Luke
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CibbuanoNight of the Living Dead
June 12th 2006 11:56
Night of the Living Dead
The plot? Young folk joke about the undead. One of them get's scared. The undead appear and wreak havoc. Group of strangers hole themselves up in a cottage as scores of zombies home in on them in their quest for human flesh. It's cheesy, but in a good almost-kitschy way. Of course, this sort of stuff seems cliched now, but this low-fi low-budget horror film pretty much got there first, inventing genre conventions that would eventually give way to such cliches. It's quick to get to the action, perhaps afraid that it's audience will otherwise tune out if it doesn’t give something worth seeing straight-up, and then slowly builds a bigger picture of apocalyptic proportions from there (all on the cheap of course, cleverly using radio and television broadcasts to portray a country-wide crisis).
Now, I saw this as a fairly newly-released DVD, and I think the original score has been replaced - as it stands, the music is rather odd and I don't really know what to make of it. There's a bit too much melodrama in the middle (probably there to pad the film out a bit) and I feel it just slows things down too much to see bad actors play arguing characters for more than a few minutes. Interesting to note that the word 'zombie' is never actually used, and I was a little surprised by the level of gore considering the film was made in 1968... then again, I guess that's what you call 'ahead of it's time'.
It's a fun film nonetheless, and as far as I’m concerned the creepy ending is what really makes it a worthy film. I came for the cannibalistic zombies, but stayed for the black dude with the shotgun. Insert 'moaning brain-craving sound' here.
TRIVIA: Director George A. Romero followed 'Night of the Living Dead' with two sequels - 'Dawn of the Dead' and 'Day of the Dead', a remake, and most recently, ‘Land of the Dead’.
Bosco chocolate syrup was used for blood.
Muuuhhhh!!!
The extras who played zombies were paid $1 each and given shirts that said "I was a zombie on Night of the Living Dead".
'Night of the Living Dead' is considered public domain, due to a copyright being accidentally left off when the film's title was changed during production. Hence you can find many various releases of this film for only a few bucks.
SEE ALSO: 'Carnival of Souls' (1962), which director Romero readily admits as a big influence on 'Night of the Living Dead'.
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Comment by Cibbuano
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I've come around to the Romero series... I recently re-watched Dawn and Day of the Dead and they're fascinating...less about the zombies and more about how we're our own worst enemies...
Comment by Luke
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