Night of the Living Dead (1968)

Night of the Living Dead: 1968, dir. George A. Romero. Seen on DVD (Oct. 9).
It seems that October is, appropriately, Undead Movie Month for me. Mostly the movie Shawn of the Dead is to blame. My boyfriend and I want to see the movie, but we decided that we should see a couple of the Romero films beforehand so we could appreciate all the jokes. He suggested it and he is not even a film geek. Perhaps I am a bad influence.
Also, Alamo Downtown is showing a lot of horror movies this month. No other theater chain in town seems to be acknowledging Halloween very well, but at Alamo they’ve got all kinds of goodies planned. I’m really pleased about this.
I thought about lumping all my thoughts on these undead/horror movies into one big review but first of all, it would be way too long and second of all, when in the hell would I finish that? And should I include all the horror movies I see this month, or just the ones with undead/re-animated corpses/evil dead? So I’m splitting up my thoughts on these movies by movie, but will probably have a lot to say about my general feelings on the genre.

I used to have a much higher tolerance for horror and gore. I have no idea what happened. That’s not true. I said that last week, and then I realized that my tolerance for goriness depends on the tone what I am watching. Buckets of blood, as in Kill Bill Vol. 1, are so unreal and stylized as to be vaguely amusing, but I could not look at the skull drilling in the remake of The Manchurian Candidate. I also flinch less at blood in horror movies with a comic side, as in Evil Dead 2.
Night of the Living Dead isn’t gory as much as it is gruesome. And nihilistic. And downright unpleasant. I didn’t have much sympathy for any of the characters, not even Barbra, whom I wanted to smack out of her shock-induced trance. I did like the relatively cool and calm demeanor of Ben, who was portrayed as level-headed but not with any cloying sentimentality.
This isn’t a likeable movie. It’s a good suspense film and a good horror film. The undead (they are never called “zombies” in the film, I noticed) don’t look all that scary. They’re slow and clumsy and you aren’t sure why it would be that difficult to defeat them until you realize they’re relentless. They keep grabbing, and pulling, and they increase in numbers as the night goes on.
And you get the feeling that there isn’t anything the characters can do to save themselves or anyone else. Escape attempts are botched and people die. Hiding in the cellar doesn’t work because now the little girl is undead. And when Ben survives the night and all the undead, what happens to him? He is mistaken for a zombie and shot in the head. At least it’s a less horrible way to die than being devoured by the undead.
The movie is shot in black-and-white, which gives a further sense of gritty realism. Blood can look a lot more appalling in black-and-white film than it does in Technicolor. I remember seeing an obscure Orson Welles movie, Chimes at Midnight, which was filmed in black-and-white, and the mixture of blood and mud in the battle scenes would have looked far less horrible in color.
Lots of people have come up with theories about the symbolism of this movie, invoking the Cold War and Vietnam and the rise of technology. Because the two main characters are a black man and a woman, people also make references to civil rights and feminism. I think the feminism charge is completely stupid because the woman spends half the movie acting like a zombie herself, but I find the other theories interesting. However, you don’t need to speculate on the Cold War to find this movie absorbing.
Night of the Living Dead was fascinating, and I’m glad I saw it, but I don’t feel like I need or want to see it again. I’m told that Dawn of the Dead, which we’ve also rented, is much less grim and even funny at times, so I’m looking forward to seeing it.