Director: George Romero
Stars: Duane Jones, Judith O’Dea
Snack Report: Halloween Candy, of course!
I can hardly believe 31 nights have passed, and my first annual (?) Fright Nights Challenge is finally at an end!
I came up with the idea for the Challenge because I wanted to immerse myself in the horror genre this Halloween. Also, since I just launched the website in September, I thought it would be a good opportunity to share some of my favorite films with you.
So I’ve watched and written about zombies, aliens, witches, vampires, werewolves, psycho killers, talking severed heads, and more. But of course, I haven’t even scratched the surface. I passed over so many great films (and films I’ve never seen but always wanted to) because there just wasn’t enough time. In fact, I’m thinking about making the reviews a regular feature on the website.
Thanks for sticking with me through my Grand Tour of the horror genre! I hope you enjoyed reading about the movies as much as I enjoyed watching and writing about them.
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So on to #31, our last Fright Nights film… I decided to wrap things up with one of the most influential, genre-changing films of the horror realm… George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. I also chose it as a tribute to Romero, who passed away earlier this year… truly a favorite son of Pittsburgh, my hometown.
One reason we Pittsburghers have a special soul connection to Romero’s early Living Dead films because they were filmed here in the Pittsburgh metro area with local actors.
The guy who played the Field Reporter interviewing the sheriff wasn’t exactly an actor – he was our very own Bill “Chilly Billy” Cardille, local news anchor and late night horror show host for Chiller Theatre on WIIC-TV. (If you’re familiar with SCTV’s Monster Chiller Horror Theater, Chilly Billy was also the inspiration for Count Floyd, written and performed by Pittsburgh native Joe Flaherty.)
My boss, Lee Cummings (RIP) as Bathing Suit Zombie
When they started making sequels, I actually knew people who appeared in them. In fact, my boss and the assistant manager from my first job as a pet shop girl were cast as Bathing Suit Zombie and one of the bikers in Dawn of the Dead (1978), filmed at the legendary Monroeville Mall, not far from where I live.
The first time I saw Night of the Living Dead, I was about 12, and I remember it scared the crap out of me. It was released in October 1968, just before the new MPAA ratings system began that replaced the discontinued Hays Code. So yes, children were allowed to see this film in theaters… which was probably a windfall for therapists across America.
Fortunately, I was a pretty hard-boiled little kid, and I’ve gotten even tougher with age. I’ve probably seen it a dozen times since then. Like a true classic, it never really gets old.
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The plot is pretty well known, so I won’t go into too much detail…
Siblings Johnny and Barbara have driven a long way to a remote cemetery to please their mother, placing a floral tribute at their father’s grave. Johnny teases Barbara for her nervousness about being in the cemetery as night approaches, uttering the oft-quoted line – “They’re coming to get you, Barbara!”
Unfortunately, it looks like he’s right. A weird pale man is slowly shambling toward them, and they ignore him until it’s too late – he attacks Barbara, and Johnny fights him off long enough for her to escape.
Barbara makes it to the car but realizes Johnny still has the keys. So she releases the brake, and the car rolls down the hill, but she wrecks it into a tree and has to escape on foot, with the ghoul still pursuing (fortunately, he’s pretty slow). She finds a farmhouse and locks herself inside.
Ben shows up, and together they board up the doors and windows as more and more of the undead are milling about outside.
More refugees come up from the basement where they were hiding – Tom and Judy, a young couple, and Harry and Helen Cooper and their daughter Karen, who was injured when their car crashed.
Radio broadcasts warn of apocalyptic scenes all over the east coast with the unburied dead rising to attack and eat the living. They don’t know the cause, but a scientist suspects radiation from an exploding space probe.
There’s conflict among the group, each having their own ideas about how to stay safe. TV reports tell them that the only way to kill the ghouls is to destroy the brain, either shooting them in the head or smashing the skull, and that armed patrols are out looking for the creatures.
As the TV scrolls the locations of Western Pennsylvania rescue centers, they make a plan to distract the ghouls, get to Ben’s pickup truck, then refuel it and use it to escape. As you would expect, their plan ends in disaster, and Tom and Judy go up in a ball of fire. (On the bright side, the ghouls got their first hot meal…)
I can’t resist mentioning that the body parts the ghouls are feasting on from the burned-out truck were made of ham covered with chocolate syrup. And the guts were real, provided free by a crew member who in everyday life was a butcher. (Incidentally, Readers’ Digest warned their readers not to see the film, fearing that it would inspire them to cannibalism. I don’t think they had anything to worry about.)
Anyway, the power goes out, and the survivors are fighting amongst themselves. As the ghouls begin to break through the boarded-up windows and doors, Harry and Ben struggle over the rifle, and Harry is shot. He stumbles down to the basement and dies. When Helen goes down to the basement to check on her, she finds little Karen munching on her dad’s arm. Then in the big screen’s first-ever incident of matricide, she’s attacked and killed by her daughter’s reanimated corpse.
Things are unraveling quickly, as Johnny reappears, breaks through, and drags Barbara out into the hungry undead horde, leaving Ben the sole survivor. Ben barricades himself in the basement with the rifle to make his last stand.
In the very unlikely event you haven’t ever seen or heard about the ending, I won’t tell you what happens. But I will say it’s pretty damn nihilistic.
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Night of the Living Dead can claim a number of film firsts:
- First African-American lead in a horror film. (The part of Ben was written as an angry truck driver of unspecified race. Romero was so impressed with Duane Jones’ audition, he rewrote the part to reflect his personality).
- First movie feature film made in Pittsburgh.
- George Romero’s first feature film.
- One of the first films added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress.
I don’t know about you, but something I’ve always wondered about is why the word “zombie” is never used in the film (or in most other walking-dead-type films for that matter). They’re referred to in NOLD as “ghouls” or simply “those things.” Research revealed that the term “zombie” until that time was mostly used specifically to refer to Caribbean voodoo victims who were enslaved by magic. The term began to be used by reviewers later on to describe modern movies of the subgenre.
George Romero and Friends
There is a wealth of Night of the Living Dead trivia! I’ll just hit a few of the highlights…
- George Romero cited Carnival of Souls (Fright Night #5) as a major influence on NOLD.
- Evans City Cemetery, where the opening scene was filmed, was chosen because it was so isolated – thus, they could shoot without being bothered by sightseers or cops. Since then, it’s become a very popular Weird Tourism destination.
- Romero wanted to cast Betty Aberlin (Lady Aberlin of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood) as Barbara, but Fred Rogers wouldn’t allow her to do the film.
- It’s rumored that Romero never did laundry during the entire production. When the old clothes got dirty, he just bought new ones.