Back to Basics – NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD

A little while back, I opened my mailbox and discovered some zombies.

Perhaps I should explain.

Upon learning that I’d never seen any of George Romero’s zombie films, Kai Parker was nice enough to send me a dvd copy of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. The one caveat was that I had to write about it after I watched it. Well a deal’s a deal, so please take a look after the jump for my take on the granddaddy of all zombie movies.

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD doesn’t hold any sort of title as the “first zombie film”. Yet for many enthusiasts, it is mentioned as the starting point. It re-invented the genre in a way, and made the undead less of a supernatural entity and more of a viral passing, flesh-eating mob. In many ways, it invented the genre…which would account for its status as the starting point.

What caught me the most off-guard, was how unexpectedly dark the film got in its final act. I’m not talking about violence or gore. I’m talking pure bleak hopelessness. The characters continually disagree on the best plan to survive, which is to be expected since they are facing a danger unique to all of them. But by the time the dust settles, every single survival plan is torn apart…along with the potential survivor planning it.

It’s like the Agatha Christie story Ten Little Indians, but with a platoon of walking dead scratching at the door.

Like the creatures themselves, this dark violence isn’t shocking, loud, or fast. In this film, the dark fate is slow, lumbering, omnipresent, and inescapable. Our heroes are doing all they can to survive, but the irony is “all they can” is confined to a running start. The saying goes that most of us want our death to be quick and painless – and if we had to choose one of the two, we almost all say “quick”. Unfortunately for our heroes, their fate is neither quick nor painless.

For me, what makes this film so effective and so frightening is simplicity. As I’ve worked on upping my horror IQ, I’ve discovered that the films that disturb me the most don’t rely very heavily on effects. The zombies in NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD aren’t all that scary to look at. However, when you take these less-than-scary beings, film them in a gritty black and white, and have them continue to sway in the nighttime like strangers on the lawn, and things get scary in a hurry.

We would all like to believe that the difference between life and death isn’t as simple as “upstairs or downstairs?”. Unfortunately, in NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD such simple decisions are the difference, and there’s no margin for error. You’d like to believe that faced with certain doom, you’d have the option to run as fast as you ever have. That these characters don’t have that option is terrifying.

The cherry on the zombie sundae that is NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD is its exposure. Because of an early title change, the film holds no copyright. This means that it can be shown on TV without the station having to pay a penny. (A similar fate befell IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE for a while, but there is no eating of guts in that film). This opportunity for wide exposure has played a big part in the film’s rise to classic status, and arguably rescued it from the dusty depths of B-movie purgatory.

But Hatter, Is it List-Worthy?… You bet your bile duct it is. The trouble with classic horror is that as time passes, they lose their edge and flip from scary to hokey. NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD remains every bit as dark, disturbing, and gruesome as it was when it was first released.