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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