The Legacy of The Night of the Living Dead

What happens when a newbie watches Night of the Living Dead, 50 years after it was released? Does the shocking ending still hold up?

My friend Anna-Maria is a certified geek. She loves Harry Potter, Star Wars, and a bunch of other stuff that squarely puts her into the realm of nerd.  So it was a surprise when I discovered that she hadn’t seen some of the classic genre movies.

That conversation went a little like this.

• BMAN: Hey, Anna-Maria, you’ve seen Dragonslayer, right? Classic fantasy movie?
• Anna-Maria: Sure. The one with Sean Connery as the dragon!
• BMAN: I weep for your generation.

It turns out that, as a younger geek, she’s never seen quite a few of the classic fantasy, sci-fi, and horror movies.

I obviously had a duty. A calling, really. Nay, a destiny: to make her watch all the nerdy movies she’s missed!

Plus, it’s always fun to see a newbie’s reaction to older movies, to see if old flicks stand up to the test of time.

We’ve since initiated Anna-Maria into viewings of films such as The Dark Crystal, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Time Bandits, Brazil, The Road Warrior, Big Trouble in Little China, and Aliens (yes, she had actually never seen Aliens! WTF?).

But it’s October now, and that means one thing! Time to watch some classic fright flicks!

For me, that means the original Night of the Living Dead!

And if I ever needed proof that older films still have the power to shock, well, Anna-Maria’s reaction was it!

BTW, there be spoilers here, kiddos, so if you haven’t seen it, go watch it. I mean, seriously, who hasn’t seen the original 1968 Night of the Living Dead? Even Anna-Maria has seen it now. If you haven’t seen it, then go watch it! RIGHT NOW! (And for the love of all that is holy, see the original black and white version, not some colorized abomination that should not exist…)

You watch it? You back? Good, let’s keep talking.

Night of the Living Dead is the exemplar low budget movie: a classic example of a film that defied its budget (and the limited film making experience of its creators) to not only connect with audiences, but have a major impact on pop culture.

Have you heard of Zombies? Yeah, you can thank Night of the Living dead for that genre. Directed by George A. Romero, this little flick pretty much invented it in 1968—(they weren’t called zombies here, but rather “ghouls,” but it established the basics: The dead are coming back to life, they like to eat people, and the only way to kill them is to shoot them in the head).

Can you imagine the current pop-culture landscape without zombies? Didn’t think so.

Now, it IS a low budget movie. So one has to expect a little wooden acting—the two leads (Duane Jones and Judith O’Dea) are quite good, but it’s clear that’s where the acting budget went, certainly not the supporting cast. 

But the movie still works anyway, and still stands out from other films of its era.

In fact, the low budget actually tends to work in its favor. Night of the Living Dead feels less staged than other films of its time. While not quite a documentary approach, it definitely has an unflinching, “you are there” feel to it.  It’s stark, black and white images put you in the moment, traps you in the farmhouse with the survivors, and doesn’t flinch from showing what happens to them, including gore and a murder by an unsettling, zombie-fied little girl.

Also unusual for 1968 is a black man as a protagonist: Ben is a man of color not only taking charge, but doing so over an otherwise entirely white cast. Much like Ripley in Alien was not originally written as a woman, Ben in Night of the Living Dead wasn’t originally written for a black man. That means the film doesn’t go out of its way to be about race—Ben’s status as a man of color in 1960s America is never directly addressed.  But because the story pits him against a cowardly white man, it instantly created a subtext (intentional or not) about racism that was inescapable in the late 60s.

And what’s interesting is that the characters aren’t painted as black and white (pun intended, I guess?).  Ben may be the film’s protagonist, and he is likeable, capable, and smart. But he’s also wrong.

It’s a pivotal argument in the movie. Stay upstairs in the farmhouse, or retreat to the basement. The first floor has more avenues for the ghouls to enter, but there are also more exits for our survivors to escape from if they need to flee. Retreating into the basement means there’s no escape if the house gets overrun.

Ben vehemently argues that the basement is a death trap.

But in the end, it’s only by escaping to the basement that Ben actually survives.

Which brings us to the ending.

Ben makes it through the night when all the others die. And the cavalry is coming, a band of civil defenders and volunteers killing ghoul after ghoul in the dawn soaked countryside. Ben comes out of the basement, takes a look outside.

And a good ole boy shoots him dead, right through the head.

Anna-Maria’s reaction? A muffled scream.

“NO!” she lamented. “He made it! WHY?”

She just sat there, stunned, as one of the most effective and chilling credit sequences in cinema history rolled: grisly, documentary style stills of the clean-up effort: men pulling the bodies of the ghouls into piles with meat hooks, forming bonfires to get rid of the dead.

And there’s Ben, just another one of the countless casualties.

Anna-Maria was still in shock. She looked at us, hands held on either side of her face, looked back at the screen. Speechless.