Night of the Living Dead

Night of the Living Dead (1968) was quite the treat considering it being an old movie. I'm not a fan of old movies, but this one caught my attention for a couple reasons, one of which being the first ever "zombie" film. Also, I found it interesting the main lead is a black male in a horror movie. The stereotype for many horror movies these days is that the 'black man dies first.' Well, apparently not. He died last in this one. That's right. Learn to get your stereotypes from the right movies. Thirdly, the biggest twist is the fact that everyone dies in this movie. There is no heroic savior at the end, or a romantic kiss with explosions in the background. Everyone dies, plain and simple.

Night of the Living Dead is about a group of people getting trapped inside a house while savage human-eating people from the graves try to overrun them. It all starts as a joke, but when things take a wrong turn, havoc is brought upon Barbra...and eventually the people in the house. The movie is in black and white even though color has been past introduced. Then again, so is Schindler's List and The Artist. That choice is up to the Director and it's been holding up well. Along with the grayscale color choice, the music was also a good fit. The music determined whether to be scared or not and came and went right on cue. Another thing I noticed was the obvious use of handheld cameras instead of tri-pods - another Director's choice, I assume. Why should the the camera be still and perfect when the characters are frightened for their lives? The camera should reflect the characters in a horror film. Another thing I liked about the camera-work was use of crooked, diagonal, and low set-ups.

The dialogue was very fluent and didn't seem scripted, which is what most writers try to go for. One thing that bothered me a bit was the fact that the zombies seemed a bit too smart. How did they know how and when to pick up rocks? Then again, that goes against what I said about the black man dying first. Who's to say zombies are not smart? Who made it up? Nobody, I suppose. And how did zombies know to stay away from fire? How did they know it might hurt them? I'm not sure. I'll leave the zombie lore to the experts.

My final notes are these: George did a spectacular job making this movie come to life...from the grave. Get it? Never mind. Either way, I really enjoyed this movie and it remains to be one of my favorites from the '60s.