Original: Night of the Living Dead (1968)

Night of the Living Dead (1968)

Director: George A. Romero

Writer: John A. Russo (screenplay) and George A. Romero (screenplay)
Genre: Horror/Sci-Fi/Thriller

Story

George A. Romero’s black and white beginning of a zombie trilogy that spawned many other sequels, remakes, and rip-offs. Night of the Living Dead follows a small group of people hiding out in a house after corpses start coming back to life and attacking people. Of course these are zombies in the most traditional sense and Night of the Living Dead even offers up an explanation. These zombies are believed to have come from corpses being exposed to radiation from a fallen satellite. As the group of survivors in the house struggle to keep the large amounts of zombies from taking over, they fight and come up with one bad idea for escape after another.
Everything Else

George A. Romero was obviously on a budget when he made Night of the Living Dead as it was very rough in the sound and picture quality department. This is classic black and white, grainy film which is an odd choice for a movie with so much blood and guts (you work with what you can get I guess). The movie was later colorized to show off the blood and guts, but I always prefer the original rather than the altered version.
Special effects were sparse aside from a fire and explosion, but the costume design and makeup were great. The zombies look better in the black and white than they do in the color sequels to Night of the Living Dead. There is plenty of flesh eating and disembodiment so you are sure to get your fix on that. Really the story and the shear amount of deaths are the real reasons for the zombie genre; it’s all about the gore. With that said, there was certainly not much acting. Duane Jones is Ben the main character and is one of the only actors who did a decent job. Some of the other acting was downright awful and annoying. Even with the poor acting Night of the Living Dead had plenty to offer in the zombie film genre.
The Real Deal

I loved Night of the Living Dead. It was great to see it in black and white. When I first got the DVD I found out it was the color version, but it still had the original B&W version on the disc as well so I was in luck. I was surprised to find that Night of the Living Dead actually explained where the zombies came from rather than most zombie movies these days which simply assume it’s not something the viewers care about. There was enough gore and flesh eating in Night of the Living Dead to keep me satisfied and although it started slow, the ending was great. I highly recommend this one to any fan of zombie flicks.
The Short Version

Raw Score: 806,987
Sharon Movie? No

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