Year of the Living Dead

Very, very few films can truly claim to have wholly created a new sub-genre. George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968) is such a rare beast. It is truly the year zero moment for the zombie film as we understand it today. Sure, there had been sporadic examples of zombie films before Night but they all focused on a decidedly different type of thing. The early zombie, both in cinema and literature, was a sort of sleepwalking being in a deathly trance. Romero's film was the first example anywhere to postulate the idea that bodies returning from the dead would be rotting corpses who relentlessly pursue human beings in order to rip them apart and eat them. Nowadays, of course, zombies are simply everywhere. In the last decade in particular the idea of the Romero zombie has become so well known that it is a cultural reference that practically everyone understands. For this reason, it goes without saying that Night of the Living Dead is easily one of the most influential and important horror movies ever made. And that's only part of the reason why.

Birth of the Living Dead is a very good focus on the making and impact of this seminal film. It looks at the social climate of the time and considers how this influenced the making of the movie. The late 60's were one of the most dramatic periods in American history. The counter-culture was in full swing but about to come crashing down, political distrust was widespread, racial tensions were resulting in violence and the deeply divisive Vietnam War rumbled on ominously in the background. All of these elements and more led to the crumbling of the Hollywood studio system whose movies no longer connected with the rapidly changing times, this of course led to the brief but glorious New Hollywood years where many personal and left-field films were made by the big studios.

While all this was going on a bunch of inexperienced film-makers from Pittsburgh were putting together a low budget horror movie, so low budget that it was being shot in black and white. This very fact was a serious obstacle back then given that the move to colour was pretty widespread by 1968. But this independent film went against the grain in other ways too. For one thing it had a black lead actor. Not only that, but the film never even made any reference to this and dealt with it in a matter of fact manner, making the decision seem all the more bold. This may not sound like much now but in the 60's it was still quite a hurdle and ultimately transgressive. Also, the film brought in a unique seriousness to its b-movie material. Everything is played completely straight. The influence of the European New Wave can be detected in the television scenes of the news reports detailing the carnage. They are messy and naturalistic in a manner like an actual news-feed; this of course added to the urgency and realism and magnified the fear factor. With this more serious framework, Romero introduced graphic violence which added to the overall terror. Gory violence had been a staple of some schlock horror of the earlier 60's in the form of the films of H.G. Lewis and his imitators but these films always essentially had their tongues in their cheek. Romero removed the humour safety valve and so the visceral violence is all the more terrifying as a result. We have zombies eating human remains and a little girl bloodily murdering her mother in full on sequences. The film even had the nerve to end on an incredibly bleak and ironic note with the hero Ben being killed at the end when a gung-ho mob shoot him thinking him a zombie. But this hero also had survived by doing the one thing he advocated against the whole film, so this was a film that presented the viewer with many questions and gave few easy solutions.

The documentary interviews many of those involved in the making of the film. We get to understand the financing problems and the way that everybody involved had a variety of roles in the creation process in order to save money. We also learn how difficult it was to sell the movie afterwards, even exploitation distributors AIP only wanted to release it if it had a happy ending added. When it did eventually get a distribution deal it met with initial hostility and only later did many actually understand it. It was ahead of its time in truth. It also is notable for falling immediately into the public domain for not having a © mark on it, leading to the film-makers who made this incredibly influential work not making a cent on it! This film details all this and much more, it's essential viewing for anyone at all interested in this most important of horror movies.

It's 1968. Pittsburgh filmmaker George Romero introduces the world to the flesh eating zombie. He started working for Fred Rogers on Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. Then Romero recounts how he gathered a group of people to develop and film the classic horror. It's a real indie at a time when indies had no money.

It's a documentary and it's nice to have Romero tell his story. None of it is too surprising. It's like Romero doing the commentary for his movie. It's also a great underdog story of independent filmmaking. I could do without the modern influences and less of the talking heads dissecting the movie moves. I rather have more stories about the making of and the stories of the people around the movie. The social commentaries are fine but it's rehashing old territories. It takes up a lot of movie. I like the part after they finished the movie and I love the stories of the little kids watching the movie.

It's not often that one can trace back the origins of an entire genre to one body of work, let alone have that seminal entity still directly influence all its successors in one way or another. We can from time to time point out overt homages to a keystone effort or see themes and imagery blatantly stolen, but in the case of George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead, we've simply seen a genre organically (and sometimes brilliantly) evolve within the confines of the trendsetter's mould.

Efficiently and entertainingly, Birth of the Living Dead takes us back to the late 1960's where times were tough, social divides were widening and where one nearly novice auteur dared to craft a horror film unlike anything audiences had seen before, and arguably, haven't seen since.

In viewing the first entry in Romero's "Dead" series decades after its first release, not analyzing what it must have meant at the time is an easy feat. For most watching it now, they'll be struck by how well it holds up, rather than that it featured stark parallels to the climate at that time, both intentionally and otherwise. Race wars at home raged, and so too did the Vietnam War overseas – the symbolism of unstoppable, remorseless monsters laying siege to one's home rung far too true in some cases. Birth of the Living Dead strips away these layers and provides us with a capsule of time when a movie became more than just a movie.

The film also intriguingly touches on the casting of African American lead Duane Jones, an addition to the crew that was purely based on skill, and who was not accompanied by changes to the script to address his ethnicity. This resulted in (at the time) a black man serving as the leader of a group of white folk who did not engage in slurs or anything of the like and instead played things out as it would between those of the same race, or if those prejudices did not exist at all. It was man versus the undead and man versus man at the same time, but not because of racism.

All of this insight would of course be for nought if Mr. Romero himself were not to wryly chime in on his experiences, thoughts on the actors, the filmmaking process and everything around and in between. At age 73 he's still as chipper and sarcastic as ever, and frankly is just a blast to watch on screen. Furthermore, his commentary of things he would have changed today and things he wished could have been accomplished then, help to flesh out a man who has spent his life in the industry.

If there was one major complaint I would have against Birth of the Living Dead it would be its slim runtime. While digestible in the best of ways, it could have dug a little deeper into the mythos of the film and the actual filmmaking process. It's a shame that many of the cast and crew have passed on since filming as their lack of insight into how the process went for them softens the bite of the documentary a tad, but of course I can't lay blame on something that cannot be altered, and as it stands it still paints a very vivid picture.

While slight in areas, I would certainly label Birth of the Living Dead as essential viewing for fans of zombie films, Night of the Living Dead or of the man behind the magic. It's overall an immensely enjoyable watch that should leave most fans, save the die-hard, with something new to mull over about one of the greatest horror films of all time. If at the very least it makes you want to partake in another viewing of the iconic flick, then that's good enough in my book.

This oddly short documentary gives us a history lesson on the iconic groundbreaking Night Of The Living Dead (1968) Though the interviews are mostly with Romero that is no issue for me as the man always delivers intelligent concise points on whatever he's talking about.

The documentary covers the films origins through its production and to the legacy that it created. Truly the movie was genre defining and a lot of what we see today on stage and screen wouldn't exist without its presence.

What this feature covers extensively as well is the race issues touched upon in the film and that were raging through America during the 1960's. This though nothing not seen before is informative and hard hitting.

Short, sweet and competently made this is a decent effort and a must watch for fans of Romeros work.

The Good:

Romero interviews are excellent

Well constructed

The Bad:

Tad short

Things I Learnt From This Documentary:

The guts and intestines being eaten by the zombies were real!

Nothing fancy here, just talking heads explaining a story. This could have been a youtube doc or a dvd extra, but if you're a fan, it's nice.