Without watching, and thinking of, the two back to back, it is easy to miss the similarities between John Carpenter’s Halloween and George Romero‘s Night of the Living Dead. Both were made by a bunch of amateur filmmakers on a minuscule price tag and both are highly regarded, not only in horror films, but in their respective sub-genres.
Romero helped define the modern zombie as we know, and despise, it today. Previously, zombies were not autonomous flesh-eating beings, but pawns by some voodoo priest from some exotic locale. Now, zombie is not only a term for mindless folk enacting a set routine consistently (we’ll get to Shaun of the Dead soon enough) but also deadly slow (or fast depending on the movie) “people” out for blood by way of whatever reason is given or not. In fact, just like Halloween, the gist of the film (people trapped in a confined space battling deadies) has been done and done again to the point that it seems cliched. Night being the start, and to some extent the apex, of zombie films though takes this mere plot summary and does wonders with it.
Romero likes to say that his original film is not really a piece of social commentary on race relations in the 1960s, but given his proclivity for shoehorning other commentary in films that are not worthy of it (cough … Diary of the Dead), I find that hard to believe. That point notwithstanding, Night is a clever film, not only for its subject matter but also for its production technique. Much has been written about the guerrilla-style filmmaking used during this production and it is remarkable especially since the low-budget-ness does more to engulf you in the zombie phenomenon than other similar films can pull off with big budget set pieces and makeup.
Even though I’ve seen the 1990 remake more than this, the original Night has a certain charm that exudes during every minute. Starting with poor, meek Barbara and her obnoxious brother Johnny at the cemetery to Ben and Cooper’s introduction at the old farmhouse, this film features realistic characters who do not necessarily fall into the Hollywood trap of painting them as extremes. Cooper is kind of an ass but he is not necessarily dangerous, just scared and stupid. Ben is not a hero, more of a poor guy stuck in bad circumstances who has to take charge. Everything about them (even the almost comatose Barbara) feels genuine, not some character written by committee.
The final third of the film is exhilarating with constant threats from both inside and outside as the human occupants come to blows and the zombies come closer and closer to their feast. It would be an understatement to say the ending is a downer but it fits the rest of the film perfectly. The excellence performances, mostly from Duane Jones and Karl Hardman, and especially the go-for-broke attitude of Romero and his crew set this apart as a horror film that will live on much longer than its undead antagonists.
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