Horror Classic 29 of 50: NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD

I've watched a number of zombie movies in this Horror Classics DVD set, all made in the 1930s and '40s, and thus far they've all left a lot to be desired. White Zombie, Revolt of the Zombies, King of the Zombies, Ma and Pa Zombie Back on the Farm -- these were all movies I endured rather than enjoyed.

But to my surprise, this week's horror classic was 1968's Night of the Living Dead, a zombie movie directed by George A. Romero which is so influential they're still making sequels to and knockoffs of it. In fact, this may be the first movie in this box set that can accurately and without question be referred to as both a horror film and a classic. I've never gone out of my way to see zombie movies (I enjoyed 28 Days Later well enough but skipped 28 Weeks Later and had no interest in I Am Legend), but they can be pretty darn effective when done well. So I was curious to see this movie, and especially to see if it still seemed scary.

Synopsis

After some eerie, mood-setting opening credits music, the movie opens on Johnny and Barbara, two adult siblings who have just taken a three-hour one-way drive to place flowers on their father's grave. Okay, so these are our two main characters. As they head back to their car, Johnny sees a dour-looking man walking toward them, and teasingly tells Barbara, "He's coming for you!"

And then... well, the man is coming for them, and he attacks Barbara so Johnny jumps in and fights the guy and they struggle and roll around on the ground and then the guy kills Johnny and then he starts chasing Barbara and she screams and gets in the car and crashes it into a tree and the guy is still chasing her so she runs to an abandoned house and tries to call for help but the phones are out and there are more zombies hanging out outside the house and she runs upstairs and there's a decomposing corpse there!

Whew! We're about seven minutes into the movie, and there's already been more action and thrills than any five of the previous "horror classics" put together. Barbara is completely dazed, so it's a good thing that Ben shows up. He's a quick-thinking dude who beats the tar out of three zombies until they stop moving, then sets fire to them. They're afraid of fire, you see... just like Frankenstein, or the Martian Manhunter, or Mortimer Snerd.

As Ben boards all the windows and doors, Barbara tells him what happened to her... though, curiously, the way she tells it is not exactly the way we just saw it happen onscreen. I don't know whether this was a result of filming out of sequence or on-set improvistion, or a deliberate choice on the filmmakers' part, but it certainly makes sense that the traumatized Barbara would have some of her facts skewed.

Suddenly, there are two other men in the house. Where the heck did they come from? The cellar, actually. Tom and Mr. Cooper have been hiding out there with their respective wives, Judy and Helen, as well as the Coopers' daughter Karen, who was attacked by one of the creatures and is now deathly ill. Mr. Cooper, by the way, has the exact same hair as Daily Show correspondent Rob Corddry. Also, he's kind of a jerkface, yelling at Ben and insisting that everyone stay in the cellar instead of gathering on the ground floor. So... he's definitely gonna die before the movie's over.

The whole area is crawling with zombies, so they can't leave the house. The TV becomes an essential source of information from the outside world, and they learn from the news that this "epidemic of mass murder" includes recently dead folks coming back to life, killing people, then eating their flesh. Which is disgusting. If I had been dead for a few days, I'd come back to life
starving for a #6 combo at Whataburger. (In other words, I'd be craving chicken fingers, not my friends' fingers.) Also, scientists are speculating that the whole horrible outbreak might be connected to a radioactive space probe that recently crashed back to Earth after investigating Venus.

Soon, the men devise a plan. Cooper will hurl Molotov cocktails at the creatures while Ben and Tom run to the gas pump outside and fill up Ben's pickup truck. Then everyone will escape in the truck. But first, Tom and Judy share an emotional moment, and danged if it wasn't actually pretty affecting. They're all in love and stuff, and she's worried something might happen to them.

Next: Cooper throws Molotov cocktails, aggressively! The zombies recoil, fearfully! Ben and Tom dash outside, quickly! Judy follows them, unexpectedly! They put gas in the truck, but the encroaching zombies cause them to spill some, and a fire starts. BOOM! The truck blows up, with Tom and Judy still inside.

Now it's really anyone's game. Up to this point, I was fully expecting that about a third of the characters would survive, but now I wasn't so sure. Could it be that the winners in this movie are... the zombies?

Is It Scary?

It's only the scariest movie out of 29 horror classics I've watched so far. I guess that's not really saying a lot when previous contenders have included The Giant Gila Monster, but yes, it's scary. And occasionally yucky. I was very surprised to see, in an American film made before the existence of the MPAA ratings system, a scene of zombies hungrily chewing on their victims' torn-off body parts.

Lessons I Learned:

• Well, "zombies are afraid of fire" seems to be an important one. After all, you never know...

My Favorite Line:

• TV Reporter: "Are they [the zombies] slow-moving, Chief?"
  Police Chief: "Yeah, they're dead. They're... all messed up."

My Favorite Tie:
Johnny's polka-dotted necktie, which I only wish I could have seen in color.

Body Count:
Sixteen! A new record, if I'm not mistaken. That's including the zombies who were re-killed, as well as the DVD set's very first trowel killing. A trowel!

Comments:
• I'm not intimately familiar with the history of horror movies (or the horror of history movies), but I'm guessing you could effectively divide the genre in half: Everything before Night of the Living Dead and everything after. The high body count, the flesh-eating scenes, the good guys fighting amongst themselves... There's a lot here that would inform horror movies for decades after. And today, zombies are making a comeback, including that book World War Z, which certainly drew on this film and its follow-ups for inspiration.

• Ben, with his bravery and resourcefulness, emerges as the leader of the group and the hero of the film. For a film made in the 60s it seems unusual to see this character played by a black actor (Duane Jones), so I guess that's another way in which this movie was progressive and influential.

• The part where the zombies ate people was really gross. Really gross. Yecch. It was not nearly as graphic as similar scenes in today's terrible horror movies, but how did this get released in theaters in 1968? Not only that, there were a few instances of swearing that took me aback.

• The officials in the TV reports refer to the undead creatures as "ghouls" rather than "zombies." When did Hollywood make up their mind about what a zombie was? Some of those earlier movies depicted zombies are merely being hypnotized humans, which is like, totally lame compared to this.

• The explanation of the reanimated corpses as being the product of radiation from Venus was unnecessary. I think I would have preferred it if there were no explanation at all for the zombies' existence. The sci-fi element clashes with the more earthy feel of the rest of the film, I think. However, it does open the door for a series of relationship books called "Men Are From Mars, Zombies Are From Venus."

• I know this film praised for its use of metaphor... but I'm just a country bumpkin so I couldn't quite pick up on what the zombies were a metaphor for (metafor?). I'm guessing that the way the police handled the zombie invasion is meant as a critique of the US military's efforts to ward off Communism... but I could be way off. After I post this, I should go to my local library and Read All About It. Or, you know, check out the external links on IMDb.

• Now I'm interested in seeing George Romero's other "living dead" movies. Has anyone seen them? Are they all worth watching?

Letter grade for Night of the Living Dead: A
Next film in the 50-movie set: Doomed to Die. Not to be confused with that horror classic about Easter eggs, Doomed to Dye.