"Night of the Living Dead" and The Joy of Research

Released: 1968

Director: George A. Romero

Writers: John A. Russo and George A. Romero

Starring: Duane Jones, Judith O’Dea, Karl Hardman, Marilyn Eastman, Keith Wayne, Judith Ridley, Kyra Schon

“Yeah, they’re dead. They’re all messed up.”

When I came up with the idea for this blog, I thought that Dawn of the Dead would be the first film I discussed.  It’s not only a great F’dup Flick, it’s also one of my favorite films.  But as I gathered my thoughts, I came to the realization that, like the movies themselves, Night must come first.

I first saw Night of the Living Dead on TV, as part of the WABC 11:30 Saturday Night Movie some time in the early 1970s.  I was probably about 10 or 11 years old.

I’d long ago won the battle for a later bedtime on Saturday nights, so that I could stay up and watch monster movies (Godzilla, being my first victory).  This was likely a concession on the part of my mother so that the rest of my family wouldn’t be forced to watch these kinds of films with me. 

I knew nothing about Night before the broadcast, but it did have “dead” in the title.  So, with the rest of the family off to bed, I tuned in and hoped for the best.

 

The first thing I remember about this broadcast was that the station made a special point of reminding viewers at commercial breaks that the events being depicted were fictional.

How odd.  I’d never heard a disclaimer like that before (and only rarely since).   So, already I had the feeling that there was something unique about this film.  Later, I figured out that the station must have taken this precaution due to the faux radio and TV reports incorporated throughout the film.  After all, we didn’t want another “The War of the Worlds” broadcast now, did we?

The second thing I remember is that I fell asleep!

No, I wasn’t bored.  The flick starts off great with Johnny and Barbara’s ambush in the graveyard.  And Ben’s monologue, about his escape from the zombies at the dinner, is so vividly told that I was convinced, for years afterwards, that I’d actually seen the zombies racing after that burning fuel truck.

It was just late and I was a kid.

Before I fell asleep, my mother came over and asked what I was watching.  I filled her in and she sat down to watch it with me.  And then I nodded off…

The next morning, I asked my mother how the film ended.  This was not an unusual occurrence.  Normally, she recounted the events, in a slightly dismissive tone, as if these films were so predictable that she could have written them.  On this morning, however, her mood turned serious.  “What was that film?  It scared the crap out of me!”

A film so terrifying that it scared my mom?!  And I missed it?!!

Immediately, an obsession was born.   I MUST see the rest of this film!

In those days of pre-home video, seeing a film more than once meant waiting for it to air again on broadcast TV.  Dutifully, I checked TV Guide’s weekly movies list every issue, but I never saw it listed again.  

My God, why hast thou forsaken me?

Unable to actually watch the film, I decided to read everything I could about it.  This consisted mainly of a capsule review in my beloved copy of Steven H. Scheuer's “Movies on TV” book and maybe a brief footnote in whatever books on current cinema I could find in the library.  In other words, not much.

As I was introduced to new research tools in school, I immediately tested how useful they were by looking-up Night of the Living Dead. 

The Periodical Contents Index (do these guides even exist any more?) led me to an essay by Roger Ebert in "Reader’s Digest". 

For years afterward, I disliked Ebert, based on that single article, as I had misunderstood his self-described “review of the audience reaction” to be a condemnation of a film that was just TOO scary.

So, both “Reader’s Digest” and my mother were declaring this film the scariest movie ever made…and I MISSED IT!

My research into Night eventually led me to “Film Comment” magazine, and, in particular, the concept of the “Return of the Repressed” in an article by critic Robin Wood. (Vol. 14, No. 4 - July/August 1978). 

Oh, how I wish I could link to this groundbreaking article!  Alas, the piece is nowhere to be found online (but I’ll keep looking).

Not to overstate its importance, or anything, but that article struck me like Col. Kurtz’s “diamond bullet straight through my forehead.” 

For the first time I'd ever seen, a serious critic was treating these movies seriously, presenting the case that they reflected the turbulence of the era.  Wood later expanded upon these ideas in his books, but never again would he present the main points in such simple and straightforward language. If you are a fan of horror, you owe it to yourself to seek it out that article.

As I researched Night, I learned of Romero’s other flicks – Season of the Witch, There's Always Vanilla, The Crazies, and Martin – all of which sounded interesting and all of which were equally impossible to see. 

I also discovered other filmmakers in the horror genre, all creating a body of work that sounded darkly fascinating: David Cronenberg, Wes Craven, Bob Clark.  Of course, there was no way to see their films, either (though Bob Clark became a happy exception, to be covered in another post).  

A whole new world of cult and disreputable cinema existed out there...and no one in my hometown had even heard of it.

Finally, one summer day when I was about 17 or 18 years old, I heard a radio ad for a midnight show of Night: “Complete and unedited”. 

I could not believe my luck!

And so, come Saturday night, a group of friends and I headed to a theater a few towns over for my long anticipated, second chance screening of Night, together with a packed house and a six pack of beer.  

The screening went down pretty much exactly as Ebert described all those years before, sans the teary-eyed toddlers. 

The film starts out creepy but fun in the early going, then settles in for some slow-boil interpersonal conflict.  But nothing prepares you for the final 30 minutes, when the film drags you straight down to hell.

From the moment the group decides to make a break from the farmhouse, the film delivers on its premise in a way that most horror films never do. 

The young lovers die first, burned to a crisp.  As if that’s not shocking enough, the zombies then descend and eat their burnt flesh, in gory detail.  Whoa!

Ben retreats back to the house and kills Mr. Cooper, after the coward locks him out. Johnny returns, as one of the dead, and pulls his sister Barbara, screaming, into a pack of the zombies.  Turns out that HE was coming to get you, Barbara.

In the most chilling sequence in the film, the sickly little girl in the basement, turns ghoul and kills her mother with a garden spade, before eating her.  The lighting, the shot selection, the distorted audio, the sheer awfulness of a child becoming a thing that sees only food when she looks at her mother, is one of the most terrifying sequences in horror. 

Ah, but in the end, the sun rises and the forces of good sweep down to rid the area of zombies.  Ben comes out of hiding, revealing that he survived the ordeal. Order is restored.

Except that the instrument of said order is some ignorant good ol’ boy, who promptly mistakes Ben for a zombie and shoots him in the head!

The film closes with a series of newspaper-like photographs depicting Ben’s lifeless body as it is dragged by meat hooks – meat hooks! – to a bonfire, where he is unceremoniously burned along with the rest of the dead.  The End.

What.  The.  Fuck!

Everyone died.  Everyone.  The smart, the cowardly, the lovers, the parents.   And these weren’t noble deaths.  These people did not go gentle into that good night.  They raged, raged against the dying of the light.  Fighting, clawing, betraying one another, until no one was left standing.

It was the bleakest ending I’d ever seen.  And yet it rang true in some post-‘60s hangover sort of way.  This was some heavy shit.

In many ways, falling asleep during that film shaped my taste in movies forever. Unlike you lazy bit torrent junkies today, I couldn’t just download the film to my phone and finish it on lunch break the next day.   I had to wait.

And wait and wait and wait...  As I waited for Night to return, I kept the light burning by reading as much as I could about it.   

What I uncovered was an alternate reality, an underground cult of filmmakers, fans and critics who recognized that horror could be so much more than just cheap scares.  It could be ABOUT stuff.

I couldn't say exactly WHAT, right then and there, but I knew for certain that, whatever it was, everyone else wanted to ignore it.

In effect, these films weren’t just about the return of the repressed, they WERE the return of the repressed.  To seek them out was to go down the rabbit-hole along with them.  As the meta-trailer might scream: "Finding them was a test of will.  Seeing them, an act of defiance!"

It was all so life-imitates-art perfect.  I was hooked!

P.S.: for an in-depth examination of the many themes at play within Night of the Living Dead, I highly recommend this BFI Film Classics book by Ben Hervey 


Footnotes:

1. The pictures on this page are screengrabs from the Elite Entertainment Millennium Edition DVD, now out of print.  The photos are heavily compressed and do not represent the actual PQ of this release.  If you are an Amazon prime member you can watch this movie for free here.