BrianKoller's Full Review: Night of the Living Dead
George Romero was a maker of television commercials and company films in 1964, when he spent his weekends directing his first feature film, Night of the Living Dead. A low budget independent film, it cost only about $114,000 to make. (Today's equivalent of about one million dollars, however.) The major studios passed on distributing the film, partly because of its content, and partly because it was made in black and white.
The film finally reached theaters in 1968, distributed by an obscure theater chain called Continental. Its notoriety was fanned by a handful of indignant reviews; it made millions during the 1970s through select midnight showings. Romero attempted to reproduce its success with the belated sequels Dawn of the Dead (1978) and Day of the Dead (1985), but those films were much inferior in quality if not in production values.
Barbara (Judith O'Dea) and her brother Johnny (Russel Streiner) are attacked in a cemetery by a zombie. Barbara escapes, and she runs into an apparently abandoned country house. Now catatonic from shock, she is soon joined by Ben (Duane Jones), who is also escaping from rampaging zombies. Ben boards up the house, while people emerge from hiding in the cellar.
They are Mr. Cooper (Karl Hardman), an aggressive, wild-eyed jerk; his unhappy wife Helen (Marilyn Eastman), and their critically ill young daughter Karen (Kyra Schon). With them are earnest lovers Tom (Keith Wayne) and Judy (Judith Ridley). Tom tries to play the peacemaker, to stop Ben and Mr. Cooper from quarreling. The radio and television bring news of a nationwide epidemic of carnivorous zombies, an increasing number of which surround the farm house.
The cast is amateur and completely obscure. Karl Hardman is almost comical in his performance, while Judy is lovely but wooden. The film also has its slow parts, especially during a long sequence which has Ben nailing boards to the wall, while Barbara stares aimlessly into space. The radio broadcasts aren't very effective. But the television clips work much better, especially the shots of Presidential advisors evading questions, and rednecks hunting zombies.
Despite its problems, due mostly to its low budget, Night of the Living Dead is an excellent movie. The script is deceptively banal. From the opening scenes, we see how fragile Barbara is, and how much she relies on her brother's presence. It's no surprise that she has a breakdown upon his absence. The film offers horror with almost no signs of parody and comic relief. Johnny makes some jokes about his annual wreath laying ceremony, and that's about it.
Romero plays games with the audience expectations, in ways that no other American filmmaker was doing at the time. We take turns rooting for one character, then another. But our hopes are dashed each time, as Romero and the zombies take no prisoners. The film is full of irony. For example, the big jerk proves to be right after all. The cellar was the place to hide, and the impromptu barricades don't hold. If Ben had listened to him, they might all have survived (with at least one exception, which can't be revealed).
Night of the Living Dead has been compared to Psycho, its landmark predecessor in black and white horror. Romero may beat Hitchcock at his own game, however. Even the famous 'shower scene' is not as intense as the little girl armed with the gardening spade. Actually, I'm not sure any scene from any film is as intense. It has to be seen to be believed, and I get chills just remembering it. It is probably the greatest scene from any horror film. Kyra Schon has made a career from her grisly childhood moment of glory, through appearances at weekend horror film conventions.
Night of the Living Dead was a landmark film in an another, less mentioned category. It is probably the first film starring an African-American, whose ethnicity is never once referred to in the script. Granted, this would have been a more important milestone had it occurred in a Hollywood production. Still, obscure actor Duane Jones deserved at least some of the accolades that were given to Sidney Poitier for his roles in Lilies of the Field (1963), In the Heat of the Night (1967) and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967).
Another good amateur performance is from Marilyn Eastman, whose character soon learns that a bad marriage can be the least of one's problems. Eastman, along with her character's husband Hardman, did the makeup for the film. Hardman helped produce the film, which might explain why Romero cast him despite having seen him act.
Night of the Living Dead has inspired so many bad horror films that its originality is no longer recognizable. But the original is still the greatest. Not only the greatest of all low budget zombie films, it may be the best of all horror films, with only Psycho and the moody I Walked with a Zombie (1943) also in the running. (90/100)
George Romero's NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD is a low-budget homegrown classic that had great difficulty finding a distributor at the time of its release ...More at Family Video
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