Night Of The Living Dead. (15.)
Directed by George A. Romero.
Starring Duane Jones, Judith O'Dea, Russell Streiner, Karl Hardman, Keith Wayne, Marilyn Eastman, Judith Ridley, Kyra Schon, Charles Craig. Black and White. 96 mins. A two-disc Blu-ray edition released as part of the Criterion Collection. Released February 26th.
Watching Romero's first movie is to imagine what it was like to be in on the ground floor: attending Steve Job's first Mac presentation; being in the audience the first time the thought occurred to Eric to slap “Little Ern” on both cheeks; suggesting to Bill Haley that he give those Country and Western numbers a bit more oomph. I can't believe that absolutely nobody had thought of flesh-eating zombies prior to this (but in the extras Guillermo Del Toro and Frank Darabont say it is so, so I guess it is) but when Romero and his buddies at their Image Ten Production advertisement film company went off into the woods around Pittsburgh to shoot a low budget horror movie they really started something. Half a century later Zombies/ living dead have become the default horror vehicle, the ghoul mule on which all our contemporary fears and anxieties can be loaded onto. Most of the old monsters have been packed off into obsolescence. Vampires, they're for girls now.
The film exists in a space between the traditional and the radical. The opening scene in a cemetery where a brother mocks his sister's superstitions and doesn't realise until too late the threat that the tottering figure lurching towards him represents (cinema's first representation of the undead has a rockabilly countenance, like Eddie Tenpole Tudor) is much like a standard horror film. As she flees, his sister Barbara (O'Dea) even manages to do the cliche trip and fall. But at the same time the dull, late afternoon drabness of the location, (it is perhaps the least Gothic cemetery ever to appear in a horror film) the ordinariness of their conversation, sets it apart. Teenagers in horror films always seem to be semi-acquiescent with there fate, half in cahoots with whatever is coming for them. These two don't roll up like lambs to the slaughter, they really do seem to be going about their everyday business.
The majority of the film is a siege picture about a group of strangers, with widely varying attitudes and acting abilities, thrown together in an empty farmhouse. Having boarded up the doors and windows to keep out the gathering hordes of ambling undead they tune in to the TV news for developments and hope for rescue. Once inside though they don't do what characters that find themselves in horror movie binds are suppose to do: they neither pull together and come up with a plan nor stupidly get themselves killed. Instead, the two main males Ben (Jones) and Harry (Hardman) bicker and fight over what the best course of action should be, while Barbara falls into a state of shock. Everybody apart from Ben seems overwhelmed by the situation, unable to grasp the enormity of this apocalypse.
Night was a revolution when it came out, beating a course to legend status through the drive-ins of North America all the way to the hallowed pages of pompous French film journal Yippee Cahier du Cinema. Shooting it in black and white, the colour of newsreel, would have been the equivalent of the Blair Witch shaky cam, giving the film a terrible immediacy. Add to that the colourblind casting of a black man in the lead role, meant that the film had a radical political dimension. (Romero always claimed Jones was picked because he was the best actor available to them.) Possibly in this one decision lies the root of the notion that Zombie films are the best medium for satirical takes on contemporary society.
You can't question the film's historical significance, but does it still scare now? I remember the first time I saw this – in the small hours of the Sunday morning after the Live Aid concert because it had to be back at the video shop that day – it really worked me over. It was so bleak and despairing. Along with Elvis Costello singing All You Need Is Love, it's all I remember of that day. Today it doesn't have the same sting, mostly because of all that has come after it: it didn't just inspire lots of other movies, it inspired lots of really good movies.
The news broadcasts where they introduce the idea that it is all caused by radiation brought back from a space mission, one of the elements that made it all seem so chillingly real back then, now seem oddly reassuring. Radiation mutation is such a hoary old plot device, and things can't be that bad if the telly is still on. Also, as they couldn't afford an original music score, they used library tracks that were cheap but suitable for more generic horror products.
But you wouldn't call it tame. The arms reaching through the gaps in the windows, an image inspired perhaps by Polanski's Repulsion, remains a chilling image and the idea that the living dead are ultimately no scarier than gun-toting posse that is knocking them off is still a more than workable irony.
It isn't the greatest zombie film, or even the greatest Romero zombie film, but it is still a work worthy of its legacy. That Romero, eh?
Extras.
New 4K digital restoration, supervised by director George A. Romero, co-screenwriter John A. Russo, sound engineer Gary R. Streiner, and producer Russell W. Streiner
Directed by George A. Romero.
Starring Duane Jones, Judith O'Dea, Russell Streiner, Karl Hardman, Keith Wayne, Marilyn Eastman, Judith Ridley, Kyra Schon, Charles Craig. Black and White. 96 mins. A two-disc Blu-ray edition released as part of the Criterion Collection. Released February 26th.
Watching Romero's first movie is to imagine what it was like to be in on the ground floor: attending Steve Job's first Mac presentation; being in the audience the first time the thought occurred to Eric to slap “Little Ern” on both cheeks; suggesting to Bill Haley that he give those Country and Western numbers a bit more oomph. I can't believe that absolutely nobody had thought of flesh-eating zombies prior to this (but in the extras Guillermo Del Toro and Frank Darabont say it is so, so I guess it is) but when Romero and his buddies at their Image Ten Production advertisement film company went off into the woods around Pittsburgh to shoot a low budget horror movie they really started something. Half a century later Zombies/ living dead have become the default horror vehicle, the ghoul mule on which all our contemporary fears and anxieties can be loaded onto. Most of the old monsters have been packed off into obsolescence. Vampires, they're for girls now.
The film exists in a space between the traditional and the radical. The opening scene in a cemetery where a brother mocks his sister's superstitions and doesn't realise until too late the threat that the tottering figure lurching towards him represents (cinema's first representation of the undead has a rockabilly countenance, like Eddie Tenpole Tudor) is much like a standard horror film. As she flees, his sister Barbara (O'Dea) even manages to do the cliche trip and fall. But at the same time the dull, late afternoon drabness of the location, (it is perhaps the least Gothic cemetery ever to appear in a horror film) the ordinariness of their conversation, sets it apart. Teenagers in horror films always seem to be semi-acquiescent with there fate, half in cahoots with whatever is coming for them. These two don't roll up like lambs to the slaughter, they really do seem to be going about their everyday business.
The majority of the film is a siege picture about a group of strangers, with widely varying attitudes and acting abilities, thrown together in an empty farmhouse. Having boarded up the doors and windows to keep out the gathering hordes of ambling undead they tune in to the TV news for developments and hope for rescue. Once inside though they don't do what characters that find themselves in horror movie binds are suppose to do: they neither pull together and come up with a plan nor stupidly get themselves killed. Instead, the two main males Ben (Jones) and Harry (Hardman) bicker and fight over what the best course of action should be, while Barbara falls into a state of shock. Everybody apart from Ben seems overwhelmed by the situation, unable to grasp the enormity of this apocalypse.
Night was a revolution when it came out, beating a course to legend status through the drive-ins of North America all the way to the hallowed pages of pompous French film journal Yippee Cahier du Cinema. Shooting it in black and white, the colour of newsreel, would have been the equivalent of the Blair Witch shaky cam, giving the film a terrible immediacy. Add to that the colourblind casting of a black man in the lead role, meant that the film had a radical political dimension. (Romero always claimed Jones was picked because he was the best actor available to them.) Possibly in this one decision lies the root of the notion that Zombie films are the best medium for satirical takes on contemporary society.
You can't question the film's historical significance, but does it still scare now? I remember the first time I saw this – in the small hours of the Sunday morning after the Live Aid concert because it had to be back at the video shop that day – it really worked me over. It was so bleak and despairing. Along with Elvis Costello singing All You Need Is Love, it's all I remember of that day. Today it doesn't have the same sting, mostly because of all that has come after it: it didn't just inspire lots of other movies, it inspired lots of really good movies.
The news broadcasts where they introduce the idea that it is all caused by radiation brought back from a space mission, one of the elements that made it all seem so chillingly real back then, now seem oddly reassuring. Radiation mutation is such a hoary old plot device, and things can't be that bad if the telly is still on. Also, as they couldn't afford an original music score, they used library tracks that were cheap but suitable for more generic horror products.
But you wouldn't call it tame. The arms reaching through the gaps in the windows, an image inspired perhaps by Polanski's Repulsion, remains a chilling image and the idea that the living dead are ultimately no scarier than gun-toting posse that is knocking them off is still a more than workable irony.
It isn't the greatest zombie film, or even the greatest Romero zombie film, but it is still a work worthy of its legacy. That Romero, eh?
Extras.
New 4K digital restoration, supervised by director George A. Romero, co-screenwriter John A. Russo, sound engineer Gary R. Streiner, and producer Russell W. Streiner
- New restoration of the monaural soundtrack, supervised by Romero and Gary Streiner and presented uncompressed on the Blu-ray
- Night of Anubis, a never-before-presented work-print edit of the film
- New program featuring filmmakers Frank Darabont, Guillermo del Toro, and Robert Rodriguez
- Never-before-seen 16 mm dailies reel
- New program featuring Russo on the commercial and industrial-film production company where key Night of the Living Dead filmmakers got their start
- Two audio commentaries from 1994 featuring Romero, Russo, producer Karl Hardman, actor Judith O’Dea, and others
- Archival interviews with Romero and actors Duane Jones and Judith Ridley
- New programs about the film’s style and score
- New interview program about the direction of ghouls, featuring members of the cast and crew
- New interviews with Gary Streiner and Russell Streiner
- Newsreels from 1967
- Trailer, radio spots, and TV spots
- PLUS: An essay by critic Stuart Klawans
