Night of the Living Dead (1968) - film review

Barbara and her brother Johnny drive out to a rural cemetery in Pennsylvania to put flowers on their father’s grave.  Barbara is not amused when her brother does his zombie act in a childish attempt to scare her.  She gives a more appropriate reaction when a real zombie appears from nowhere and tries to rip her head off.  In a moment of mad bravado, Johnny attacks the ghoul, allowing his sister to get free, but he is killed when he falls and hits his head on a gravestone.  Barbara flees to her brother’s car but cannot start the engine as the key is in Johnny’s pocket.  With the zombie in relentless pursuit of her, Barbara runs away and comes across a remote farmhouse.  The building appears to be deserted – until she finds the mangled remains of a corpse.  A young man, Ben, suddenly appears, pursued by more of the monsters, which he manages to frighten off with flaming torches.  Realising that there are hundreds of flesh-eating zombies in the neighbourhood, Ben wastes no time trying to secure the farmhouse.  He and Joanna then discover that they are not alone in the house...

Unquestionably the most influential horror film of them all, certainly one of the most frightening, Night of the Living Dead created something of a cinematic revolution when its zombie protagonists first burst from the movie screens in the late 1960s.  This is the film that unceremoniously buried the traditional horror film, with its camp Gothic accoutrements and schlock silliness and moved on to a complete different realm of nightmarish fantasy, laying the foundation for the modern horror film, where all the old taboos and restraints would be stripped away and viciously gnawed to death.

Director George A. Romero was the man who conceived this vision of supreme nastiness, but he had barely enough money to realise it.  Romero had previously been employed making advertisements and films for industry but was keen to make a feature film with a fantasy basis.   With a paltry budget of $114,000, Romero and his team performed a small miracle, making one of cinema’s most revered horror films with improvised special effects, inexperienced actors and low grade film stock.  The film grossed 42 million dollars worldwide, making it one of the most successful independent film productions of all time.

Night of the Living Dead was not the first marauding zombie film – Hammer got there a few years earlier with The Plague of the Zombies – but it is the first film of its kind to take place in a realistic contemporary setting.   Ironically, it is the lack of resources available to Romero and his team that makes the film so effective.  With more money and better facilities, Romero would undoubtedly have had a much slicker film, but it is doubtful whether it would be anywhere near as effective.  The budgetary constraint brought a discipline and focus that stretched the creativity of the production team to its absolute limit.  In the best B movie tradition, imaginative lighting and camerawork are used to create the desired effect, with the result that most of the horror is by implication rather than of the explicit variety (which is seldom, if ever, as effective).

The rough and ready feel that is achieved with the grainy black and white film, the confined setting and unpolished performances gives the film a stark documentary feel which makes what we are seeing unnervingly real.  The horror films that were being turned out by Hammer and its American rival AIP had a reassuring predictability and cosiness about them.  Audiences knew what to expect and were seldom taken unawares.  Night of the Living Dead was completely different.  It was as if someone had torn up the rulebook and decreed that from now on anything would be possible.  No film previously had ever had this effect on an audience, and perhaps no film ever will again.  This genuinely was a turning point in the history of cinema.   

When Night of the Living Dead was released, it initially received a lukewarm reaction in some quarters.  Many reviewers took offence at the crude production values and explicit horror content.  Most controversial were the sequences in which the zombies are seen devouring human limbs and viscera – the distributors had wanted these scenes excised but Romero tacitly refused.  The pessimistic ending also came as a shock, marking something of a break with established convention.  Despite the difficulties Romero had with distributors and critics, audiences flocked to see the film, and its reputation as a horror masterpiece was very quickly established.  It inspired countless imitations and Romero himself capitalised on the film’s success by making two respectable sequels: Dawn of the Dead (1978) and Day of the Dead (1985).  More recently, Romero gave us three (less respectable) sequels: Land of the Dead (2005), Diary of the Dead (2007) and Survival of the Dead (2009).   The film itself has so far been remade twice, in 1990 and 2006, the latter in 3D.

For such a groundbreaking and influential film, it is not surprising that many have made an attempt to read a deeper significance into it.  It was made at a time of great social and political upheaval in the United States.  The war in Vietnam was fuelling public disillusionment with the political elite, whilst racial tensions were helping to create a divided nation.  The nightmare vision that Night of the Living Dead offers is a cynical representation of contemporary America, in which the forces of evil – raw capitalism and military adventurism – are running amok and draining the last vestiges of goodness from humanity.  The underlying subtext appears obvious.  If you aren’t on the side of the demonic majority (mindless flesh-eating zombies or gun-toting thugs), you are dead meat.  You may run, but you sure can’t hide.  They will get you in the end.

© filmsdefrance.com 2009

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