Yeah, I know. More talented and thought-provoking writers, critics and academics have talked about and analysed this film. This George A Romero film was a game changing classic of the horror genre, of course people would at least bring it up in conversation, if they’re fans. I think any one of the books and documentaries out there could do it better than me. But I don’t care. I love this film, flaws and all, and I want to talk about it. So, stop with all the ‘Why you?’ and ‘Why now?’ questions will ya. Geez.

I remember when I first watched this film. You may doubt me, but it’s true. It was December in 1993, Christmas Holidays. No school and I was catching up on my reading and watching all the movies I had on my list. So, like I would usually do when I had time to burn and money in my pocket burning even hotter, I headed to the video store and rented some VHS tapes hoping for an escape to another world. On this occasion at my local rental emporium, I set out to rent 10 weekly releases for $10. What can I say, it was the early 90s. I scoured the store, looking for gems or for the cover art to speak to me. I wasn’t going to be doing any rewatching this day. This was a day of discovery, damn it.

After wondering the isles for what seemed like forever (which was probably 30 mins. Time seems to stretch when you are impatient) I was at only eight titles. I needed two more. And I was starting to worry. Mainly because I was a stupid kid, and when you’re young these things seem important. I settled on two movies with cool sounding names to my teenage brain, because the cover art was a bit bland on these ones. Forbidden Planet and Night of the Living Dead. I wasn’t expecting much out of them. Little did I know, they would be rewatched every year of my life since that day. I can’t even tell you what else I had chosen that day. And yes, these two films have been in my personal collection in multiple formats since I started the collection.

I didn’t know it at the time, but I had seen Romero films before. I had watched Monkey Shines and The Dark Half that same year, but Night of the Living Dead made me remember his name and search out more. I later found Creepshow, Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead and Knightriders before school went back the next year. Favourites, one and all.

On first viewing, I thought NOTLD was a good movie. Nothing special, but good none the less. But I couldn’t stop thinking about the film. I would watch it again before returning the tape. I remembered wondering why they had shot it in Black and White when colour was the norm back in 1968. Why did the characters act the way they did? And why did the film seem more real? Relax, this was before I ‘knew’ anything.

As I watch more movies, Romero’s film among them, learnt about filmmaking, learnt how this film in particular was made and the time it was made in America’s history, I understood it more and more. I fell in love with this film slowly. But that love has never wavered for this ‘little movie that could’. I now see it as a masterclass in low budget filmmaking, storytelling and, yes, as a piece of art.

And I’m not kidding about the film being art. Not only does this film feature on many lists of the best films ever made, in 1999 the film was called “culturally, historically and aesthetically significant” by the Library of Congress in the good old U.S. of A. and selected to be preserved in the National Film Registry. So, important and entertaining. Suck it, horror haters.

While the film spawned a franchise, a legion of fans and imitators and influenced an entire genre, it’s this small confined story told well which is still the most affecting of the series. Think what The Purge tried to many decades later. And like that film, NOTLD is at its heart a siege drama. But instead of a band of killers, outlaws or an opposing army, it is a horde of undead flesh eating ghouls (they weren’t called zombies until much later).

The tale goes like this.

Siblings Johnny and Barbara (Russell Streiner and Judith O’Dea) arrive at a cemetery after a long drive to place a wreath on their father’s grave, something their mother is too weak to do. There is some good-natured ribbing from Johnny towards his timid sister until they are attacked by a man in a suit. This is the first ghoul (or zombie) of the film. In the tussle Johnny is killed and then the undead man in formal wear goes after Barbara. She runs and hides in the car, but Johnny has the keys because of course he does. She pops the parking brake, puts the car in neutral and rolls down the hill away from her attacker. But he seems to forget how to steer and runs into a tree. Fleeing on foot, with the creepiest of uncles in pursuit, she comes across a farm house sitting by itself in the country side. Scared out of her mind, hoping to find help, she heads for the house. Finding it empty, she hides inside.

Barbara looks around after the dead guys leaves and finds a half-eaten corpse on the first-floor landing. Yum Yum! She screams, completely freaked out and runs out of the house. Right into headlights of a truck pulling up to the house. Ben (Duane Jones), our hero, gets out of the car hoping to also find sanctuary in the old farmhouse. They retreat inside as the ghouls appear wondering what all the noise is about, walking like someone has poured a ice cold beer down the back of their pants.

Ben decides they need to board the place up and protect themselves and their ‘safe’ house. After a brief search of the place for supplies, they find what they need and begin to seal themselves in. Ben even finds a rifle and some ammunition. Because, ‘Merica y’all.

Another ghoul attack and exposition dump later, it is revealed that there have been people hold up in the cellar. Harry Cooper and his wife Helen (Karl Hardman and Marilyn Eastman), their injured daughter Karen (Kyra Schon) and teenage couple, Tom and Judy (Keith Wayne and Judith Ridley).

This is where the human drama kicks into overdrive as the egos of Ben and Harry clash. It’s the well to do middle glass, prosperous business man Harry against the intelligent, resourceful, likeable working glass Ben. And everyone else caught in the middle. After arguments and fingers pointing, everyone helps to finish boarding up the house, even if Harry doesn’t agree with the course of action. Once finished, they listen to news report on the radio and then watch news broadcast on a television they found in another room. This is where a lot of the backstory and what is possibly going on around them comes to our characters. And they come up with a course of action. They need to get to a nearby town to one of the rescue stations. Oh, I almost forgot, throughout all of this, Barbara is in a near catatonic state.

There is a fuel pump out the back to the property. If they can get to it and refuel the truck Ben drove, they can all pile in and make it to the help they need. As long as they drive like a bat out of hell. It would have worked too. But it ended up with Tom and Judy and the truck exploding and Ben stranded in a burning field surrounded by zombies. Without any kung-fu moves Ben does fight through them and makes it back to the house only to be refused entry by Harry. Because, you know, Harry’s a dick.

Breaking down the door he gets in, Ben and Harry fight, zombies attack, Barbara comes back to life, briefly. But in the end, everybody dies except for Ben, who hides in the cellar, something he said he would never do.

The next day, the police, national guard, militia (rednecks with guns) sweep the country side exterminating and burning the ghouls. Hearing the noise, Ben cautiously leaves his hiding place and approaches an open window to see what is going on. He is greeted with a bullet in the head by the sweeping force thinking he’s a zombie. Oh, did I forget to say ‘Spoiler Warning’? This film is almost 55 years old. If you haven’t seen it, that’s on you. And that’s the end. No shit. The hero dies.

Fuck this movie has a bleak ending. It’s like having a strong cup of coffee and a bran muffin in the morning, it’ll open you right up. And I think the bleakness of this film’s ending caused Romero to end the other entries in this Dead series with a little hope.

This movie, was, for a time, the most successful independently financed film, and not just in the horror genre. Made by a group of friends and colleagues who had been making commercials and industrial films in the Pittsburgh area. One day they decided ‘Hey, let’s make a movie’. Ten of them through in $600 each and started with that $6000. They were off. They would later gain further financing and the films budget increased to around $100,000.

Romero co-wrote the screenplay with John Russo. They ended up combining two different ideas. Romero’s ‘I Am Legend’ inspired story about the dead not staying dead and Russo’s flesh-eating aliens story. The modern zombie story was born in those pages.

Filmed in 1967 and 1968, the production consisted of the original group, their friends, their friends’ friends, and what other contacts they had. And everybody was pulling double or triple duty. Many of the producers and production staff were also actors in the film or zombies. Hardman was the actor playing Harry Cooper and one of the producers of the film for example. Romero himself was not only the director and co-writer of the film, but also the editor and cinematographer as well He even appears in the film as one of the reporters in Washington.

The tension in the film is built throughout the film expertly for a debut feature. Most of it coming from the documentary style black and white photography and the interaction between the characters in a tense and unusual situation. Something Romero would use over and over in his later Dead films. But was mainly achieved because of the low budget. The use of black and white film was because of budget, as was the one location and the heavy use of shadows. Hell, the blood was chocolate sauce. This is a good film, but why has it been hailed as a great and important piece of art and how has it been seen by so many people over the years. Well, I will try to enlighten you. So, buckle up you bunch of flesh eaters.

First off, the casting of this film is very important. You may think that casting wouldn’t have that much of an effect on the film as a hole, right? Well, you would be wrong there. Imagine someone else playing Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs or imagine if Lance Henriksen or O.J. Simpson where cast as the Terminator. Hard to think about that, huh? They would have been to different films.

Casting this film, while the filmmakers didn’t think it was all that striking a choice, ended up being one of the elements of this film that has been analysed and hailed as a triumph. And that, dear readers, was the casting of Duane Jones as the character of Ben. Duane Jones was the only Afro-American actor in a cast of white actors. And he is our hero in a horror film made in 1968. Almost unheard of up till then. And he fucking nailed it.

The filmmakers weren’t trying to be edgy or subversive, Duane was simply the best actor that they knew and nailed the audition with flying colours. So, he was in. Jones brought an intelligence, grace and gravitas to the role that I doubt another actor could have. And certain aspects of the story would have simply been something that moved the story along, but suddenly were dripping with subtext. Think of the clash of egos between Ben and Harry. Working class black man and well-off middle class white man, going head-to-head in a war of words and emotions.

And think about the reaction of Barbara on first seeing Ben. Her eyes get wider and she becomes still in shock. Is she more afraid of Ben then the zombies in that moment? The film being made around the time of the civil rights movement. Reports of riots between protestors and authorities were starting common place on the news. I can see that a timid little white girl could be afraid or at the least cautious of an Afro American man meeting the way they do in the film. Hell, a decade previous, it was still illegal for Afro-Americans to drink from a whites only water fountain.

And the filmmakers not thinking about this kind of reading into their film is true. They had no idea of the effect it could have until they were driving the completed film to New York to hopefully sell it to a studio or distributor. On that faithful drive, the announcement that Martin Luther King Jr had been assassinated came over the radio. And it hit them. And to their credit, they refused to alter the film in any way, paving the way for other films to make similar films. I believe it was also a very positive influence in the film industry at the time and probably helped create the Blaxploitation movement of the 1970s. And black horror films in general. An early example of this is a vampire film entitled Ganja and Hess (1973) also starring NOTLDs Duane Jones. And is started with a couple of clueless dudes who just wanted to make a movie.

Another reason why this film is so loved, so watched and so analysed is because of a mistake. And a silly one at that. The film when it was finished was called Night of the Flesh Eaters. And that is how it was sold to distributers, complete with copywrite. But since there was another film that had be released four years previous called Flesh Eaters, the distributers wanted to change the title. So, the distributers came up with Night of the Living Dead. But when changing the title, they forgot to reinstate the copywrite notice on the film with the new title. And because of this for most of its life as a piece of entertainment, the film has been in the public domain. Which meant that is could be shown at any theatre and drive-in, on any television and cable network and later released over and over again on VHS and DVD. The film was hard to escape, as it was everywhere. And the filmmakers, financial backers and the distributors made no money on the success of the film. It is sad that this film that is so praised as art and loved by many ended up not making a profit. But on the positives, it was seen and gave Romero, Russo, Jones and many others careers in film and television.

And just before I go, the version of this film that I have, that I used for this review/rant was a double feature Blu-Ray from the awesome people at Umbrella Entertainment. The release features the original 1968 film and the 1990 remake that was produced by Romero and directed by special effects make up wizard Tom Savini. Which was made so that they could try and regain the copywrite on the name of the original film. And also, to have fun. The Umbrella release is pretty damn cool. And they did the same thing with the Blob. So, check it out if you can.

Well, I think I’m out of things to talk about, so I will say Good Day, Good Night and Don’t let the zombies bite.

What things did I miss?