Night of the Living Dead

Alternate titles : Night of the Flesh Eaters.

Tagline : "They won't stay dead!"

The low budget horror, that re-defined zombie films. George Romero's classic starts innocently enough, with a young couple, Barbara (Judith O'Dea) and her brother Johnny, visiting their mothers grave in an out of town cemetery. Johnny is joking around, talking about the dead coming back to life, when from out of nowhere, they are suddenly attacked by a REAL zombie.

With Johnny lying in a bloodied mess on the floor, Barbara flees to a nearby farmhouse looking for help, where she is soon joined by six others, who are also seeking refuge from the zombie menace. As night falls, they then find themselves under siege from the flesh eating ghouls, who are attempting to break in from all sides. Matters are complicated by the fact that one of them, Mr Cooper (Karl Hardman) is only interested in looking after himself and is constantly fighting with one of the other survivors, Ben (Duane Jones) over what they should do.

With hoardes of undead massing outside, the people inside squabbling over the best method of surviving the night, and all attempts at making a break for it ending in disaster (trying to fuel up you truck whilst fending off zombies with a burning torch is never advisible), it looks increasingly like the group may well tear each other to pieces even if the zombies don't.

Filmed back in 1968 using old black and white film stock, "Night of the Living Dead" started life as a B-movie, but quickly went on to become a true horror classic in it's own right. Although looking somewhat dated by today's standards, the film still holds up pretty well and should be required viewing for any serious horror fan.

Overall Marks : 7/10.

Terrifying Trivia

• Alternate tag lines used, "There is a fate worse than death", "Don't watch this alone", and "They scream louder in colour" (the last one used for the "Colourised" version).
• Romero employed a lot of guerilla film tactics to complete the picture. They shot on old Black and White film stock, because it was much cheaper then colour. Director Romero and the investors William Hinzman and Karl Hardman doubled as extra's, and helped out behind the scenes when not on camera. They also slept in the old farmhouse they were filming in, so they could shoot long hours, and the soundtrack was comprised of tracks from old classical records on which the copyrite had expired.
• Chocolate syrup was used for fake blood.
• The film became one of the most successful independent productions ever. Made for $114,000 (equivalent to $847,400 in 2020), it grossed approximately $30 million (equivalent to $223.6 million in 2020), over 263 times its budget. Unfortunatelty, Romero and the other investors saw very little of the money because they forgot to put a copyright on the print, meaning anyone could copy it and show it and not have to pay them royalties. Plus, what money was made through legitimate distribution deals were mostly kept by the distributers, as not knowing much about the industry, the deal he signed allowed them to walk off with most of the profits.
• Tom Savini was going to do the special effects on this, but got called up by the US Army to serve in the Vietnam war.
• The scenes in the basement were filmed at the editing studio in Pittsburgh, as the farmhouse did not have a basement.
• The Graveyared used in the film was the Evans City Cemetery, which was chosen for its remote location as its seculded and had very few visitors tending the graves. Ironically, it's since become a very popular visitor attraction for fans of the film.
• Though filmed in Black & White, there is a "Colourised" version of the film available on Disc.
• Columbia Pictures were the only major Hollywood studio interested in distributing this film, but eventually passed because the film was in Black-and-White, and this was at a time when Cinema films had to compete with new colour televisions. Ironically, Columbia did distribute the 1990 remake.

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