Night of the Living Dead - Millenium Edition Super Review Review

One of the most influential, iconic and most effective horror films of all time remains 1968's Night of the Living Dead, directed by George Romero.

Shot in 1967 on 35-mm. black and white, with a budget of around $14,000, it was created and made by a team of perfectionists who made commercials and industrial videos and films in Pittsburgh PA.. They put everything they could possibly muster into making the best possible low budget independent horror flick.

 It was strongly influenced by two earlier films; Carnival of Lost Souls and The Flesh Eaters  (Stephen King writes about this ias part of the booklet in the Millenium Edition DVD from Elite).  It was also influenced by a wonderful British import called FIEND WITHOUT A FACE (available in a beautiful --though not cheap-- Criterion disc). FIEND'S climax of the "flying brains with tails" who want to suck out their victim's spinal chords crashing through boarded up windows looks and feels like two of the most memorable zombie attacks in NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD.

Today's horror fans may not have the perspective to understand how truly groundbreaking, controversial and frightening NIGHT was to audiences in 1968 and throughout the 1970s.  It created of course not just a whole new sub-genre of films involving flesh eating Zombie movies, but showed how to do movies without happy endings, and with political subtexts and messages inside (like racism is here).  

The roots of NIGHT can be found in the 1950's with Howard Hawk's original 'The Thing', and Don Siegel's 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' (McCarthy Era)--"the enemy is us". 'Night of the Living Dead' (even with the slight explanation that a Venus space probe might have somehow caused the zombies to get up and party) deals not with alien forces overtaking humans, but humans fighting themselves and soul-less versions of themselves for survival.

Writer-Producers George Romero and John Russo have stated they weren't consciously making an outright political statement when they cast the black Duane Jones as the lead character, nor even with how the film ends-- but political statements were made very loudly regardless. It's important to understand the part Duane Jones playes was supposed to be a touch macho white truck driving man.  It was NOT re-written when Jones took over-- and that is very significant.  Jones stepped into a role not written to be played by a black man and it was significantly re-written to accommodate an African-American.

Having Duane Jones as the protagonist of a film-without making a big issue within the movie or the audience about his being black was a very, very big deal in 1968 when the film was released. This was not an obvious overly written message picture like  ‘Guess Who's Coming to Dinner' this was a low budget, horror flick, made by people who made commercials for ad agencies in Pittsburgh,Pennsylvania. It quietly made an important statement. Romero, Russo and producer Russell Streiner didn't think all that much about the casting of Duane Jones because they had been casting jazz musician friends and others in their commercials whenever they could anyway. And that is exactly the point. It shouldn't have mattered and it didin't to the filmmakers-but it created waves of controversy and discussion all across 1968 America.

I first saw Night of the Living Dead in the early 1970s.  It was considered one of the most disturbing and grosses films ever made and absolutely inappropriate for a child of 14 or 15 to view. In some communities it was censored, in others it was banned outright, and in others it was shown only at special midnight shows.   It was not on video, it was not on television.    

Watching it today you see a black and white film with some disturbing images and very effective suspense, but the gore is tamer than what you see on network television shows every night and certainly less gory than CBS'  CSI  series.

None of the people who made or starred in the movie made very much money from the movie.  The distributors and supposedly a couple of mafia families made money distributing the film.  They did not put an official copyright seal on the movie, so it wound up being a public domain film that people copies and distributed  and later put on video without paying money to any of the filmmakers or actors.

There was big fallout between scriptwriters Russo and Romero and they split up the idea. Romero re-launched, modernized and updated the film magnificently with DAWN OF THE LIVING DEAD in 1979. And after DAWN the zombie films kept coming and coming. Some of the good ones included: Fulci's THE BEYOND, the campy ‘RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD‘. Raimi's EVIL DEAD films, Peter-‘Lord of the Rings'- Jackson's DEAD ALIVE a.k.a. ‘Brain Dead'). And the Romero's  DAY OF THE DEAD and the recent LAND OF THE DEAD. 

"Kill the brain and you kill the ghoul."

On one level, we have a simple and spare horror film: . Barbara (Judith O'Dea) and Johnny (played by one of the film's producer's Russell Streiner) are paying their respects to a parent in the graveyard when suddenly Johnny is attacked and killed by a zombie and Barbara runs screaming. Eventually she hides in a nearby farmhouse. When she discovers the horrible corpse at the top of the stairs, she goes into a state of near catatonic shock.

Ben (Duane Jones) soon runs into the house fleeing from zombies that were trying to attack him. It's getting dark and more dangerous as more and more zombies seem to gather outside the house. Ben boards up the windows and protects both Barbara and himself from the hungry, flesh eating zombies that want to get them. Then the people who were hiding in the basement come up to meet Ben and Barbara. They include the young couple, Tom and Judy (Keith Wayne and Judith Ridley), and a family of three, Harry and Helen Cooper (Karl Hardman and Marilyn Eastman) and their injured daughter Karen (Kyra Schon). Harry is a frightened control freak jerk who believes everyone would be safest in the basement. He also nearly gets Ben killed when he acts in a cowardly fashion when the zombies attack and nearly kill him. Conflicts and tension among the trapped humans mount as the Living Dead grow in number, become more restless and hungrier as the night goes on. There is prejudice, there are power plays, and there is jealousy. The film is set up quickly and simply. It builds to a horrific climax and along the way there are a series of shocks and scares. It's claustrophobic. The sense that anything can happen builds until the impossible is accomplished.   And for the few of you who don't know . . . there's a surprise twist at the end.

NIGHT is available on DVD and Video in dozens of cheap versions ranging from $1.99 to $9.99  Avoid them.  Many use censored t.v. prints, others use damaged source materials and do little improve the quality.  

One of the best known DVD releases is the 2 disc, 30th Anniversary of The Night of The Living Dead from Anchor Bay  in 1998.   It's terrible.  George Romero had nothing to do with it.  New color video footage was added to the old film along with some new dialogue, new subplot and terrible soundtrack to create this version. It ruins the film.  On the 2nd disc you'll find a mediocre transfer of the original black and white film.  Junk.

The only  'Night of the Living Dead' DVD to make sure you have in your collection is Elite's Millenium Edition which is still available from Amazon and other places for under $25 bucks.    

The film has been meticulously restored from the best prints that were found  (the original negative of the film was destroyed many years ago because of a basement flood. It was incidentally the same basement we see used in the movie -located in Pittsburgh).  This DVD includes most of the content of the old Elite Laser Disc version with ain improved transfer of the film and sound upgrade.

I was amazed as how beautifully composed and lit the movie is.  It's not the grainy fuzzy movie we've seen on cable or bad video versions at all.  You also get seperate commentary tracks from most of the principles involved with the movie including George Romero. You have the 15 minute final interview of Duane Jones done by Fangoria Magazine, you get the 1990 parody short, Night of the Living Bread,  an interesting clip from Romero's supposedly lost film There's Always Vanilla a.k.a. The Affair (which you can find at Something Weird Video) that  There's the original script, production stills, and more that you can access on your DVD player..   You get outtakes from a short called The Derelict starring actor Harry Cooper that most will care less about it.    I really enjoyed the old commercials (made by the Dead film-makers and starring some of its cast members) from Latent Image. A couple of them are camp classics and Duke Beer is a great commercial. If you're from the East coast or Pittsburgh area you'll get a big kick out of these... there's even an old Iron City Beer commercial (pre-Steelers Beer version).

And remember:

"Yeah, they're dead. They're ALL messed up."