Night of the Living Dead
George Romero
I enjoyed “Zombie Week” with two classics: World War Z and Night of the Living Dead. The contrast between them is one of openness versus claustrophobia, macro versus micro, process versus passion.
In Night of the Living Dead, Romero uses close perspective to place viewers inches away from the ghouls and their victims. I felt trapped in the house along with Ben, Barbara, and Harry. The group has only a slim chance at life—Death is pounding on the door. Both the film and World War Z are gory, but Night of the Living Dead is literally “no holds barred,” and the horror is both inside and outside the house. There is no escape to an above-it-all perspective like in World War Z, at least not until that last overhead shot of the police searchers (Romero used a blimp for that shot!) That makes it more terrifying by far.
I’ll share some bullet points of moments that struck me as I watched Night of the Living Dead for the first time in many years:
• First, that cricket. It chirps for most of the movie.
• Barbara’s partial wig, called a “fall” in the sixties, is a classic. I love her growing preoccupation with running her fingers over the textures of fabric as her sanity slips away. Ghouls are busting down the door, and she’s like, “Ooh, this lace is nice!”
• Night falls awfully fast--one moment, zombie number one is walking around in daylight, the next moment, Barbara looks out the window, and it’s full dark. Continuity issues abound with windows that look out onto daylight even though it’s nighttime.
• Finally, Ben mentions several times that he’s finished boarding up the first-floor windows, each time with an un-boarded-up window right behind him. That window never gets boarded up.
• The zombies look a lot like dead people, more so than the zombies of today. They walk with a stiffness that is unmatched by modern films. There are more “everyday,” identifiable types of characters, like middle-aged women in nightgowns. This makes their undead status more frightening. The single, unclothed woman is horrifying.
• The zombies love “takeout.” Unlike modern zombies who munch on victims where they fall, these creeps carry their arms, legs, and intestines across the yard.
• The zombies use tools and aren’t as dumb as most modern ones. They are aware of each other and fight over victims’ remains.
• The final, perhaps allegorical, scene where the clean-up crew use meat hooks to carry Ben off to the pile is difficult for me to watch. It reminds me of all the violence that our black population has endured. However, Romero didn’t deliberately cast a black man in the role. The symbolic element appears to reference the dehumanizing ways we treat each other.
• Those intestines are one of the most disturbing images I have ever seen. That shot has stayed with me all my life. Far worse than anything in The Walking Dead. The low-budget, high-contrast cinematography gives the shot a Weegee-esque tabloid quality that is more real than modern HD shots. It looks like historical footage. Awful how the ghoul fights off the others who are trying to steal them. And… they’re slippery. That’s the worst part.
There’s a great interview with Romero in Variety that has only recently surfaced. I love what he said about the sheriff: “The sheriff wasn’t actually a sheriff or an actor. He was just a mill hand. Just a beautiful guy. One of those guys you can put in front of a camera or in front of ten thousand people and he’ll just be himself.”
Romero also said that the film's crudeness was partially due to budget and partly by design. This crudeness is almost a character in itself and has helped the film to become a horror classic