Every movie-lover, at their core, has a small collective of films and viewing experiences that define them. Films that forever altered their path in life, irrevocably steering them toward the magic of the silver screen while revealing the visceral and emotional energy that only the movies can provide.
As my teenage years dwindled and my 20’s were coming into sharp focus, my mind was a turbulent place. Cancer had claimed my mother a few years before and I was still grappling with a wide array of conflicting emotions about life, death, and all that fell in between, harboring a resentment that even the movies seemed unable to quell. My usual, more dramatic favorites were cathartic, sure, but they just couldn’t match the acuteness of the bite with which life had seized me by.
Horror had begun to catch my eye in those years and my burgeoning curiosity led to some, admittedly shallow, internet research. I typed phrases like “best horror movies” and “scariest films” into the web browser and came up with what I now know to be the usual suspects. While the odd images and evocative titles did indeed catch my eye, one in particular stood out above the rest, towering towards the top of just about every list I came across.
Night of the Living Dead (1968).
I had heard of it, probably seen bits of it here and there, but I had never really considered it before. All I knew was that I couldn’t shake the image of the living dead from my mind’s eye. So it was that Night would be my first attempt at really understanding horror as something more than a fun escape.
I could see the sun making its descent through the window blinds beside our old couch as I sat down before the large console television that late, summer afternoon. The memory remains clear and visceral, right down to the N64 controllers on the floor, their long wires snaking a web across the carpet. Every last detail of my surroundings is etched in my memory in regards to that fateful day when I watched George A. Romero’s seminal classic for the very first time.
From the moment Barbara and Johnny began to talk about the inane, capitalist rituals surrounding death that the human race has ultimately succumbed to, I was enraptured. Well before a ghoul ever graced the screen, I became keenly aware that George A. Romero was interested in exploring a lot more than the gruesomeness that goes along with flesh-eating corpses.
The movie quickly establishes the fatal flaw in mankind’s relationship with their own mortality: we reject it. We cling to life. To memory. We’re unable to let go. Unable to break tradition. Eternally haunted by the very thing that makes life itself so special— so much so, that the world is willing to sacrifice that existence if it might shield them from the truth for a handful of seconds longer than it might have otherwise.
To look death directly in the eyes is to face a reality most mortals find far more frightening than the conclusion of life. It means answering an existential question that most would rather leave unanswered. What’s next? Where do we go? Does it matter?
The film explores its heady themes by way of a small collection of people representing archetypal elements of society at large. Not only forcing different walks of life to dwell together in a small space, the film asks that they might agree on a plan of action. Agreement, though difficult and in contrast to some of the character’s deeply held convictions, could mean survival for them all. Whereas maintaining the status quo, fracturing and fighting, would inevitably result in their demise. The path they choose is as unsurprising as it is uncompromising— definitive proof that George A. Romero’s film is less about the undead menace and more about the threat that dwells next door.
The sky had turned black by the time the credits graced the screen. I sat as though in a trance. 96 minutes had passed, but that seemed like a trivial amount of time given what I had just experienced. For the first time in a long time, I felt… seen. Heard. I wasn’t angry, I was fascinated. And I saw a way to tell my own story. For the first time in years, I didn’t feel defeated. I felt inspired.
I decided, right then and there, maybe this horror stuff was for me.
The film is a masterpiece, a perfect work of cinematic storytelling, its dramatic elements bolstered by the horrific creatures haunting the backdrop of its runtime. George A. Romero and John Russo’s screenplay is lean and impactful, a clean layout for what’s onscreen with provocative language that elicits terror whenever the walking dead are mentioned. And it’s how those ghouls were brought to life that solidifies Night of the Living Dead as an important and iconic horror classic, creating a grounded, somewhat simple but altogether bone-chilling threat that so perfectly personifies the societal notions of death that Romero was so interested in indicting.
THE SCENE
THE DEAD WALK! And, they feast…
THE SCRIPT
Excerpt taken from the script ‘Night of the Living Dead’ written by George A. Romero and John Russo.
THE SCREEN
In the script, the ghouls don’t get mentioned until the scene following the altercation with Ben and Cooper. As they sit together discussing options, Ben peers out of the window and sees many ghouls, lurking in the shadows of the hanging trees.
What amounts to a rather succinct paragraph on the page becomes close to several minutes of undead feasting on the screen. Transplanted to the end of the scene prior, the sequence provides the viewer with their first real window into the world of the ghouls in their natural state— that is, as natural a state as the walking dead can be in.
The many ghouls Ben is described as seeing translates to a wide shot of the undead slowly approaching the truck as a fire burns in its cargo bed in the foreground. The script doesn’t go so far as to describe the creatures in detail, still it’s their mismatched looks, clothing, ages and demeanors that allow them to feel like such a uniquely disturbing threat.
One woman stumbles forward in a long nightdress, another overweight man makes his way toward the truck wearing nothing but a white pair of boxer shorts and a third man lumbers forward in what was once a fine suit. These are people from all walks of life who one day stopped whatever it was they were doing and joined the horde of the animate deceased. Death can come for anyone, anywhere at any time— no one is safe. When it beckons, you follow.
In the script, Ben watches as the creatures feast on his friend: in the moonlight, several ghouls are devouring what was once Tom . . . They rip and tear into aspects of his body . . . ghoulish teeth . . . biting into Tom’s arms and hands . . . In the film, this also occurs, only without Ben’s watchful eyes.
The image cuts from the approaching attackers to the interior of the truck. A small, dark space, the many reaching limbs become lost in shadow, grasping and moving in anonymity. The things emit a heavy, breathy sound, broadcasting their desperate craven cravings for flesh as they retrieve bits of Tom and Judy.
Ben’s repulsion concludes the scene in the script, but the film continues to hold on the ghouls. There’s a personality to them as they interact alone in the dark, unencumbered by the drive to hunt in the absence of prey. One of them emerges from the small group of ravenous monsters clutching an organ above its head, staking claim and hoisting the meat away as though it were some prize to be coveted and protected. Then, a medium shot watches as the assorted deceased kneel down on the dewey grass to gnaw serenely on their meals.
What follows is a montage of slurping, gnashing, and squelching that delivers on the promise of disgust that the mere thought of the flesh-eating dead conjures up. One furiously tears at a long, floppy tube of intestine while another attempts to wrangle it from him, as two dogs might fight over a rope of sausages. Another bites hungrily into a wet, slippery organ, and still another nibbles raw meat straight from a charred bone. Amidst the carnage, however, the feasting creatures all share one thing in common: an eerie calmness.
Perhaps best represented by the ghoul whom the scene leaves viewers with, the image lands on a man, his face badly scarred as he bites down on the flesh of the once-living, chewing serenely as he looks up to the sky. He smiles a carefree smile, happily enjoying his meal as though sitting at a nice cafe on an early summer afternoon. A reflection of a man, but not a man at all.
It’s in that mirror image that the danger of the dead truly lies, their appetites notwithstanding.
THE BLOODY CONCLUSION
“We were worried that it wasn’t strong enough,” director George A. Romero recalled in his commentary track for Night of the Living Dead, saying that they needed more footage for what the crew referred to as “the last supper”. “We went back,” he continued, “and reshot— more close-ups.”
There are films for every movie-lover that stand as pillars in the halls of their cinematic adoration, special stories that hold weight beyond the mere experience of watching them, the reels winding into their very beings. For me, there is no better example of that than Night of the Living Dead.
From the perspective of a grieving, repressed teenager facing off against their impending twenties, the film offered a point-of-view I had not encountered and one that very much matched my own. Although generations removed from my own life, it felt like a script plucked directly from my own brain, speaking to the very emotions, fears, and rages that I was— and wasn’t— dealing with.
Tackling issues of class, race, sex, and society’s inability to cope with death and mortality, the film is a powerhouse contained within a brief 96 minutes that offers careful examination with an immediate pace. Its cerebral aims are amplified by its carnal imagery, providing the sort of exploitation, drive-in horror that audiences were clamoring for without sacrificing the meaning or sentiment that makes such things more worthwhile.
While the scene where the zombies feast on full display may not be the most important to the narrative or its themes, it stands as a showcase for the type of simple, thoughtful horror and gore that make the film so successful in its intentions. Deriving from simple yet clear text, the sequence shows the ingenuity and creative interpretation employed by the filmmakers as they brought their words to life. Using everyday objects like silly putty (“Hey, this would make great flesh!” Romero recalled on his commentary), dental wax, and water filled tubes, the whole scene has a DIY sensibility that’s simultaneously as endearing as it is repulsive.
In time, all of George A. Romero’s great zombie epics became fast favorites of mine, each holding a special place in my heart. But Night of the Living Dead will always stand as the one that started it all, not just in terms of its grander genre influence but in relation to my own love affair with the horror genre. It wasn’t because it scared me, it was because it presented a perspective I could relate to and one that was unafraid to venture into the deep, dark recesses of our world and shine a light on what’s hiding there.
When you’re sad or hurt or worse, there are a lot of people around you who might think it better to hide. To ignore the truth of your pain. To deny it, and hope it goes away. Horror doesn’t do that. Horror faces the darkness and plows through, for better or for worse. But I can’t help but think that that is the healthier course of action, the outcome be damned.
And so it is, this movie-lover, at his core, holds Night of the Living Dead and that late summer afternoon in my old TV room near and dear to my heart. The film is a testament to all that the horror genre is capable of and, for all of its death, a thoughtful reflection on what it means to live.
