THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS OF THE DISCUSSED FILM. READERS DISCRETION IS ADVISED.
Sometimes, you just can’t tell who is and is not a monster until it’s too late.
PLOT
Night of the Living Dead follows Barbra attend a cemetery to pay respects to her late father. As her brother Johnny (Russell Streiner) taunts her that someone spooky is after her, the joke becomes reality when a pale man kills man in her very eyes, crushing his head on a tombstone. When Barbra drives away, she crashes into a tree and continues going on foot. When she finds a farmhouse, she’d be furthermore terrified when finding a corpse half eaten on the stairs. The place would be surrounded outside by multiple ghoulish people, but she’d be protected by a man named Ben who burns one that breaks in. They then board up the house together and hear on the radio of how there’s a mass wave of people proving they’re not what they seem committing mass murder across the Eastern United States. As Barbra becomes catatonic, Ben meets multiple people that were hiding in the cellar. A man named Henry was with his wife Helen and young daughter Karen, as well as another pair named Tom & Judy (Judith Riley). Ben scolds Henry for refusing to help, especially when he believes the cellar to be safer than upstairs. As they continue shooting down the horde of ghouls approaching, more keep coming due to being attracted to the noise. Henry also defends his case with the fact Karen got bit by one of them before hiding. Judy watches over the child while the others listen to the news and get an update that the mass are committing cannibalism, possibly due to radiation exposure from a satellite that returned from Venus, and can die from brain damage and being burnt which is exactly how Ben has been killing them. The news also reports the insistence on finding the closest rescue stations set up by the military. Ben plans to get some medical supplies for Karen before heading to said station. Tom & Judy join him holding things off as long as they could, but the couple die from a gas explosion. This results in Ben heading back on his own, by Henry refuses to let him in. When he breaks down the barricade on the door, he reinforces it before fighting Henry for his cowardice. The latter tries to shoot him, but he disarms him and shoots him first in self defense, causing the father to die next to his child. Karen would reawaken as an undead ghoul and proves her undead ghoul when eating her dad and killing her mom with a trowel. When Barbra tries to help Ben maintain the barricade, she gets overwhelmed by her undead brother. Ben is able to defend himself for the remainder of the night because by next morning, the horde of the undead are wiped out by an armed posse. When he emerges from the cellar, he is mistaken to be one of them and the film ends with him being shot down and burnt with the rest of the ghouls.
THOUGHTS
The term ‘zombie’ comes from Haitian folklore in which a dead body is brought back to life with voodoo. George Romero heard this word and gave a spin at it that in his directorial debut, which became its own subgenre in the world of horror. Knowing this, it’s hard to say disappointed anyone in the long haul after its 1968 release. Due to a small budget, the violence can be tame compared to later films but whatever you get to see, you’re still surprised. The creatures here are so relentless just to feast that they’ll arm themselves just to get to you which is a rare thing to see now. You’re already on the edge with the idea that your undead relative could seal your fate or a complete stranger getting aggressive when pursuing you, but the imagination just gets uncanny when the possibility of a child wanting to kill you, the latter being well performed by Kyra Schon. I think the reason this movie stands the test of time due to how grounded it still felt in reflecting social commentary as in people will show their true colors when they’re scared. You can be a leader wanting to do right by others or be a coward and be more concerned for your own well being. That’s the dynamic you sense when following interesting characters that are so relatable you see it as the formula for each of these movies that’d come after. We all love Duane Jones as Ben because he’s still able to be resourceful and calm despite being scared like everyone around him and that fear motivates him to survive as well as not put up with any egos that think differently. Karl Hardman was accurately hostile as Harry to the point where you’d think the guy has prejudice towards the natural leader. The big irony is that they were both right when it came to protecting themselves because even though the cellar was safer than expected, it was still smart to defend the living room which would’ve lessened the need to go the cellar. Ben’s death was the most upsetting of the whole film because it destroyed all the hope we were investing in, believing that’s how we should feel in reality. Harry’s death would be only ironic since he drew his last breath in the one place he said to be safe. If it wasn’t enough, Ben wasn’t the only victim in this story. Judith O’Dea was so interesting as Barbra because you can relate to the catatonic feeling she’s going through. Seeing her brother die from something she couldn’t have expected, her hope was at the last straw in an instant and since she barely had the motivation to do defend herself. By the time her brother returned in shocking fashion, you can simply she was put out of misery. I also dug Tom since Keith Wayne was way more optimistic compared to Harry as he saw how Ben was seeing things. He and Judy getting killed sucked as well since they put a better effort in being helpful. Lastly, Marilyn Eastman spiced things up as well when playing Helen because she was self aware that her husband had a trail of being self centered and had the right to call him out at every opportunity. If that was enough to save her and daughter from their grim fates, the troubles would’ve been over sooner. In short, Night of the Living Dead is undoubtedly a backbone to horror for making the unconventional conventional. If you’re interested in where the root of zombies begun, look no further with this one.
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