Year of the Living Dead

(Classic movie quote) - "They're coming for you, Barbara!"

To fully appreciate and enjoy this documentary (that takes an in-depth look at the 1968 zombie-flick "Night Of The Living Dead" and the vast impact that it has had on the zombie genre ever since), I think one really needs to watch said-movie first in order to remain interested in this DVD's content.

Through interviews (with, among others, a 73-year-old George Romero), as well as vintage film clips and stills galore, the viewer gets a behind-the-scenes look at the making of this classic, low-budget horror film (whose costs totalled $114,000) that was solely responsible for rebooting the tired zombie-movie genre, and, to date, has earned itself over $30 million.

Naturally, there are people out there who want to read hidden, political messages into this film's gruesome, little story, especially since its protagonist was a black man who, at one point, actually resorted to slapping the face of a white woman.

For the most part - I did not feel, in any way, let down by this 76-minute documentary. In its generally good-natured way, it certainly delivered the goods on a truly haywire movie that literally terrified me silly when I first saw it on late-night TV as an impressionable kid.

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!

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.

While I am certainly no fan to zombie films in general because the genre has been WAY over-saturated in recent years, I have enjoyed a few of the films and understand that they still are very popular and important films despite my misgivings about many of the recent films. So, because of this, the new documentary Birth of the Living Dead is well worth seeing and is rather timely. It is THE granddaddy of all modern zombie films—the one that led to subsequent generations of such pictures. In fact, it's one of the most important movies of the 1960s and it's one every film student and horror fan should see and appreciate. It managed to overcome its low production values and humble origins to become a cult favorite.

Not surprisingly, the creator of the original film, Night of the Living Dead, George Romero, is featured in this documentary. When he's being interviewed is when the film is at its best. His tidbits about the making of Night of the Living Dead are really interesting and I wanted even more of this than Romero provided. Additionally, a variety of experts are interviewed and they discuss what they love about the movie. Also not surprisingly, various clips from this seminal film are shown throughout this homage. Among the topics covered are the director's expectations as well as how he made the film, the impact of the film on pop culture, the reaction of the critics (both immediately after the film was released and later after many re-assessed the movie), the political and racial themes in the film (whether intended or not) and how the film was groundbreaking as well as how it mirrored the times in which it was made.

This documentary certainly is well worth seeing and I recommend you see it provided you first see the old film it's based on—otherwise it might be a bit confusing. However, it's not a perfect making of film and could have been a bit better. As I mentioned above, the inside information from Romero was great but too often various 'experts' (and I have no idea what constituted this in many of the folks chosen to discuss the film) talked a lot more about hidden social significance (something that Romero revealed is NOT always in the movie) and the times instead of talking more about the original movie itself and how it was made. Still, despite this, the film is reasonably well made and kept my interest throughout. For horror fans and film students, it certainly should be a film to watch.

Birth of the Living Dead (2013)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

Did we really need yet another documentary about NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD? Probably not but this one here is so entertaining and gives us some fresh looks on the subject that fans of the George Romero classic will certainly want to check it out. Director Rob Kuhns interviews Romero who touches on familiar subjects like his early career, how the story came up and the impact the film had once it was released. Where the documentary sets itself apart is that it focuses in on some of the more political moments in the film including what was going on in the world at the time. Vietnam and the Civil Rights are certainly discussed here. You might be saying that we've heard these stories before and that's true but this documentary manages to throw out some good information and even better is that we get some professional critics who discuss the impact of the film and their memories of seeing it as children. Elvis Mitchell has some great stories about the first time he watched the film and there's some great stuff dealing with how the distributor pretty much threw this film into kid matinées. There's even a great sequence where people discuss how everything zombie wise pretty much goes back to this film and Romero. Even more interesting is the talk of the lead black actor and the type of movies Sidney Poitier was doing at this thing. I really wish Romero would have commented on this part of the subject but he doesn't. With that said, this is certainly a highly entertaining documentary, although it does run a bit short at just 75-minutes.