Night of the Living Dead

Review - Where have I been, so long, that I have never seen the original Night of the Living Dead?  Out renting comedies because I thought Horror was dead.  And while I’m in no real fear of it's future, it's past has a new milestone for me.

George A. Romero's cult classic is an amazing piece of work.  Darkly original and surprisingly smart. The film is, at best, described as a combination of a classic Twilight Zone episode and Orson Wells' radio version of The War of the Worlds.  Pretty strong words there but I feel they're earned.

Night of the Living Dead is basically set in a farmhouse of rural Pennsylvania where a small group of people are set upon by Ghouls (they're not called zombies in this film), or the freshly dead, who have reawakened with a disturbing new hunger.

We all know this because it's 2004.  The film's cast and the audience of 1968 have no idea what the hell is happening.  Night of the Living Dead serves up very practical solutions to this most absurd situation.  By - which the audience gains a far deeper empathy for or connection to the people and events of the film.  The conflicting character portrayals only solidify these connections.

Now for all of the film's praise there's some flack to be endured.

Most notably would be the film's repetitiveness.  This could be a 50-minute film if it didn't repeat itself so much.  Odd camera angles, long copied since, don't do the film justice during its early stages.  And the music can be a bit overbearing but hey, this is 1968.

-m-