Night of the Living Dead

This film is a seminal work of its type that is seldom, if ever, bettered. One either likes it or doesn't. To say that the images in Night of the Living Dead are iconic would be an enormous understatement; they have informed the modern horror genre more completely than almost anything else to this day. When it was released in 1968, the film hit like a tornado. It was the first to offer such shocking, graphic depictions of horror-film violence, and its effect has never subsided. It was made in black and white on a shoestring budget, with largely non-professional actors and stock recorded music in real locations on the outskirts of the director's home town, Pittsburgh (still his home). Prior to Night of the Living Dead , director George Romero's company, "Image Ten," generally produced Pittsburgh-area TV commercials. Unlike its many imitators, Night of the Living Dead gives the viewer a sense of almost documentary realism, making it all the more disturbing. Although it is the first to use such explicitly gory images in a horror film, its pacing and psychological character examination set it apart from the cookie-cutter efforts that succeeded it despite ever more sophisticated special-effect technology.

The plot in outline form: Johnny and Barbara, a brother and sister, are visiting the grave of their late (and from Johnny's perspective, unlamented) father when they are approached by a ragged, vacant-looking stranger who immediately attacks and kills Johnny. Barbara, in deep shock for the remainder of the film, runs for her life and seeks refuge in an old farmhouse. As the film progresses, it seems that she is not the only refugee. These emerge only gradually from their hiding places, afraid that the noises they hear are the violent intruders. Radio and TV reports eventually inform the group that their problem is not an isolated case, and that for unknown reasons, the recently dead have been reanimated, with the even more mysterious need to feed on the living. Those killed in this manner are themselves reanimated; only a bullet or heavy blow to the brain can return the zombies to death. The rest of the film consists of efforts by the group, led by an assertive, resourceful Ben, to ward off these cannibalistic attacks. The ending is not a happy one, and there is a twist that appears to be a comment on racism, though the director claims not to have had that in mind (hard to believe).

Ironically, Romero draws his unsettling atmosphere from fright films that are not violent or graphic at all; he has admitted that he was most influenced by Herk Harvey's brilliant Carnival of Souls (1962), one of the best independent genre films of all in this writer's opinion. There had been many zombie films before: two of the most significant are White Zombie (1932) with the great Bela Lugosi in his prime, and the Hammer film Plague of the Zombies (1966). But in these and others, zombies were actually more sinned against than sinning: they were largely harmless corpses reanimated to provide slave labor--at a sugar mill in White Zombie and a mine in Plague of the Zombies. Indeed, the legend has to do with the terror of slavery continuing after death, reportedly originating in the former slave colony of Haiti, where, in fact, White Zombie is set. In these films, the zombies are indeed controlled by wicked, corrupt slave masters--who meet suitably nasty ends. Appearing a mere two years after Plague of the Zombies, Romero's 1968 film is the first to do away with the earlier premise altogether, making his zombies unexplained, murderous, and, in a sense, vampiric: being partly devoured by one makes the victim a zombie as well. As of this date, Romero has made three sequels to, and even his own remake of, Night of the Living Dead; indeed, he seems nearly incapable of making a film without zombies, but none have achieved the brilliance of his first effort. His second film in the sequence, Dawn of the Dead (1978), is very fine; it relates zombies to American consumerism and takes place in a shopping mall, once again near Pittsburgh. It was itself remade--far less effectively--by a different director in 2004. Although Romero's Dawn of the Dead and his later, lesser sequels are much gorier, in vivid color, and although they too have messages of social conscience, they are overly heavy-handed and lack real character development, sometimes almost bloody cartoons. They contain large doses of dark humor, while the original Night of the Living Dead is dead serious (no pun intended).

Night of the Living Dead has never been out of circulation, but most TV, VHS, and early DVD copies were struck from murky, damaged 16mm prints. In 1993, Elite joined forces with Romero to produce a restored definitive version from the original 35mm negatives for laser disc. It was issued on a THX-certified DVD in 1999 as a "Special Collector's Edition," minus a few extras for which early DVDs had insufficient space. In 2002, all the laser disc's extras were restored, and a new surround-sound option added, for a version called the "Millenium Edition"; the restoration of the film is the same in both editions.

Please take note that terrible editions continue to proliferate, the worst of all being Anchor Bay's 1998 "30th Anniversary Edition," which is grotesquely mutilated with a new electronic soundtrack and atrocious newly filmed scenes; still available--and costly, it is the one to avoid most scrupulously.

Despite having fewer extra features than the 2002 "Millenium Edition," Elite's 1999 "Special Collector's Edition" is preferable, dealing with one problem more honestly. As I indicated, stock recorded music is used throughout the film, and it begins unsteadily. In the 2002 "Millenium Edition," the soundtrack starts almost inaudibly and increases in volume for the first fifteen seconds, making the viewer adjust the TV for an expected low overall sound level (certainly when using a DVD player's "dialogue expander") and then jump to turn down the volume a few seconds later. The volume swell was either a poor attempt to conceal the minor unsteadiness problem in the first few notes or just a mistake that Elite made while creating the new, unnecessary 5.1 surround track; sadly, the problem also afflicts the regular mono soundtrack in the "Millenium Edition." The older Elite "Special Collector's Edition" presents the original consistent volume level from the beginning, and the slight "wow" in the opening notes is barely noticeable.

The "Special Collector's Edition" has almost three times as many track cue points as the later "Millenium Edition"--the opposite of what one would expect. The "Special Collector's Edition" has all the extras one would want: two commentary tracks, trailers, the hilarious parody "Night of the Living Bread," and a few of Romero's local-area commercials. The "Millenium Edition" restores more of those commercials, a few audio interviews, and extant fragments of a not-very-good non-horror early Romero film from the laser disc. Those extras are historical curiosities, pretty dull and not horror film oriented; I doubt that many people will want to see them more than once, if at all. The surround sound of the "Millenium Edition" seems inappropriate for an independent b&w film from 1968. My feeling is that Elite's 1999 "Special Collector's Edition" is the best overall presentation; the accurate opening volume gives it the edge, as does its recently reduced price: while the "Millenium Edition" is still nearly $20, the "Special Collector's Edition" can be had for as little as $7 US (at DeepDiscountDVD.com)!

I note that the Good Times DVD (catalog no. 05-81170) is an unauthorized clone of the "Special Collector's Edition" without any extras. The cloning apparently produced a somewhat grainier picture. At about $4 US, it's the only good cheap version, but as the genuine Elite "Special Collector's Edition" is now almost as inexpensive and has all the essential extras, it's certainly better--and more ethical--to go with that. Strangely, in library cataloging of the Elite editions, "Good Times" is listed in the "added authors" column.

Review by Robert E. Seletsky