Night of the Living Dead
Here's the funny thing--at no time in the film is the word zombie mentioned. The word "zombie" is from Haitian folklore, or voodoo, a corpse reanimated from the dead. There was no instinct for these creatures to eat human flesh. Romero, taking mythology going back to Gilgamesh, took the notion of ghouls and gave it a contemporary spin, and ever since then we have been inundated with fiction and films about zombies. The "Zombie Apocalypse" is so ubiquitously mentioned it's almost as if it were a fait accompli.
The film, made for peanuts and grossing several thousand times its investment, was made in grainy black and white, and reminded me of a '50s stag film. But though it may look shoddy at first glance, Romero shows great skill with the camera, frequently using closeups that give it an expressionistic look. The editing is also skillful, perfectly accompanying the spooky music (complete with theremin, of course).
The story begins with a brother and sister (Judith O'Dea) visiting a graveyard to lay a wreath on their father's grave. The brother, who has no interest in being there, begins to tease his sister that a man in the distance is coming after her. He turns out to be right, as the man grabs the girl. Fighting him off, the brother is killed. The girl runs away and finds refuge in an abandoned farmhouse, where other people are also staying, including Duane Jones (who happens to be a black actor--according to Romero there was so social import to this). Also hiding out there are a man (Karl Hardman), his wife and daughter, who was bitten by one of the ghouls. There's also a young couple.
Outside stagger the ghouls, who we eventually learn were the recently dead brought back to life. They hunger for human flesh. The only explanation offered by news reports is that a probe from the planet Venus introduced radiation into the atmosphere. I imagine this is a dig by Romero at the military industrial complex, but the film might have worked even better had there been no explanation.
The survivors hunker down in the house. Hardman, clearly representing the twisted patriarchal American family head, wants everyone to hide in the basement, but Jones asserts himself and wants to stay upstairs, since the basement has no way out. Meanwhile, authorities learn that shooting the ghouls in the head stops them, so posses form, shooting their way across the countryside.
Eventually the ghouls over run the farmhouse, and those dead become ghouls themselves. In a very political ending, Jones, waiting for rescue, is mistaken for the walking dead and is shot to death by a lawman who talks like a redneck.
Night of the Living Dead makes for a good midnight movie, but it has turned into something much more. There are many interpretations of it, and I'm not sure they fit. Most have called it an anti-Vietnam War screed, depicting mindless violence. The use of Jones, a black lead in a film otherwise cast with white actors, was certainly radical, but Romero says he just gave the best audition. But a white actor in the role would have made it a much different movie. Conversely, feminists complained that O'Dea, who spends most of the movie near catatonia, is a very unfortunate depiction of women.
The film was condemned for its raw violence, but of course by today's standards it's pretty tame. But I will admit that a scene where the ghouls munch on the burned remains of a couple, one ghoul wielding the intestines like a lasso, was pretty intense.
Over the years, Romero has made several sequels (I've seen none of them), each taking on the issues of the day. That's all well and good, but horror movies don't need to be political. I think they work best when they are truly supernatural, and the worst part of it is unexplainable. O'Dea, snapping out of her shock, reacts the way most of would, I think, by continuously screaming, "What is happening?"
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