LogFAQs > #930501271

3. Night of the Living Dead (1968 film) (27 points)
Nominated by: Xeybozn (1/5 remaining)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_d68kyNY0jI

Importance: 10
Fear: 8
Snake: 9

Whether you love or hate the over-abundance of zombies in horror today, there's pretty much one man you can thank/blame: the legendary George A. Romero. While Night of the Living Dead wasn't the first film to feature zombies how we know them today (that honor goes to Plague of the Zombies, released two years prior to NotLD), it is by far the most well-known and influential early use of the shambling, brain-dead reanimated corpses with no purpose but to feed. Before these films, zombie would refer to someone under voodoo or mind-control, such as in White Zombie, Revolt of the Zombies, or I Walked With a Zombie. While there are certain similarities to those voodoo zombies, Romero actually drew more from the vampires featured in Richard Matheson's I Am Legend, which too were infected with a virus but still were portrayed with typical vampire tropes in that story. Particularly, Romero was interested in how the outbreak initially started, leading into humanity's downfall, rather than the in-media res start of I Am Legend. Thus, the idea for Night of the Living Dead was formed, and the rest is pretty much history.

The script for Living Dead was extremely satirical and progressive for its time. Notably, the film features a black lead character, portrayed by Duane Jones, the first of only a few roles he would in. Though the part was originally written as a white character, Jones gave the best audition and thus was chosen by Romero pretty easily, and he refused to rewrite the script to conform to any stereotypes common in film at the time. Having a black lead was unheard of at the time, especially in horror, and it's a trend that very honestly continues to this day. Romero simply saw his characters as real people and that's the real x-factor for a lot of zombie films, and why you see so many that use zombies as a conduit to tell relevant, socio-political stories focusing on the human element instead. To me, that's Romero's real mark and influence on the zombie genre. Night of the Living inadvertently transformed into a film that deftly dealt with racism, its ending eerily mirroring the deaths of MLK Jr. and Malcolm X even if Romero never intended for it to be that way. What is more prevalent is a heavy anti-war message, tying into the Vietnam War and portraying the military as brutish, boastful brutes who think they have the answer for everything whilst in reality knowing nothing. Living Dead pushed boundaries in both horror and social commentary, and I think that's the key ingredient that made this film the lasting classic it has become.

NotLD is in the public domain, so you can watch it pretty much anywhere. It's also why it's almost always the number one choice to show in movies when a character needs to be watching something scary on television. I notice it so much it honestly has become somewhat of a minor pet peeve to me! There are other public domain horror movies, give them exposure instead! Okay, "thing only Snake cares about" rant over, obviously give this film a viewing if you somehow haven't, and give appreciation to where The Walking Dead, Resident Evil, 28 Days Later, Zombieland, World War Z, and so much more get their inspiration from!

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What I am about to do has not been approved by the Vatican.
https://imgur.com/MmrKwGZ - https://imgur.com/ntWVGyh