31 Days of Horror: Night of the Living Dead
Quick! Hands up everyone who has not seen George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. That’s what I thought, but for the uninitiated, NotLD tells the story of a small group of people holed up in a Pennsylvania farmhouse, trying to survive the night while zombies try to get into the house. The zombies are being created by radiation from an exploded space probe that had recently returned from Venus. The film, which is at times slow, builds it’s unease from the opening scenes and continues with healthy doses of claustrophobia and paranoia. The viewer never knows more than the characters on the screen know up until the shock ending.
Night of the Living Dead is the blueprint for most horror and nearly every zombie movie made since 1968 even those films that don’t take some inspiration from the film are intentionally trying to not show the influence. The film has been sequeled, parodied, re-made by rarely bettered. It has also been seen as an allegory for the Civil Rights Movement and/orthe Vietnam War. Of course any film made between 1967 and 1972 could be seen as addressing one of these issues. The racial element is pretty obvious and makes some sense especially in the closing scenes. An allegory for the Vietnam War? I think that’s a stretch by people trying to read something that isn’t there.
“1notldleg”
Night of the Living Dead has a weird history on DVD. There are countless releases of edited, public domain prints on discs that sell as low as one dollar. Trust me, save your money and get a good quality disc.
The recent DVD from Legend Films would be a good place to start. The disc features a really nice, un-cut, restoration of the film complete with 2.0 mono and 5.1 Dolby Stereo sound. There is also a Rifftrax commentary from former Mystery Science Theater 3000 alum, Mike Nelson. Ok you aren’t going to get a lot of inside information or a film theory lesson, but the tracks is quite funny, and even die hard fans of the film will get some chuckles and some handy Zombie cocktail recipes during the slow spots. The disc also has a colorized version of the film. Without getting into any of the merits of colorization in general, the results on this film look good, far superior to the mid 1980’s attempt, although I always imagined Johnny’s car to be blue, not red. Plus you’ll need to watch it at least once to hear the commentary track. Plus Legend Films have given the purists a great black & white version as well, and all for a very affordable price.
