Review of Night of the Living Dead (1968) by Mr. B — 07 Feb 2014

In the late sixties, George Romero set out with a limited budget to make a monster movie that would revolutionize a genre. It would be a little film about a group of survivors of a sudden plague of flesh eating humans. The word 'Zombie' wasn't too familiar in horror movies at the time. Bela Lugosi had coined the term when he appeared in the 1932 horror movie 'White Zombie'. It was considered to be the first feature length Zombie movie, but these types of Zombie's didn't bite. Before they could devour flesh, they were mainly people that were hypnotized or mindless beings walking around hypnotizing others. It wasn't until Romero came along and gave them a taste for blood.

A brother and sister come to put a wreath on their father's grave when they become assaulted by a strange man. The brother doesn't make it, but the sister is able to flee with the man chasing her down. She finds shelter in an old farmhouse, but the man that is chasing her has brought along a few other people. The strange thing is that these people are slow moving, are decaying and don't seem to have much life in their eyes. Luckily, for the sister, a black man shows up to keep her safe. For the time being, he boards up the place until two couples in the cellar pop up. Tensions build between the black man and one of the white men who came out of the cellar. An interesting, if a little silly, piece of race relations I suppose. Sadly survival for this odd group looks grim as the unrelenting forces that be takes it's toll which leads to an all out climax of horrific proportions.

Shot guerrilla-style and for about $115,000, George Romero kicked started what would be the all too familiar norm in horror movies. Zombies have become so well known today that even newborns are well aware of them. Especially if they're raised by respectable horror movie addicts that teach their young the word from an early age. But seriously, Zombies do get old very fast. I am not much into the genre other than for it's blood & guts as well as it's crappy acting. However, you do find some good Zombie movies and some sort of good ones. This one, a classic as it is, is a sort of good one. It's not a masterpiece, but does it's job well as a great piece of B-movie horror. If anything this film is the prologue of many, many things Zombie!