Night of the Living Dead

(1968) ****

I've given this movie a lot of crap since I first saw it, because I was 15 and saw Dawn first and griped about Night's neglect of certain zombie rules that were laid down ten years after it was made. Also the constant bickering. I've held up the bicker level of this film as a negative archetype for years. And while it was gratifying to see that bald, bitchy Harry Cooper was every bit as annoying as I remembered, it was far more gratifying to find that this film is a stark little tour de force that deserves all the credit it gets.

First the bad. There's a huge sag in the first half of this movie. The opening is great, with Barbara getting to the house about ten minutes in. Then smooth old Ben shows up, and there's nearly a half hour of watching Ben board up the house and occasionally lob some fire at the gathering ghouls. Then, after all that, here comes charming Mr. Cooper, who before you can say howdya do is running around the house like a cracked-out gerbil calling everybody stupid. Between arguing with the upstairs crowd about the merits of the basement, and then arguing with his wife in the basement about the same thing, the worst ten minutes of the movie pass. Then they find a TV.

Now the good. Everything that happens after they turn on the TV is pure black-and-white gold. The newscasts are priceless, with a nerdy guy in thick-framed glasses dispassionately providing the grisly facts over a steady soundtrack of that ticka-ticka-ticka news noise. At one point he's joined by a similarly bespectacled gentlemen who discusses the immediate burning of new corpses: "The bereaved will just have to forgo the dubious comfort of a funeral. They're just dead flesh." After that comes the escape plan, and the movie just keeps on rolling from there. I'll even admit the groundwork laid for Harry Cooper's part in the story had some very satisfying results.

And no matter how much this movie might be annoying you, the cinematography is exquisite. Here's the first interior shot of the house as Barbara shuts the door behind her.


It's like a film noir playground, and every shot boasts either this moody style or a Twilight Zone sharpness. It's eye candy, all right, but a strange pepper-flavored candy you find in Japan.

Oh yeah, the controversial trowel. One of the zombies uses a trowel as a weapon in a clear violation of zombie tool-using protocols. This was my old gripe. What I'd completely forgotten was the sudden psychedelic surge in the sound effects of that scene, and that made all the difference. I totally forgive the trowel zombie, although the scene would seem more at home in an Argento flick.

At the end there are some wonderful narrative bookends to enjoy. The final answer to the whole basement question, for one thing. But most of all there's old Johnny (top), coming in the door and letting Barbara know that the nameless thing that she ran from as a child, scared of the cemetery and her brother's taunting -- that's what gonna take her down.

Required reading: Summerisle's excellent review of NotLD from last year.