Night Of The Living Dead [1968] [DVD]

It's hard to imagine how shocking this film was when it first broke on the film scene in 1968. There's never been anything quite like it, though it's inspired numerous pale imitations. Part of the terror lies in the fact that this one's shot in such a raw, unadorned fashion it feels like a home movie, and all the more authentic for that. Another is that it draws us into its world gradually, content to establish a merely spooky atmosphere before leading us through a horrifically logical progression that we could hardly have anticipated. The story is simple. Radiation from a fallen satellite has caused the dead to walk and hunger for human flesh. Once bitten, you become one of them. And the only way to kill one is by a shot or blow to the head. We follow a group holed up in a small farmhouse to fend off the inevitable onslaught of the dead. And it's the tensions between the members of this unstable, makeshift community that drive the film. Night of the Living Dead establishes its savagery as a necessary condition of life. Marked by fatality and a grim humour, it gnaws through to the bone, then proceeds on to the marrow.--Jim Gay

George Romero's classic 1968 zombie-fest Night of the Living Dead (shot in black and white) offers some disturbing images, even decades later. In a Pittsburgh suburb people are being stalked by zombies ravenous for human flesh. In a house whose occupant has already been slain, two separate groups of people unite and board themselves in, hoping to fend off the advancing ghouls. Through radio and TV reports they learn that radiation from outer space is thought to be responsible for the wave of zombie attacks all over the eastern United States. Once the humans are trapped, Romero shifts the focus to the internal feuding between them as they decide how to handle their dreadful situation. What unfolds is an examination of human nature, and of the fear and selfishness that keep many citizens from getting involved in the world's problems. Appropriately, both the zombies, and the authorities who later hunt them, are equally soulless. This film could also be read as a criticism of white males--it is not merely a coincidence that the film's two most rational, constructive characters are a woman and a black man. It is also no coincidence that the sequel Dawn of the Dead (1978) takes place in a mall infested by the undead--a perfect analogy for consumer culture. --Bryan Reeseman, Amazon.com

4:3 Full Frame
English
Region 2
Dolby Digital Stereo English
Dolby Digital Stereo
Living Dead Beats Music Video

George Romero's Night of the Living Dead is a low-budget classic that had great difficulty finding a distributor at the time of its release in 1968, and has since become one of the most influential horror films of all time. Aside from its visceral impact years before realistic gore became the fashion, the film is also important for its portrayal of a black man as the protagonist during a time when race relations were an extremely sensitive issue in the United States. The plot is simple: seven people, secluded in a Pennsylvania farmhouse, face relentless attacks by reanimated corpses seeking to eat their flesh. The group, which includes a married couple and their daughter, a pair of young lovers, and an African-American man, try to keep their sanity as the living dead try endlessly to enter the house. Radio news reports tell of the plague taking over the eastern United States, while the ever-decreasing band of survivors rapidly loses ground in the battle to both keep peace with one another and stay alive.

The grandaddy of them all. Created a whole new genre! --Nolan's Pop Culture Review

A tightly-edited, claustrophobically-framed horror film that retains, along with its relevance, its ability to startle and appall. --Film Freak Central

This is horror at its most probing, subversive and socially aware, with a truly harrowing ending that reveals the dangers of misdirected fear and prejudice. --Eye for Film

Cult figure who will forever be remembered as Ben, the resourceful, yet ill-fated hero, of George A. Romero's low budget zombie film Night Of The Living Dead (1968). Jones was a former English professor who directed at the Maguire Theater at the Old Westbury campus of New York State University, and he additionally served as artistic director at the Richard Allen Center in New York City. His casting as the hero of the Romero film was rather unique, as it was the first occasion that an African American actor had portrayed the hero in a horror film. The tall, well spoken Jones appeared in a handful of other B grade horror movies such as Ganja & Hess (1972) and Vampires (1986), but none are remembered as well as his first on screen role.

George A. Romero never set out to become a Hollywood figure; however, by all indications, he was very successful. The director of the ground-breaking Dead pentalogy was born February 4, 1940, in New York City. He grew up there until attending the renowned Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. After graduation, he began shooting mostly short films and commercials. He and his friends formed Image Ten Productions in the late 1960s and they all chipped in roughly US$10,000 a piece to produce what became one of the most celebrated American horror films of all time: Night of the Living Dead (1968). Shot in black-and-white on a budget of just over US$100,000, Romero's vision, combined with a solid script written by him and his Image co-founder John A. Russo (along with what was then considered an excess of gore) enabled the film to earn back far more than what it cost, became a cult classic by the early 1970s and was inducted into the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress of the United States in 1999. Romero's next films were a little more low-key and less seen including There's Always Vanilla (1971), The Crazies (1973), Hungry Wives (1972) (where he met his future wife Christine Forrest) and Martin (1977). Though not as acclaimed as Night of the Living Dead (1968), or some of his later work, these films had his signature social commentary while dealing with issues, usually horror-related, at the microscopic level. Like almost all of his films, they were shot in, or around, Romero's favorite city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.