Classic 60s Movie: “Night of the Living Dead”
January is Classic 60s Movie month. Today’s guest post comes from John Henderson.
Movie Title: Night of the Living Dead
Year: 1968
Writers: John A. Russo and George A. Romero
Lead Actors: Duane Jones, Judith O’Dea
Director: George A. Romero
IMDb Plot Summary: A group of people hide from bloodthirsty zombies in a farmhouse.
Why I Think This Is A Classic 60s Movie: Good horror movies scare us with well-placed shocks and scary images. Great horror movies tap into subconscious fears and keep us feeling unsettled long after the movie is over. JAWS showed audiences what could be underneath the water. PSYCHO made us peek around the curtains every time we take a shower. NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, essentially a monster-on-the-loose movie, encapsulated many of the concerns that dominated the late 1960s US: Vietnam, Civil Rights, social unrest. It plays on the fear that civilization could come apart at any moment. For the movie, that moment is when the recently deceased come back to life and start chasing the living. As plan after plan to escape and to find help are foiled and our characters begin fighting amongst themselves and distrust one another, an uneasy feeling begins to emerge: there’s no way out for these characters. The movie ends, not with a triumphant defeat of the zombies, but with our hero, Ben, killed and an unknowing future for the film’s inhabitants.
Throughout the movie, horrific images and scenes occur: A little girl becomes a zombie and attacks her mother; zombies eat the intestines of the fallen; dead bodies are thrown with complete indifference into a fire. Shot in grainy black-and-white with handheld cameras, it sometimes has the appearance of a documentary rather than a movie, as if what we’re watching is real. This is especially true with the character of Ben, an African-American, who is gun-downed by trigger-happy rednecks who mistake him for a zombie. The imagery of the fallen black hero and civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr who was assassinated six months earlier is eerily similar. NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD begins as a nightmare come to life and ends with a sense of dread and tragedy. If you went into the theater in 1968 to escape reality, you probably left the theater feeling even more distressed. While early James Bond movies and THE SOUND OF MUSIC and MARY POPPINS are 60’s movies, NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD *is* the 60s.
My Favorite Moment In The Movie: “They’re coming to get you, Barbara, there’s one of them now!” The movie opens with Barbara and her brother, Johnny, driving to a cemetery to place flowers at their father’s grave. Barbara feels creeped out by the location and Johnny begins to tease her with the above quote. Suddenly, Barbara is attacked by a man who turns out to be a zombie. Johnny fights him off her but is killed when he’s knocked to the ground and smashes his head on a tombstone. From that moment, everything in Barbara’s world (and ours) is turned upside down and the movie begins.
My Favorite Dialogue In the Movie:
“Yeah, they’re dead. They’re all messed up.”
Key Things You Should Look For When Watching This Movie: The word “zombie” is never used. Instead, they are referred to as “those things” and “ghouls”.
The original title was Night of the Flesh Eaters but when the title was changed, the copyright notice on the screen was omitted. US Copyright law at the time required copyright to be displayed on a movie. This mistake left the movie without a copyright and it immediately went into public domain. This is why the movie is sold on home video by numerous distributors.
Romero made five sequels to this movie: Dawn of the Dead (1978), Day of the Dead (1985), Land of the Dead (2005), Diary of the Dead (2007) and Survival of the Dead (2009). Night of the Living Dead was remade in 1990. Cowriter John Russo made his own zombie movie, Return of the Living Dead in 1985 which also spawned numerous sequels.
Thanks, John! To show our gratitude for your guest post, here’s a dash of creative juju for you. Whoosh!
Twitter: @hendersonjohnm.
We already have a set of classic 70s movies, 80s Movies and 90s Movies. This month, we’re working on 60s Movies.
We have 21 volunteers. I have put in bold those who have already sent their guest post to me.
Ipsita Barik — Rosemary’s Baby
Bookman Film — The Sound of Music
Brandnewusedcar — Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Markham Cook — Jules et Jim
Steve Cook — The Blue Max
N D — Lonely are the Brave
Drew Dorenfest — Easy Rider
Felicity Flesher — The Music Man
JasperLamarCrab — 2001: A Space Odyssey
D.L. Gill — Zulu
Jeff Guenther — Cool Hand Luke
Kate Hagen — Repulsion
John Henderson — Night of the Living Dead
hoernsch — The Graduate
Zach Jansen — They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?
Will King — The Pink Panther
Lisaisfunny — Blow Up
Jack McDonald — Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Daryl Powell — The Apartment
jprichard — Persona
Michael Waters — Dr. No
I’m looking for more guest posts to take us through January. Why not pitch in to help add to this online resource to inspire writers to learn about and — most importantly — watch great movies.
If you have a classic 60s movies on which you’d like to do a writeup, please either post in comments or email me.
Thanks in advance!
For the original post explaining the series, go here.