Night of the Living Dead (1968)

ridiculous rating

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

George Romero's black & white cult low budget zombie film, Night of the Living Dead is now regarded as a seminal classic.It is not a great film. The acting is ropy, the zombie effects are not that good and it is too talky. However it did rewrite the rules for low budget horror films.Two siblings are visiting their father's grave and are attacked by a strange looking drifter. The woman, Barbara (Judith O'Dea) runs to an abandoned farmhouse to escape him.Ben (Duane Jones) a black man also escapes to the farmhouse where she meets Barbara who is in shock. Ben barricades both of them inside the farmhouse by reinforcing the doors and windows.They encounter several other people who have been hiding out in the cellar. They learn on the radio that radiation contamination from a space probe has somehow reactivated the brain of dead people. These people were now devouring the flesh of the living who themselves would come back as zombies.It is a classic base under siege scenario with various types of people bickering, arguing and reluctantly joining forces. The film is notable that the lead is played by a black actor who is ordering the other survivors around, even shouting at them. In retrospect that looks like a brave piece of casting.Jones does give the film's best performance. O'Dea is pretty bad though, the zombies are more animated than her.

I should alert readers that I am not very knowledgeable about the modern zombie genre, so my review should be taken accordingly as one by an unenlightened old geezer who is not at all hip to the twenty first century.This classic horror movie's greatest strength is its carefully developed and successful "creepiness factor" by director George Romero. After many viewings, I am still terrified when the man walking among the cemetery monuments (Bill Heinzman) suddenly begins to attack Barbara (Judith O'Dea) before moving on to her brother, Johnny, (Russell Streiner), and then begins to chase her into an isolated farmhouse before being joined by what becomes an army of his fellow ghouls, mysteriously raised from the dead. Heinzman not only imitates Karloff very well, but he looks like him! It's my worst nightmare being brought to life on the screen.Although the music is stock material, it was well chosen for its fear effect and downright creepiness. Considering its low budget, Romero's ability to create such a spine-chilling movie is very impressive and commendable.One of the problems with the film, however, is that it fails to sustain the intensity of its opening scenes and loses its punch along the way. I understand that the dialogue was often spontaneous, but it was also often weak, as was much of the acting. This may be controversial, but I didn't get the racial theme that many IMDb reviewers mentioned. I saw Ben as Ben without regards to his race. Harry views both Ben and Tom, who is white, with contempt, and I didn't understand why Ben didn't shout out "Help! I'm not a zombie!" as soon as he heard gunshots outside. He had to know that the zombies were incapable of shooting weapons. Also, the scientists and military officials in Washington were not very credible. They were actually laughable, as was their dialogue.In spite of the weaknesses, this film remains as a remarkable, pioneering classic in the horror genre, and I will continue to watch it and fear it.

Finally after all these years watched the cult hit classic of the now late George A. Romero's "1968's" "Night of the living Dead". And for it's time this low budget independent picture was a masterpiece that helped change the landscape and gave upcoming horror films a new path to follow. For 1968 and being in black and white it had plenty of gore, death, and blood. And even a few twists and turns in the plot were found.Set in Pennsylvania in a small farm town the nearby graveyard starts to come alive and one by the dead have risen! And oddly enough this is a panic and epidemic that is all over the country!It's a battle of will and determination for survival against the walking undead! Many will not like this film when comparing today's standards of special effects, graphics, and "CGI" yet one can see that this old classic was a gateway to current hits like "The Walking Dead".

This was director George A. Romero's feature film debut — wild to think about considering the classics he has under his belt now (Dawn of the Dead, Creepshow, Monkey Shines) and just how known his name is. Reading some of the reviews that were made at the time is equally wild, such as this one from The New York Times: "Night of the Living Dead is a grainy little movie acted by what appear to be nonprofessional actors, who are besieged in a farm house by some other nonprofessional actors who stagger around, stiff-legged, pretending to be flesh- eating ghouls."I mean, they aren't wrong, but this movie still holds up as a cult classic among horror lovers — who HASN'T said "they're coming to get you, Barbra!" in an imitation of poor short-lived Johnny's voice? It did well upon its release, too — despite a budget of just $114,000 it grossed $12 million domestically and $18 million internationally. It seems surprising now, since much of mainstream horror is FILLED with unspeakably disturbing images, that it was criticized at the time for its "explicit gore". It's part one of three (followed by Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead) — the stories for each film all written at the same time but executed with quite a few years in between each release — and Romero has talked about it being heavily influenced by Richard Matheson's 1954 novel I Am Legend.It was the first movie to introduce the modern idea of a zombie — though they never use the actual word, opting instead for both "murderer" and "ghoul" — as a reanimated, flesh-devouring creature.It's heavily ad-libbed and roughly shot — no real bells and whistles here, though I admired the stark black and white and the use of shadow and light throughout. I think it added to the movie in a real way to have it feel so raw and real.Whether it was initially intended by Romero or not, there's lots of commentary and themes throughout: on society in the 60's as a whole and peoples' disillusionment towards law enforcement and authority as a whole, the Vietnam war ("We may not enjoy living together, but dying together isn't going to solve anything."), and racism (Ben being chased by an all white zombie mob with a torch was very reminiscent of the Ku Klux Klan, the upper class white man being offended and angry by Ben not ceding to his wishes and to his grabs for power, Ben surviving an attack of the undead only to be killed by a group of white law enforcement). Romero has said that he didn't cast Ben — a black lead among an entirely white cast — on purpose, or as any kind of statement; he said he simply gave the best audition. But once Duane Jones was cast and they started filming, they became aware of the symbolism and the themes that it was important to play into. In general, it was less about monsters turning against people, but people turning against people — there is no real community formed, no solid efforts to work together to face the threats head on. They are very divided throughout the whole film, and more of them are killed by human error and mistakes rather than the undead themselves.Barbra was like a silent movie star — so expressive despite not much dialogue. She becomes almost catatonic early on in the movie, and there's lots of tension between her and Ben in several scenes — again, playing into the racism and general attitude towards people of color in the 60's.I do love that they never call them "zombies" — one of the news reports on the radio said "there is an epidemic of mass murder being committed by a virtual army of unidentified assassins", they are called "marauding ghouls", and, one of my favorite lines: "yeah, they're dead, they're all messed up". Apt.There's several amazing shots that I loved: the shot of the open field as the ghouls all silently lurch toward the house is great. The overall feeling of dread and suffocation is awesome. Them feasting on the bodies in the car was definitely a contributor to the "explicit gore" mentioned. And the zombie daughter killing her own mother by repeated stabs with a spade — as writer R.H.W. Dillard, a defender of the taboo in the film, said, "What girl has not, at one time or another, wished to kill her mother?".But maybe my favorite was when the zombies finally are fully encircling the house, beating on doors and windows, and the camera pans to each actor as they express their concern and fear, the lighting as dramatic as ever, everyone SO expressive. The ghouls are slow but unrelenting, and in that moment you kind of feel the full weight of hopelessness.And then there's the ending — solidifying humans being more dangerous to one another than any outside force, the unreliability of those in power, and the fear of any "outsiders" clouding our judgment to a fatal degree. I loved the darkness of it, the finality.I don't think I even need to say it, but it's a classic for a reason — worth a watch if you've never had the pleasure (or a re-watch if you have!).