Sunday, November 18, 2007

Night of the Living Dead

     This movie probably has the largest cult following of all time. Most Cultfiends know it word for word (and I'm sure that it would make for some interesting karaoke). This is another film that was made on a shoestring budget and definitely not expected to be an Oscar winner, but instead, has very much become art personified and still delivers a frightening punch that is truly scary and still very effective. 

      I have an admitted obsession with "living dead" movies. I'm not sure why, I guess it's because of having been through mortuary school and worked in funeral homes, I just find the subject to be most disturbing, terrifying, effective... and also wonderful! Anyway, this is also another movie to be recently colorized by Off Color Film, very interesting. 

      Ok, so Johnny and Barbara are at the cemetery putting a wreath on their dead father's grave. In a joking manner, Johnny teases his sister saying "They're coming to get you, Barbara." and "Look, there comes one of them now". Barbara notices a man stumbling towards them and wants to apologize for her brothers' rudeness but instead, he attacks her. 

      She barely gets away with her life which is more than I can say for her brother. She makes it to an old farmhouse (the owner turns out to be a meat salad at the top of the stairs) and holes up there with a man who manages to get to the farmhouse just as his truck runs out of gas. He tells her about other attacks going on outside, she slowly loses it and becomes hysterical and then is basically mute for the rest of the movie. 

      Soon we learn that there are people hiding in the basement. A young local couple and an obnoxious man and his barely tolerant wife. Their kid is also downstairs and is sick due to being bitten by one of those "things" out there. 

      One gripping aspect of this movie is the dynamics between all the people in the house. They fight and bicker over everything, but if they'd only gotten along and helped each other, they might have made it through the night, but instead, they all pulled in different directions, and eventually, everybody is killed sooner or later.  Calm nerves are now a distant memory, having been replaced by shattered ones now that creepy walking corpses keep banging their way through the windows and doors. 

      This film was the beginning of the careers of two of the most respected people in the movie industry... George Romero and Tom Savini. George Romero went on to have a hugely successful directing career and Tom Savini is one of the largest names in the special effects department for more movies than I can count. 

      Night of the living dead has spawned multiple sequels and had countless copycat movies made, including a remake by Tom Savini himself in the early '90s. But who better to do a remake than someone who was there from the beginning? Most remakes are really bad, but I can honestly say that it was actually really well done and stuck to the original script except for an interesting new twist ending.  

     Night of the Living Dead was also credited for being the first movie to have a black man as the main hero of the film, which didn't happen much in the 1960s.  George Romero has addressed this by simply saying that he wasn't really trying to be revolutionary, Duane Jones just happen to be the best actor out of all our friends.  This is as classic as they come. A must for any Cult fanatic!


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