La Nuit des morts-vivants

Finally after all these years watched the cult hit classic of the now late George A. Romero's "1968's" "Night of the living Dead". And for it's time this low budget independent picture was a masterpiece that helped change the landscape and gave upcoming horror films a new path to follow. For 1968 and being in black and white it had plenty of gore, death, and blood. And even a few twists and turns in the plot were found.

Set in Pennsylvania in a small farm town the nearby graveyard starts to come alive and one by the dead have risen! And oddly enough this is a panic and epidemic that is all over the country!

It's a battle of will and determination for survival against the walking undead! Many will not like this film when comparing today's standards of special effects, graphics, and "CGI" yet one can see that this old classic was a gateway to current hits like "The Walking Dead".

A wave of mass murder sweeps across America as the recently dead return to life to kill and feast on their victims. A group of people board themselves up in an abandoned house to try and hold out against a small army of the undead. This is the classic low-budget horror film that is the model for recent hits such as the Evil Dead and The Blair Witch Project. George Romero stages a national disaster but reduces it to a single house for greater effect. The story focuses on the weaknesses of each of the characters in the house - their cowardice, their greedy, their stupidity etc. This makes the drama inside the house almost as palatable as the danger from outside and makes the characters more believable and important.

The undead are not huge works of special effects, nor are they anything other than lumbering beasts. But the threat they pose is well demonstrated - the film makes them feel unstoppable and relentless and makes their lingering presence more menacing and less comical than it could have been. The use of an unknown cast also makes it more realistic as none of them have any baggage. Duane Jones is the standout actor as Ben - who is not without flaws himself.

The downbeat, realistic atmosphere to the film gives it a greater sense of tension and continues right through to the very depressing conclusion. An excellent flagship for low budget horrors.

It is very rare nowadays in Hollywood that $112,000 will cover anything more than the cost of catering on most movies. And yet that was all it took for George Romero and a number of friends of his in Pittsburgh to make what is without a doubt one of the most significant horror films of all times, the 1968 shocker NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. Detested by a lot of critics in its day for several scenes of unsettling gruesomeness (though Herschell Gordon Lewis' gore films earlier in the 1960s beat him to the punch for true stomach-turning horror), the film is now understandably highly prized of its relentless, logical approach, and for being so utterly uncompromising.

Not much more needs to be said about the plot: it merely involves seven people who have barricaded themselves inside a rural Pennsylvania home after having been attacked by flesh-eating ghouls who have returned to life from the dead as the result of an exploded Venus probe bringing back a dangerous and unknown form of radiation. What Romero and his co-scenarist John Russo (who took partial inspiration for this film from Richard Matheson's classic 1954 end-of-the-world vampire novel "I Am Legend") show, however, is the strain built up by the way the characters, especially the ones portrayed by Duane Jones and the film's co-producer Karl Hardman, react to the horror that engulfs them...whether to stay on the ground floor, or to hide in the cellar, and how best to escape even as more and more of the undead surround the place. As it turns out, of course, there is no real way out, and there is no actual good end to the whole horrible situation.

Romero, who would continue his travail through the world of the undead through several sequels over the ensuing four decades, shot this film in black-and-white largely on location just outside of Pittsburgh over several weekends in the second half of 1967. NIGHT has, in many ways, the feel of a 1950s "invasion" film (think INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS), but its setting of an isolated house under siege clearly has its roots in Alfred Hitchcock's 1963 classic THE BIRDS; and the scenes of the ghouls munching on human flesh, though brief in nature, were then, and in many ways still are, shockingly contemporary. The cast of primarily amateur actors does well at being totally naturalistic, and the low budget look of the film gives it a documentary feel that hadn't been seen in horror films before, but which would be revisited in THE Texas CHAINSAW MASSACRE and THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT.

Even after four decades of parody, imitation, and sequels, NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD is still not for those with weak constitutions, and for those who have seen far more graphic shockers, it will likely seem painfully old-fashioned. But for true horror connoisseurs, it is up there with the very best, and is an essential film of its kind and its era.

Romero is sublime. His ability to take a small budget and turn it into a stratosphericly giant film is unparalleled. This is one of the best apocalypse films ever (along with the rest of the trilogy). The zombies represent a slow moving enemy. It is easy to escape them. You have only to fear your own mistakes. On these the zombies will capitalize. One of the best aspects of this film is the lead character. Romero has always presented intelligent non-stereotypical black characters in his films. This film was made in 1968 while civil rights tensions were high, and the most "in control" character in the whole movie is a black man. If you can get past a couple of cheesy supporting performances, this is one of the best horror films ever.

The budget was low.The actors were not the top of the heap,yet Night of the Living Dead is a very effective horror film.It was the film that no doubt set the standard for horror films of today.The whole idea of freshly dead corpses returning from the grave to feed on the living makes my hair stand up,even without the movie.I find myself comparing this film with 1999's The Blair Witch Project.They are similar,not in what they are about,but in how they were made.Both films took very little money to make,used no big name actors,and were very successful and effective in presenting their respective stories.Night does get rather gory and disgusting in places,but overall is worthy of the title of "classic".