Night of the Living Dead

Night of the Living Dead (1968) ***1/2

"They're coming to get you Barbara." This line, creepily uttered near the start of the film helped launch the zombie concept as we know it today. George Romero, the director/writer of this film was an innovator and set the tone for decades of scary movies. That alone deserves two stars.

Barbara and Michael have just driven three hours to place a wreath on the grave of their dead father. Joking around about how they used to play in the cemetary as children, a staggering, disheveled man comes up and attacks the two. Barbara gets away, finding a farm house to hide in. She is soon joined by another man, Ben, as well as discovering five more people hiding in the cellar. They struggle amongst themselves in devising the best laid plan to fill the truck up with gas to drive to the nearest community safety post.

Romero is praised for two things that came from this movie: 1. Setting the standard for the horror genre in the late sixties, and 2. using horror as a satire on society. There have been countless essays and commentaries written about how the events inside the house reflected both the cold war and racial strife that were such a large part of America in 1968. So, I'm going to eschew the intellectual discussion and just focus on the meat and potatoes: was this a good horror movie?

Pretty much. Romero used real mental patients from a sanitarium as his zombies, and the effect is a subtle fright - no gore, but creepy nonetheless. I kind of wish he had spent more time on the zombies and less time on the internal strife (a complaint that could be echoed on many other horror movies - more monsters! less people!). The ending is climactic, pummeling us with creepy zombie girls and an anxious feeling of something inescapable. Still, this would have had a much bigger impact in the theater in 1968. After being jaded by the rabid zombies of today's films, it's hard to get too into this one.