IHR Induction #20: "Night of the Living Dead" (1968, George Romero)

So we're past the "Friday the 13th" franchise, which is henceforth to be dead and buried...for good. And I'm not going to lie, it feels fantastic. It had gotten to the point where I had dreams involving big-breasted bimbos coming on to me, followed by yours truly being interrupted mid-coitus by Mr. Voorhees himself and stabbed repeatedly with various slashy implements. In short, F13, I love you, but it's good to have you completely exorcised.

So, we go from my favorite subgenre of horror (slasher cinema) to my least favorite (zombie films). Ugh, zombie films. It seems like there have been approximately 15,000 zombie films in the last year ALONE, and for the life of me I just cannot see why so many people see them as awesomeness personified. For the most part, they're incredibly one-note. Humanity as a whole, or at least a country, is threatened by zombie apocalypse, group of survivors band together, followed by a 99% likeliness that said group of survivors will bicker to no end, ironic/tragic ending where either (a) the zombies win, or (b) the humans beat themselves.

I even routinely trash some of the movies that various horror nerd/internet fanboys hold up as de facto sacred cows. Want some examples? I've seen Lucio Fulci's "Zombi" once, and that was enough. Peter Jackson's "Dead Alive" has plenty of blood and guts, sure, but little other redeeming value beyond that. Then there's the series that's loved by GEEKS, NERDS and POINDEXTERS (to channel R.D. Reynolds here for a moment) everywhere - Sam Raimi's "Evil Dead" series. Its hordes of marauding fans love to slather praise on due to Bruce Campbell's acting (if you want to call it that), the greatness of Ash as a hero character, and its "awesome blend of horror and comedy" when really its only defining characteristic is that it was the series of movies that could never decide what it wanted to be, and had to morph into full-on comedic cheesefest due to the fact that Raimi failed in such an epic fashion at crafting a horror film with the original "Evil Dead" that the sequels became comedies by default.

But zombie movies are here, and they're here to stay. So, you want to know where this endlessly repeated convention came from? Look no further. To be sure, "Night of the Living Dead" is one of the most influential movies of all time, so much so that it's broad, sweeping effect is still felt today in the countless movies featuring flesh-eating ghouls seen today. In fact, pretty much any "survival horror" movie involving a band of hero-ish characters trapped together while fending off some kind of evil invasion owes a debt to this movie, as do the "Resident Evil" series of video games. Influence aside, the movie itself is also pretty damn good, although not QUITE the universal classic that some critics label it.

So...THE MOVIE!!

"Night of the Living Dead" wastes little time getting to its intended purpose - to scare the hell out of the audience. A brother and sister are headed to the cemetery to visit the remains of their deceased father when a strange man attacks the sister, named Barbra, and eventually overpowers the brother. In a panicked state, Barbra (played by Judith O'Dea) makes her way to an apparently empty house, where she encounters Ben (Duane Jones, who is aces in this role). Courageous, heady, and resourceful, Ben is really the force that drives this movie forward. He defends the house against not only Barbra's attacker but a small squad of what Ben can only call "those things" - people who aren't really people who, for whatever reason, are suddenly craving the taste of human flesh. Nope, the "Z" word is never used in this movie.

After boarding themselves into the house, the real meat of the story unfolds. Ben and Barbra are not the only inhabitants of the house. In addition, two families - one with a young daughter who has been bitten by the creatures - are hiding in the cellar of the farmhouse. Eventually, these characters come together, and in a move that won't surprise anybody who has seen the 50,000 ripoffs that this movie has inspired over the years immediately begin bickering, offering their theories as to what they face and what they should do, and in general being dicks to each other (with the exception of heroic Ben, who remains practical and thoughtful throughout the course of the movie's running time).

That, in essence, is your plot - bickering survivors vs. undead terrors, with the tension coming not necessarily from the external threat of the zombies but from the internal battle as we wonder whether or not our group of humans will put their differences aside and work together to escape their situation. Since this was 1969, in the midst of Vietnam and racial tension, it comes as little surprise when we get a very bleak ending (*SPOILER ALERT*) involving Ben getting shot by a traveling anti-zombie posse (*END SPOILER*), but what works in "Night of the Living Dead", for me, isn't it's overall structure and effect, but its little moments.

There have been people who have written some very heady stuff about this movie. I've seen more than a few reports that are damn near novel-length that ridiculously assert that this movie is on par with "Citizen Kane" when it comes to hidden meaning and subtext, and that everything George Romero was doing when shooting the movie was meant to convey those hidden meanings so film snobs could dissect its various parts ad nauseum today. Me? I just like to look at this film as a story. You know what else? I can virtually guarantee that if you look at the film this way, it becomes more enjoyable. What's there, despite its miniscule budget, black and white format, and occasionally questionable acting is quite the tense little yarn, very enjoyable and certainly one of the best movies for Halloween night viewing (and it's not a coincidence that AMC showed this bitch uninterrupted for 24 hours this previous October 31st).

For starters, despite all the wannabes, "Night of the Living Dead" still does a good job in creeping you out in regards to its situation. The scene where the characters gather around the TV, where we get all the explanation we'll ever get in this seemingly never-ending series of movies as to just WHY the undead have begun to rise from their graves, is stirring, intense stuff that really ties the audience into a knot. The movie's claustrophobic feel is also to be commended; the scenes involving the characters doing little more than boarding up a house makes for riveting cinema, particularly in those moments when characters round corners, assuming they are safe, only for one of the creature's arms to come careening into the shot, accompanied by loud music stingers meant to convey the threat worse than death. If these things bite you, you become one of them. Them, as in an italicized them. Now that's a scary thought.

There's also the immortal scene when the more dislikable of the two families meet their end at the hands of their own daughter. I won't give away the specifics for anyone who hasn't seen this movie, but this is the stuff nightmares are made of. Revolting, horrifying, and truly powerful stuff.

So yes, despite my anti-zombie bias, "Night of the Living Dead" is a great film, although not an indispensable one. It accomplishes its goal; it works as a thriller, while also throwing in some subtle messages about people being their own worst enemy in as an added bonus. It deserves its spot in horror history for its ability to creep you the f**k out, for George Romero's endless invention with his tiny budget, and for the majority of the cast's ability to endear the individual personalities to the audience.

Of course, I also need to point out that Romero would turn this movie into the film franchise equivalent of the very "things" that the human characters in this movie hated so much. Yes, folks, this became THE SERIES THAT WOULD NOT DIE. With each sequel ("Dawn," "Day," "Land," "Diary" and "Survival," with "Of the Dead" following each of those words), Romero would in turn make the series more and more didactic, pounding anti-capitalism and, dare I say it, anti-human messages at you with all the subtlety of a a croquet mallet shot to the balls. What makes it even sadder is that this goes against precisely what makes this movie so powerful and influential - that it didn't need to yell and scream its soapbox polemic to achieve notoriety, and realized that if you told a good story, the message would rise from its own grave.