Why ‘Night of the Living Dead’ is the Ultimate Horror Classic You Must Watch!

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#4 in my ranking of George A. Romero’s filmography.

George A. Romero, a partner at The Latent Image – a company specializing in commercial and industrial films – managed to gather limited funds for a horror project with mass appeal. Over a span of nine months, he collaborated with John Russo on the script for this film. The completed work, visually impressive, skillfully combines essential elements of thrilling cinema into an engaging package of horror that significantly shaped modern zombie filmmaking (despite the fact that the term ‘zombie’ is seldom used). Simultaneously, it embodies the spirit of its era (the late 60s), leading viewers to attribute profound symbolism to the movie’s events. However, it’s essential to remember that at its core, this horror film is simply a horror film.

In a narrative twist, Barbra (Judith O’Dea) and her brother Johnny (Bill Moseley) embark on a journey from Pittsburgh to their father’s grave in a secluded part of Pennsylvania. However, their peaceful trip turns into a nightmare when they encounter a silent man who viciously murders Johnny and chases Barbra away, leaving her car behind. The man then transports Barbra to an isolated farmhouse. As the days pass, Ben (Duane Jones) appears on the scene, armed with crucial insights about battling the rapidly growing crowd of mindless individuals amassing outside the house. He advises using fire as a means of defense, and he begins fortifying the house by boarding it up.

From a character perspective, I believe the movie achieves its peak performance here. The enigma has been skillfully set up, and the suspense has been maintained at an optimal level. Now, it’s time to delve deeper into these characters, offering a more intimate look. We’ve already seen Barbara’s initial scenes with her brother at the film’s start, so the spotlight shifts to Ben. He needs to describe his first encounter with the monsters (a scale never before possible within Romero’s budget constraints), and intriguingly, this occurs during a time of necessity. One of the challenges often faced in low-budget horror is an overreliance on dialogue scenes, but Ben dismantles a table to barricade the window while providing this explanation. This practical action, paired with Romero’s thoughtful camera work, results in a captivating sequence that offers multiple layers of character development.

In my opinion, the film loses some intrigue when the four adults emerge from the basement, led by Harry (Karl Hardman), then followed by his wife Helen (Marilyn Eastman), and finally the young couple Tom (Keith Wayne) and Judy (Judith Ridley). The interactions that unfold among them primarily revolve around who has control, whether to stay on the upper floor or in the basement, and surprisingly, there’s no trace of racial tension in their conversations. This is due to Romero writing Ben without any race in mind and simply casting Jones because he was the most talented actor available. This eliminates every interpretation that this film centers around race. Instead, it’s just a horror movie.

The movie aims to guide the six main characters, along with Karen (Kyra Schon), Harry and Helen’s daughter, towards a disaster relief station they discover through a broadcast. This journey is filled with a series of minor objectives like obtaining gas from a locked pump for their vehicle, but things predictably go awry in an unexpectedly dramatic manner. The filmmaking here is suspenseful, gruesome, and horror-oriented, enhanced by the character development given to all characters, even if I found the newer four adults less engaging than Ben. An intriguing twist comes in as Barbra falls into a state of near-unconsciousness for much of the movie due to her brother’s death and the collapse of their surroundings. Her eventual awakening has a darkly comical, cosmic, and gallows tone.

In a rather amusing twist, it’s astonishing how effortlessly small-town law enforcement, including our very own Sheriff George Kosana, appears to handle the looming zombie apocalypse. Gathering a group of trusty companions, he leads them through town with rifles in hand, swiftly dispatching the slow-moving undead with well-aimed headshots. The irony is rich, given that this scene, where entire theories about police brutality against black men have been spawned, seems to be based on nothing but a simplified portrayal of law enforcement. It’s almost comical how far from reality these ideas are when compared to the leisurely paced zombie-hunting depicted here.

The movie delivers a sturdy foundation as a horror film, boasting robust character development and unexpectedly intricate visuals. It was after watching either “The Red Shoes” or “The Tales of Hoffmann,” both by The Archers (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger), known for their exquisite visual aesthetics, that Romero developed a passion for filmmaking. Although it might seem challenging to replicate such visual grandeur in a black-and-white format, Romero skillfully employs shadows, creative camera angles (there’s an intriguing shot of Barbra through a complex music box that stands out), and other techniques to narrate the story in captivating ways, demonstrating Romero’s impressive filmmaking abilities right from the start.

The film, produced during a time of heightened apocalyptic sentiment due to race riots, assassinations like those of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, and the intensifying Vietnam War, seems to reflect this mindset. However, most of these events occurred after the movie was in production, so it doesn’t directly address them. Instead, Romero crafted a film that resonated with the apocalyptic feelings of his audience, who projected their own concerns onto the movie. The essay by Stuart Klawans focuses more on unrelated events that happened post-release rather than the film itself, which raises an intriguing phenomenon: viewers often impose meaning onto works that don’t inherently contain it.

It’s a good horror movie, I’m saying. It’s really not much more than that, though.

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2025-03-04 00:15