Night of the Living Dead (1968)

Film: Night of the Living Dead (1968)

Stars: Duane Jones, Judith O'Dea, Karl Hardman, Marilyn Eastman, Russell Streiner

Director: George Romero

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

All October long, The Many Rantings of John is running a marathon dedicated to the Horror classics of the 1960's-90's that I'm seeing for the first time this month.  If you want to take a look at past titles from previous horror marathons (both this and other seasons) check out the links at the bottom of this article.

When it comes to modern horror, or at least when horror transitioned from the Universal Monsters into a more violent era, perhaps no movie stands out as a clear defining line more than Night of the Living Dead, which is where we're going to start our month devoted to horror films from the late 1960's to the turn of the century.  There's a few hallmarks here that will become mainstays throughout the month.  First, it's violent.  Without the presence of the Hays Code, horror films could now show what they used to just imply, and you see that with Night of the Living Dead.  Second, though, was how critically important independent cinema would be to horror, and continues to be today.  While horror has always been profitable (it's generally cheap and relies on less name brand stars as the violence & monsters are what gets audiences in their seats), you'll see throughout this month that it alternates quite a bit between major studio fare (including a couple of films that would have marquee names & get Oscar nominations) and independent ventures like today's movie, in many ways mirroring the 1930's when horror could creep out from behind both major studios and Poverty Row.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie opens with a brother and sister, Johnny (Streiner) and Barbra (O'Dea) in a graveyard mourning their late father.  While there, Johnny is trying to spook his sister, implying that a strange man on the other side of the graveyard is out to get her.  It turns out he's right, as this man is a ghoul (I don't believe the phrase "zombie" is ever uttered in the movie, though this is generally regarded as the first modern zombie movie) and in fact kills Johnny so that he can feast on his flesh.  Barbra escapes, and joins a man named Ben (Jones) who is one of the few people in the picture who clearly has his act together.  Along with a house of random figures from young, hippie-like figures to an uptight suburban couple & their daughter, they try to fend off the zombies, as well as their own internal prejudices with the most resourceful figure in the movie, Ben, being an African-American man in a house full of white people.

This racial dynamic is central to the film, and particularly important for the movie's ending.  The film ends with Ben being the only surviving figure in the house-everyone else has been eaten by or turned into a zombie.  We see in the cold light of day a group of law enforcement officers shooting the ghouls across a field & then burning the bodies, knowing now the only way to kill a ghoul is by shooting them through the head.  Ben, though, is clearly not a zombie (he's holding a gun as well), but is shot anyway as if he's a ghoul, then burned on the fire with the rest of the bodies.  Though the filmmakers claim they didn't have a commentary on race, it's hard to imagine that in an era of Medgar Evers & Martin Luther King, Jr. being killed by white men who were angry about the way the Civil Rights movement was changing society, it's not hard to see a movie where white law officers kill an innocent black man as being a commentary about the social politics of the era (social politics that sadly have not changed enough today).

The movie's social commentary works, but honestly pretty much everything works about Night of the Living Dead-it's a good movie, full stop.  Its gore is clearly where it got its calling card (you see, in disgusting detail that even in independent cinema would've been unthinkable a decade earlier, ghouls feasting on body parts of humans), but the terror is real throughout.  The way that the film operates as kind of a Twilight Zone-type message, where the dangers are just as much within the house as outside (if they all just listened to Ben, pretty much every person would've survived...it was the rest of the house's lack of trust in him that causes their demise), it's so good.  I see why this was a hit (generally considered to be one of the most profitable movies ever made), and I'm excited to see what it wrought in the coming weeks.

Past Horror Month Reviews (Listed Chronologically): The Golem, The Phantom of the Opera, Dracula, Frankenstein, Freaks, The Mummy, The Old Dark House, The Invisible Man, The Black Cat, The Bride of Frankenstein, Mad Love, The Raven, Werewolf of London, Dracula's Daughter, Son of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man Returns, The Mummy's Hand, The Invisible Woman, The Wolf Man, Cat People, The Ghost of Frankenstein, Invisible Agent, The Mummy's Curse, The Mummy's Tomb, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, Phantom of the Opera, Son of Dracula, The House of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man's Revenge, The Mummy's Ghost, The Uninvited, House of Dracula, She-Wolf of London, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, It Came from Outer Space, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Abbott & Costello Meet the Mummy, Revenge of the Creature, The Creature Walks Among Us, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Attack of the 50-Foot Woman, The Blob, The Innocents, The Masque of the Red Death