, many truly nasty-looking prints can be found on both VHS and DVD. The only print worth owning-or even viewing--is the beautifully restored, digitally remastered print available through Elite Entertainment. They released it on video in 1995 through Anchor Bay and more recently put the same package out on DVD. Forget the rest--this is the best.)