NIGHT OF THE LIVING
DEAD (1968)
The 25th anniversary reunion documentary for
NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD begins with this neat introduction: “In 1967 a group of dedicated industrial
film-makers, broadcast professionals, stage actors and actresses, ambitious
amateurs and assorted family and friends became a virtual creative army in an
attempt to pull off the seemingly impossible – a regionally produced feature
film.”
Director George A. Romero at that time was part of a team of
creative colleagues including Richard Ricci and Russ Streiner (and later John
Russo) who formed the Latent Image commercials agency, a highly successful firm
who won 37 awards for their superb, cost-effective adverts for big name brands
such as Heinz, U.S. Steel, Alcoa and Calgon – often costing a tenth of the
budgets of their competitors. One day, amidst bitching about the usual industry
problems, Russo suggested they try their hand at producing their own feature-length
horror film - with the original title of MONSTER FLICK. It was funded by each
of the ten members of the partnership kicking in $600 and aimed at breaking in
to the commercial movie business beyond the limited world of TV ads that they
had clearly mastered. Ultimately the film cost much more, roughly $117,000,
(but made back around $700,000 in its first year at neighbourhood theatres and
the drive-in circuit). The team could not have known that the finished film as
NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD would grow to become one of the seminal modern horror
films, and its director Romero the under-appreciated godfather of zombie
cinema…
The plot is pretty straight-forward, opening with two
siblings, Johnny and Barbra (Russell Streiner and Judith O’Dea) making their
annual pilgrimage to their father’s grave to plant a wreath. In the cemetery
Johnny teases his sister about the spooky atmosphere as a stumbling sinister
man approaches. He is a zombie, part of a horrific unexplained reviving of the
dead, who proceeds to attack them both, fatally killing Johnny as he falls and
strikes his head on a gravestone. Barbara flees to an isolated house, where she
encounters Ben (Duane Jones), a level-headed black fellow escapee from the
developing terror. Ben is a capable, level-headed survivor whereas Barbra
retreats into a catatonia-like PTSD. They are joined by a likeable young couple,
Tom and Judy (Keith Wayne, Judith Ridley) and an older married couple, hot-headed bully
Harry Cooper and his bitter wife Helen (Karl Hardman and Marilyn Eastman) who
bring their daughter Karen (Kyra Schon) and an inter-‘familial’ tension that
soon affects the siege-mates as they struggle to barricade themselves against
the gradual waves of ‘ghouls’ from the outside.
Meanwhile the emergency broadcasting networks try to explain
the phenomenon as triggered by a Venus orbiting satellite, Explorer, destroyed
owing to the presence of some form of radiation
- but that has seemingly infected the eastern third of the U.S, causing
the recently-dead to reanimate and cannibalistically devour living humans. They
advise the crudest method of dispatching the walking dead, using bludgeoning,
fire and bullets and foregoing civilised burial procedures to prevent the
just-dead from rising as well: “The
bodies must be burned immediately. They’re just dead flesh – and dangerous”.
In the final act, the plans that the impromptu housemates
make fall apart: Tom and Judy are blown up in their truck as they attempt to
refuel it for a planned group getaway. Harry’s streak of cowardice gets him
fatally wounded during the climactic waves of zombie attack on the house when
he wrestles a gun from Ben, who shoots him in the heat of the conflict. Harry
stumbles down to the cellar he was so keen to hide in all along and dies of his
wounds. Helen retreats there also where she witnesses the awful sight of their
daughter Karen consuming her dead husband on the floor. Karen stabs her mother
to death with a garden trowel. Barbra is shocked to see her brother Johnny as
part of the undead horde forcing their way into the property. They envelop and
kill her. Ben, the last survivor, hides in the cellar, shooting the revived
Harry and Helen.
As dawn breaks, the posse of townsfolk led by Sheriff “Beat ‘em or burn ‘em. They go up pretty
easy” McClelland cuts a neutralising swathe toward the house. A groggy Ben
comes to the window, where he is mistaken for a zombie and clinically shot,
leaving no survivors from the night’s desperate stand…
Despite its limitations, or maybe because of them, NOTLD is ground-breakingly
effective in many ways: Firstly, the budgetary restrictions created a tight
comradeship among the cast and crew, many of whom blurred the lines between the
two by having to perform double or even triple duty in functions – Russell
Streiner was not just acting in the film as Johnny, he was a co-producer, like
Karl ‘Harry’ Hardman, who added a third role as one of the make-up artists on
set.
The close collaboration off-screen was superbly warped
on-screen to create a pressure cooker of bubbling tensions within the makeshift
family unit in the house. After eroding our character identification by
rendering Barbra catatonic (much like killing off Janet Leigh so early in
PSYCHO), the threat level of being ripped open by the zombies outside is
matched by the potential of being structurally torn apart indoors, Hot-headed
Harry bull-dozes his way in, masking his cowardice with intimidation, pushing
for the group to hide down in the cellar from the get-go whether they agree or
not. He and Ben constantly duel for top-dog status, the latter losing his cool
at the older man’s dangerous selfishness: “I
oughtta drag you out there and feed you to those things!” Harry’s wife
confirms that his behaviour is not situational - his combative, insecure nature
is a catalyst in accelerating their demise. There is sociological commentary here
about how a supposedly civilised society may descend into chaos if our instinct
for self-preservation is allowed to dominate our humanity.
The elements that make up the grammar of the zombie movie
originate here. As well as the fraught
vying for dominance between alpha males thrown together by necessity under the
claustrophobia of siege conditions , the rules - the standard methods of
dispatch so familiar as horror lore now of either burning or putting a bullet
in the brain - began with NOTLD.
Linked to this, the casting of Duane Jones as the leader
within the group was an important step in affirmative ethnic role models
on-screen, all the more impressive as he was slotted into a script where the
character was written as caucasian. No changes were made following his casting,
no traces of tokenism - his ethnicity is not referenced in any way, and he
emerges as a well-spoken, calm, resourceful, middle-class character, like a
young Bill Cosby, but one with much-needed practical skills. (Today, I fancy
this type of role would be cast more narrowly with a young, streetwise
‘gang-banger’ personality). During the filming, it took Jones some time before
he felt comfortable with the opportunity as it was so rare in a society still
supportive in many places of residual segregation and a period where civilian
rioters and the Black Panthers battled militantly for equality.
The gory feastings by the zombies on human entrails
(supplied by a local butcher shop) were fiercely graphic for their time, and
although not as visceral as, say the later eye gouging of Olga Karlatos in
ZOMBI 2 or some of the ‘head traumas’ and disembowelments in Romero’s awesome
sequel DAWN OF THE DEAD and DAY OF THE DEAD, they still deliver strikingly
queasy moments. Watching the undead hungrily devouring the remnants of Tom and
Judy in the moonlight outside the house is memorably unsettling as is the
quasi-Freudian snacking of young Karen upon her mother in the cellar.
The monochrome cinematography and raw feel adds to the
almost documentary veracity of NOTLD. During the film, we are fed pieces of
rolling news from the media as a state of emergency results in shelters being
set up and newscasters attempting to gather expert advice from scientists and
the government. Watching it now, it foreshadows the 24-hour news cycle coverage
of today’s war and disasters covered by the likes of CNN. These scenes are
credible in how they move from vague guesswork to concrete specifics of trying
to handle the situation and public panic as more facts are known.
NIGHT’s cinéma vérité
grimness of aspect is also powerfully amplified at the end. The shooting of Ben
is a shockingly downbeat conclusion; just as we are led to believe a new day
brings new possibilities for life, his death robs us of hope – an admirably
brave choice for a movie aiming at commercial success. (The early ‘70s would
usher in a similar air of cynicism in many film endings). This is reinforced by
the added one-two punch of the casuality with which Sheriff McClelland deadpans
“Okay, he’s dead. Let’s go get ‘im. That’s
another one for the fire” and the cut to a final sequence of grainy
newsprint-style photos of the clean-up operation. The all-night fight for
survival of the people we have become invested in is now nothing more than
routine sweeping-up.
It’s worth mentioning the effectiveness of sound-track cues
as well. Whilst making understandably inexpensive use of open source music, the
echoing screams chill as Karen slaughters her mother and the synthesised
thudding pulse accompanying the closing still images compounds the
hopelessness.
Romero and his colleagues ultimately lost a lot of revenue
on the film owing to naivety. Before releasing it, they had copyrighted not the
film of NOTLD, but simply the former script-stage title of NIGHT OF THE FLESH-EATERS, which meant that when the name
changed to the one we all know it as, the copyright no longer applied.
Subsequently, companies were able to print their own VHS releases and avoid
paying any royalties to its producers. This did not prevent NIGHT OF THE LIVING
DEAD from making George Romero’s name in the horror movie world. He would
always labour outside the established studio system, forging a hard road but
one with arguably more artistic control, later refining and expanding his
apocalyptic vision with the more ambitious DAWN OF THE DEAD and the damagingly
budget-constrained DAY OF THE DEAD, then to my mind over-extending his pioneering
property a few films too far (DIARY? SURVIVAL?). He earned his place as a firm genre
favourite and is hugely influential to this day as each generation re-draws his
zombie territory.
Coming up next, I’ll be covering two of Romero’s follow-on
films that explored other areas of horror – SEASON OF THE WITCH (1971) and THE
CRAZIES (1973)…
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