It was the summer of 1992. I was lying on the floor of my granny’s living room watching the rain delay movie for the baseball game that had been interrupted by a storm. It was an old black and white piece like most of the B monster flicks I’d been introduced to that summer and I wholeheartedly expected something full of schlocky designs and bad acting. I’d watched Godzilla and every movie about giant bugs superimposed over cityscapes that you could imagine. There had been invaders from Mars and killer brains that wouldn’t die. But I was unprepared for what I was about to experience. It was a grueling exercise of terror and violence the likes of which I had never seen before. Night of the Living Dead made an impression that afternoon on an eight-year-old boy that would completely change his life forever. What I saw disturbed and upset me and I wouldn’t watch it again until the summer of my senior year in high school.
The thematic elements of Night of the Living Dead, of race and sex and paranoia were totally lost on me when I first watched it and, truthfully, even today I think there are likely nuances of that old black and white horror that still elude me. Even so, it has become one of my favorite movies. I’ve watched it in black and white, colorized, and even endured the trauma of the 30th anniversary nightmare that was released in 1998. I’ve watched every remake, every nod in horror and television and internet culture that I can find to Romero’s genre changing classic. It never gets old.
The power of a good movie is to change something inside the viewer, to entertain as well as to make them reflect on the world in which they live. At eight, I was simply terrified of people in a trance wandering up and attacking me. At eighteen, it was the way a virus or natural disaster could upend society. At thirty-four, the horror is in the way we turn on ourselves in such a crisis rather than the crisis itself. Fifty years ago George Romero and John Russo wrote a story about strangers trapped in a house. Scared, panicking, facing gruesome scenarios that were unimaginable at the time. It was the era of the Vietnam War and the height of Cold War paranoia. Racial and sexual equality were being fought for and the world seemed to be imploding on itself.
Half a century later and we’re back in the same situation. Endless war in the Middle East. The constant threat of rival Asian nations. Race and sex have once again moved to the forefront as we struggle to bring genuine equality to a nation lead by a government that we just can’t trust.
Night of the Living Dead is as relevant and important now as it was in 1968. Maybe even more so.
Then, of course, we have another Romero masterwork that is also celebrating a milestone anniversary. Dawn of the Dead, released in 1978, furthers the narrative of the living dead and a world gripped in terror. The themes of racial and sexual equality, of class systems and paranoia run amok are telling of the age and, again, so relevant today that it’s scary. The blind consumerism and the rise of the corporate entity over the individual is also explored through the zombie apocalypse.
George Romero as a director was a luminary, using the notion of some mysterious radiation or disease as a way to turn the monster from some inhuman Haitian folk tale into something more real.
“They’re us. We’re them and they’re us.” Barbara played by Patricia Tallman in the 1990 remake of Night of the Living Dead mused to herself as she watched the search parties reveling in the wholesale mass murder that had been condoned in order to “save” the region.
Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead introduced us to the monster inside, the monster that could be any of us. Suddenly, the danger is real. That thing stalking you through the darkness, preying upon your flesh is now stranger, no animalistic beast of legend. It’s your neighbor. Your sibling. Your friend.
Brilliant. Entertaining. Horrifying.
Timeless.
This is the legacy of George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead and, if you are one of those few who may not have seen this film, find it and watch it today.