Welcome to the first of our Halloween reviews, we are kick starting 2023 with George.A.Romero’s cult classic Night of the Living Dead.

Filmed on a tiny budget of $100,000 this film is often credited for creating the modern flesh eating zombie.

In the film 7 people hiding in an abandoned farm house have to work together in order to survive the night with very little hope of escaping the carnivorous corpses.

Due to the tight budget Romero and his crew needed to create their own film company Image Ten in order to have a studio to release the movie. Many of the cast members on the film were known for primarily performing in television commercials and hadn’t yet had a big break in the industry.

I think the best way to review this film is to discuss what it did to change cinema, the casting is pretty mediocre in my opinion no one really stood out but never did a bad a job I think a lot of the corny or over the top acting was down to the main experiences before this being TV and advertising.

A huge and at the time controversial casting choice was to have a man of dark skin to play the lead role, the United States while much more accepting of coloured persons had not began to understand its past misunderstandings. In fact it was only just over 10 years prior this films release that Rosa Parks had refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus. Night of the Living Dead stands out in history as the first horror film ever to give its lead role to a person of colour, when asked about this choice Romero simply states “Jones was the best actor we met to play Ben”. A big win not only for Duane Jones (Actor) but the African American community.

The biggest controversy at the time was how scary this film actually was, back in 1968 we still didn’t have a rating system so  you could watch any film now matter what your age was.

This meant that a lot of children went to see the movie and it had some backlash from critics due to the amount of gore, of course these days calling this film graphic is laughable but back in 1968 this was rather disturbing to say the least.

The film holds its legacy not only for its influence on the film industry but the horror genre in general.

Zombies had been in media long before this but they were more controlled by Voodoo and black magic.

Romero created the flesh eating walking dead zombies to that we see today, while this film definitely is unique as we don’t see rotting corpses and the undead show signs of intelligence by being able to pick up and use weapons, some major tropes were born from this including eating flesh, being killed by destroying the brain and bitten persons coming back as zombies.

Night of the Living Dead is one of the most influential films ever made and it is well worth watching just to appreciate everything it managed to achieve on such a tight budget but if is far from perfect, I find a lot of the acting is over done and almost comedic with how over the top it can be, Barbara is the best example of this she is so annoying and generally a bad directors decision making her a damsel in distress and completely useless when we could have had a much more respectfully represented female lead.

The ending is tragic and definitely leaves a depressing tone on who ever sees it but I think it works well enough and is pretty shocking I remember the first time I seen it and I honestly could not believe what I had just witnessed, I left with so many emotions and I didn’t know how to feel about it but I’ll tell you one thing to this day it has always stuck with me and is such a important part of this film and something that really makes it stand out.

Night of the Living Dead may not be the perfect movie and perhaps it hasn’t aged all too well compared to other higher budget movies of the time but it has definitely made such a massive impact on the horror genre that it holds a legendary status and is well worth watching at least once to get a true appreciation for what it has given us.

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