Night Of The Living Dead

Seeing Night of the Living Dead today, one can hardly believe that it scared the living daylights out of moviegoers some dozen years ago. Not that it isn't still lots of fun (it is) or doesn't have moments that are still quite spooky (it does), but it is tame compared to all those gruesome low budget horror films it has spawned, including its more brutal but less satisfying sequel Dawn of the Dead (1978). Today one is more likely to laugh at the picture's considerable wit than hide under a chair. 

One of the most successful independently made films ever, Night of the Living Dead was produced by a small Pittsburgh production company which had specialized in making industrial films, political spots, and commercials and had never been involved in entertainment films. Likewise, George Romero (now a major "cult director") had never made a feature before, his only experience in that area having come when he was a nineteen-year-old grip on Hitchcock's North by Northwest (1959). Romero had written the original story-" an allegory," he told Filmmakers Newsletter, "meant to draw a parallel between what people are becoming and the idea that people are operating on many levels of insanity that are only clear to themselves"-and he and nine other frustrated filmmakers invested six hundred dollars apiece to convert it into a film. 

Romero cast the picture with unknowns and amateurs (with townspeople playing the ghouls), and production began-although Romero and John Russo were still working on the script. Production was forced to stop cold on several occasions while Romero found additional financing; in time he came up with another hundred thousand dollars by showing potential investors completed footage and selling them stock in the picture. And after thirty shooting days, staggered over a seven-month period, the film was completed. Columbia turned the picture down because it wasn't in color, and AIP rejected it because it has no romance and has a downbeat ending; but the Walter Reade Organization agreed to distribute it, and soon it was playing on the bottom of the bill in drive-ins and neighborhood theaters showing triple features. If ever a picture became a hit because of favorable word-of-mouth, this is it. Horror aficionados stumbled upon it in run-down theaters on New York's Forty-second Street or in drive-ins in the sticks, and soon spread the word that they had "discovered a masterpiece of the genre."  Critics started tracking down prints, and their reaction was equally enthusiastic. Living Dead had risen out of its coffin and was suddenly in demand all over the country. Lines formed around the block, and the picture quickly made back its cost thirty times over. Art houses booked it, and film societies, and then the Museum of Modern Art. When people had seen it several times, Night of the Living Dead moved to the midnight movie circuit (way back in 1969!), where it attracted a new audience as well as repeaters. Still today, it remains one of the most popular midnight movies.  

Just as many films have been influenced by Living Dead, it likewise is a derivative film. Romero himself cites those lurid, pre-comic-code EC comics (especially Tales From the Crypt) as inspiration, as well as Richard Matheson's I Am Legend, the exciting novel about the sole human survivor in a world of mutants that has been the basis of several dull pictures. Among the films with which Living Dead has most in common are: The Invisible Invaders (1953), in which a group of scientists are trapped in a house that is under siege from ghouls that like those in the Romero work seem to be sleep-walking; Carnival of Souls (1960), an excellent, eerie independent feature (made in Lawrence, Kansas) about a blonde who refuses to acknowledge that she is already dead and is terrified by the ghouls around her: and Hitchcock's The Birds (1963), in which a group of people barricade themselves in a house to protect themselves from creatures (birds) that are inexplicably killing human beings. Hitchcock's influence on Romero is quite evident: the silent passages, the collision montage (rapid-fire, rhythmic editing of powerful images), the series of (character) reaction shots, filmed from below at sharp angles-just as Hitchcock framed his characters in The Birds when they were fearfully listening to the birds hammer away at the house. When Barbara climbs the stairs and discovers the face of a half-eaten cadaver, we must think of Psycho; as we do when Karen stabs Helen many times with a trowel and the camera aims high to the peak point where Karen lifts the weapon-much like how the camera concentrates on the knife that kills Martin Balsam in the Hitchcock film. Pessimistic and unsentimental, Living Dead is so effective because it is totally without pretension. It works on basic fears: unrelenting terror, monsters, darkness, claustrophobia. "Aliens" attack us on American soil; protectors, even blood relations, turn on one another (it was wise on Romero's part to have Johnny be Barbara's brother instead of her boyfriend because when he "eats" her it becomes strictly an image of horror-and not sexual in any way). 

The black-and-white photography, necessitated by the low budget, contributes to the nightmarish look of the film. It starts out as Barbara's nightmare but it swiftly becomes ours too-especially if we identify with Barbara-and we wish someone was capable of answering her oft-asked question, "What's happening?" In other films in which people are holed up in a house while threatening monsters lurk outside, the people are there for shelter. To protect their house_ to plan strategy, to battle the monster(s), or to give themselves logistical advantage (the house becomes a fort) in the fight. The Birds and Living Dead are exceptional in that the people congregate in the house for one reason only: fear. These people don't know what to do or where to go. They only know that they want to get out of the area as quickly as possible-they are not interested in fighting with ghouls, just saving themselves. The realization that they are incapable of battling these monsters-their undisguised terror-is one of the major reasons, I believe, Living Dead succeeds in scaring audiences. What also scares them is that they don't feel that anyone-including Ben (the hero) and Barbara (the heroine)-will survive, especially since the performers are all unknowns and thus are, in movie terms, expendable. 

Along the way there are several scary moments. I particularly like the opening sequence. Johnny starts to frighten Barbara, using a Boris Karloff voice, jokingly telling her that the strange-looking man stumbling toward them is "coming to get you." When the man (being a ghoul) does in fact grab her despite Johnny's presence and without being the least bit sneaky about it, we are startled. When Barbara flees the ghoul, who has killed Johnny, she finds "safety" in a car. We remember all those horror films in which the guy tells the girl to stay locked inside the car where she'll be safe while he goes off to find out what is making the noises in the bushes. But, as we suspected and Romero knew, "the girl" isn't safe at all-and the ghoul starts to pound away at the car, rocking it back and forth and smashing the window with a large stone. Barbara sits inside, helpless and in definite jeopardy. I don't find anything that happens later as scary as this opening sequence, but it has the lasting effect of letting viewers know that nothing in this film is predictable-even to those who know the horror genre inside out. 

Throughout the film there are nice horror touches. I like it when Barbara looks at the face of a dead ghoul lying on the floor and the camera studies (in close-up) its bloody head, which suddenly moves. . . . We jump. . . . Luckily, it turns out that the ghoul is not moving by itself but only because Ben is pulling it out of the house. Also I like it when the catatonic Barbara, one of the few movie heroines who is not required by cinematic convention to get over the loss of a loved one in five minutes of screen time-sits alone in the living room, the camera alternately making a slow zoom toward her face and toward the radio, on which a newscaster (who wrote his own copy, incidentally) speaks of ghouls on murder sprees across the country. This isn't meant to build toward a shock moment, and nothing happens, but this scene adds greatly to the film's tension. The one true "jump-out-of-your-seats" moment comes when Ben walks close to a wall and hands suddenly come through the windows and grab himmuch like the asylum patients shooting their hands through the bars in Bedlam (1946). 

"The zombies are us," says Romero. "We create them so we can kill them off, justifying ourselves-it's a kind of penance, self-exorcism." Unfortunately,Romero's zombies aren't very frightening. In fact,  they're kind of silly, wearing dumpy clothes and walking around as if they'd just downed a fifth of bourbon. You wouldn't even have wanted to associate with these people when they were alive. As for the scenes in which they eat the innards (donated by an investor who was a butcher) of their victims, I think Romero mistakenly lets us see the feast up close. It is much ghastlier when we just hear slurping noises. Of course, the ghouls are, in a way, meant to contribute to the picture's absurd humor. Why else have one ghoul eat a worm off a tree, or a nude ghoul walk by with a morgue ticket still on her, or so many participate in what seems to be an Indian war dance around the truck? They definitely contribute to the film's intentional campiness. So do the amateurish performances of the lead actors and the overly dramatic internecine squabbling of their characters. 

Most interesting is the ongoing rivalry between Ben and Harry. This is played mostly for laughs ("Shut up," Ben tells Harry to end every conversation), but it also serves to complement the ghouls' attack from outside with some in-the-house hostilities. Much praise has been given the film because the lead, Duane Jones, is black and no mention is made of this in the script. If Romero was, in fact, thinking in terms of color when he cast Jones, he would have certainly made the scowling, clench-fisted, loudmouthed Harry a bigot who would spit racial slurs at Ben-this would have been perfectly believable considering what we already know about Harry. Harry is a cowardly bully who cares only about himself, and Ben is brave and concerned about the welfare of the others in his house; so whatever our race,  we side with Ben. Yet, if we were in the house with  these two men, maybe we should think again. It took  me many years to realize this, but Ben, our hero, turns  out to be terribly wrong when he adamantly tells everyone that they have a better chance for survival if  they remain upstairs with him instead of following Harry's advice and locking themselves in the basement. Everyone dies as a result of following Ben's lead and coming upstairs-and ironically, Ben alone survives the  night and keeps away from the ghouls by locking  himself in the basement. Has anyone else noticed this?   -Danny Peary, Cult Movies