Friday, October 13, 2017

A Quick Look: NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968)


   One of those few films that actually lives up to the hype heaped upon it, NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD was considered for many years the dividing line between classic and modern horror. The simple story of a group of survivors taking refuge in an isolated farmhouse as the recent dead come to life and feed upon the living still packs a jolt. Survival is a very basic premise, and that alone gives the theme some punch. Unlike all the films that followed in it's undead footsteps, NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD has the advantage of being filmed in black and white. This really lends the visuals some staying power most color films simply can't muster. Young George Romero's science-fiction-based zombies became the norm, seemingly forever replacing the old voodoo slave trope. In the 70's, Romero produced a quasi-sequel (although the connection between the two films is almost nonexistent -in fact the end of the first film seems to negate the very bulk of the second) by name of DAWN OF THE DEAD. This too was a gripping drama, and a smash hit. Dozens of rip-offs followed in it's wake, a great many imported from Italy. The zombie-survival theme became it's own bloody genre, and audiences seemingly couldn't get enough. The genre waned for a couple of decades before coming back full force in a cycle that's still with us. So prominent is the genre in our collective culture that the phrase "zombie apocalypse" is causally thrown about as a possible ending of modern civilization! It's hard to realize sometimes that NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD was once very fresh and ground-breaking. Unfortunately, it seemed the element of the film that was easiest to duplicate by others was the overall nihilism NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD presented. Officially remade at least once in the 90's. Officially sequeled in DAWN OF THE DEAD, and unofficially in two or three other flicks. It's easy to write the genre off as blood-and-gore exploitation at it's worst, but the original NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD really is a horror classic.




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