User Reviews

I don't think George Romaro ever had in his mind the masterpiece he created when he made Night of the Living Dead, one of the greatest horror movies of all time and gave birth to the zombie genre. The monster that is the zombie has been a little experimented with before with the film "White Zombie" but never like the dark depths that George took it too. To think that this film almost never would have made it to the public since George threw it in the trunk of his car thinking nobody would ever buy it, low and behold not only did the film sell but has one of greatest group of fans to follow it. Such a degrading film for it's time with naked, scarred up, chewed up zombies eating human flesh, there was no film like Night of the Living Dead. The metaphor that we are guaranteed 2 things in life: birth and death, the slow inevitable death that is walking towards you as if you are looking at your future self is just horrific. George was way ahead of his time and that's why Night of the Living Dead still gives me nightmares to this day.

Barbra and Johnny drive to rural Pennsylvania to visit their father's grave. When Barbra is afraid Johnny teasingly frightens; whereupon they are attacked by a zombie. Johnny tries to rescue his sister, but is then presumably killed when the man shoves him head first onto a tombstone. Barbra flees, with the killer in pursuit; eventually she ran off to an empty farmhouse where she discovers the half-eaten corpse. Running out of the house, she notices a man named Ben arrives in a pickup truck, drags Barbra back into the house, and barricades the doors and windows. Meanwhile, hiding in the cellar are a married couple, Harry and Helen Cooper, their daughter Karen, and teenage couple Tom and Judy. Harry asks everyone to hide in the cellar, but Ben deems it a "deathtrap" and remains upstairs. As they fight through the night for their lives, they try to escape to a safe house but the zombies outside have pulled up the table with the salt and pepper and are a bit hungry for some human flesh.

George casted a black lead, which was so unheard of at the time, I'm sure he never looked at the color but what a groundbreaking moment. He's the smart man who knows how to fight and even hit a white woman, what risks George took with this movie. The film is by no means perfectly made, but you have to understand that this was a low budget film made by a group of friends, however, when you think compared to today's low budget films that have no story with it, it's all about the gore, Night of the Living Dead broke that mold. I have a little tradition every year on Halloween, I have to watch this movie because it is one of the best horror movies of all time. How could you not still get the chills when little Karen turns into a zombie and goes after her mother with a shovel, her mother screaming "Baby!" and falls crying and screaming as her daughter just continues stabbing her to death, God, what a horrific scene! Taking a chance with a depressing ending, not to spoil too much as I feel that I already have but I envy anyone who sees this film for the first time because I like to see their reactions to this movie. A groundbreaking film, a horrifying story and a cast and crew that gave all effort, Night of the Living Dead is a terrific scary movie not to be missed.

9/10

Night of the Living Dead is a true classic and without a doubt Romero's best and most influential film.

Of course, being simply influential alone would not simply allow this movie to get a full-fledged star rating if it didn't pull through with it some quality at all, which it does in spades. In Night of the Living Dead, there is good pacing, surprisingly good acting from a list of no-name actors, and the most important part that sticks with the film to this day, the sense of dread in the film. In this movie to this day you get that feeling of hopelessness, people get attacked for no reason and nothing can save them. Whether it's family-togetherness, love between a couple, or even the law-enforcers at the end, this was all tapping into the uncertainty level people were having at the time and still today it has meaning. Topping this off with Romero's (at the time) large use of gore adds to the overall uneasiness of the film. Finally at the film's current times, there is a great subtle final nail in the coffin attack with the sad fate of the character Ben. Being the only sole voice of reason is shot, which, at the time of filming brought harsh realities of such other African-American leaders who were brought down unfairly such as Malcolm X or Martin Luther King, even if this wasn't the original idea Romero had.

Overall, no matter how cheesy some of this movie make look to modern eyes, Night of the Living Dead is a classic for offering horror without a shred of hope, forever influencing every horror movie in it's wake.

You can almost time it to the exact second (around 72 mins in) when audiences stopped grinning and laughing behind their hands, expecting just another safe, silly horror film, and started feeling completely and utterly terrified.

Before that moment, teenagers didn't get blown up and have their intestines eaten on screen -- it simply didn't happen; everyone always survived in the end, it was fun to be afraid because everyone would be OK when the credits rolled (and this was a period when people took what happened on the big screen a lot more seriously than we do now or ever will again).

George A. Romero's debut film doesn't just kill off the sweet innocent teenagers (in the aforementioned most gruesome fashion) -- which would become a staple of horror, along with zombies themselves -- he kills off everyone. Even the film's brave hero, a black man with a shotgun (a subversive decision in itself for the 1960s) gets shot in the head by a pack of zombie-hunting white men and tossed on a bonfire to end the film (the ending is filmed in photographic stills, which creates a somehow more disturbing, documentary-like grisly realism conclusion to the events).

What's truly scary about 'Night of the Living Dead' isn't the zombies, it is the behaviour of human beings: it doesn't matter what kind of monster or demon you survive a battle with, in the end it's the ugliness of human nature that is going to defeat you. And for that reason the film will always resonate, no matter how badly the acting and low budget effects age.

This movie used to be broadcast on TV every year on Halloween when I used to live in Pittsburgh. One year it was even broadcast in "unliving color". (That was how the colorized version was described.) Colorizing the original black and white movie was a huge mistake as the colors wound up looking fake. The ghouls were given green faces and the Molotov cocktails were colored bright orange.

There was also another version I remember seeing on TV one year. Someone had done a parody of the movie by splicing together scenes from the movie and dubbing in their own dialog. In their version, the people in the farmhouse were hosting a party but everyone forgot to bring the groceries! So the problem became how to fight off angry and hungry party guests. In this case, just hand them whatever you can grab (wood, nails, etc). In the scene where Ben flips over the table, the dialog was:

"The first thing we got to do is get rid of the table! If they don't see a table, they won't expect to eat!"

after he flips over the table:

"Hey Chlorine! This table has better legs than you do!"

"Oh really? Can it dance?", replies Chlorine.

The movie then ends with the zombies dancing and saying, "Let's dance!".

As far as I know however, I don't think this version has ever been released on VHS or DVD. But the original is a movie you can have fun with. Just mute the sound and make up your own dialog.

its hard to feel afraid of classic horror films because of modern society where everyone is so desensitized, but i could watch a clip of zombies having a tea party and still be uncomfortable. Night of the Living Dead still provides that sense of discomfort, but i was too distracted by how weak Barbra was portrayed. her character annoyed me. i get it, she was in shock and i'd probably be really upset too if i saw a dead guy kill my brother (if i had one), but im under the impression that most people would fight to stay alive and be alert in a situation like this. she couldn't even handle simple instructions or questions. Harry also bothered me... i cant understand how people can be so selfish and cowardly. i would understand if he was thinking of his family, but he was only thinking of himself and his own safety. and really, the risk was minimal because clearly the living were more adept than the zombies. the nature of the characters, even though i disliked them, enhances the movie because throughout the film, there was always something that was less than optimal if one was under attack by zombies.