Any body have any thoughts on this classic film?
If you're referring to the original 1968 film, I consider it a classic. It's one of the few horror movies I like. It's one I'd to get on DVD. Preferably, the double disc Anniversary edition. And I'm not much of a horror movie fan.
Danny Perry in his 1989 book, Cult Movies made what I think is a rather sobering observation. The hero of the tale, Ben, is terribly wrong in suggesting that everyone has a better chance of survival if they remain upstairs. As it turns out, Harry, the loud mouth coward was right. It was by hiding in the basement that Ben survived until the morning.
The ending to this film is a bit depressing, however.
We watched this in my Cinema Studies class last semester. Actually, the scheduling worked out so that I had to watch it while I was home over fall break. After seeing it, my mom turned to me and remarked, "So, we're paying all this money for you to go to Oberlin... and you're doing this?" Excellent moment.
The problem with that would have been that the little girl would have turned and everbody would have been stuck with her.
But as the movie demonstrated, Brian, the zombies can be "killed". Ben kills her when he takes shelter in the basement. As the little girl was only one zombie, she could easily have been dealt with. Of course, Harry and his wife might at first object. "That's my little girl! Leave her alone!" Chomp! "Okay, sweetheart. You can stop biting Daddy's arm. Sweetheart. Sweetheart? Hey! Will someone get this @#!*%#@ kid off me! I don't care! Just get her off me! Kill her!"
The truly frigehtening thing about this movie is not that the zombies are the enemies in the end it is the humans that you must watch out for. Everyone in the house is conficted and fighting, and (SPOILER) in the end humans kill off our main character, not zombies. (END SPOILER)
The Zombies where just an element that threw all of these conflicting people together and in that conflict is the true story. At least in my opinion
Interesting perspective, Meg. I hadn't considered it before.
One interesting thing to note, the 1968 movie is in public domain, believe it or not. George Romero forgot to put a copyright notice on the film when he changed the name of it from its original title, Monster Flick.
Actually, what about Dawn of the Dead? Probably the best of the Dead series. I watched it tonight - and caught a mistake: Fran (Gaylen Ross) is operating a camera when Steven (David Emgee) comes to her and suggests that she come with him to run. She looks at him for a second, and accidentally calls him David.
In Night of the Living Dead, the funniest mistake is an establishing shot of Ben going outside in the dark to face a zombie ... who appears to be running around in the daylight!
These movies were great - despite some of the corniness.
Day of the Dead was okay.
This film is pretty fun until the "Newscasts" interrrupt the flow with trying to 'rationally' explain what caused the Zombies . The explanation is just too far fetched and dated. It's a rather sour note to the film.
Then again, I don't think there could be any convincing explanation. Another zombie movie I also love is 1985's "Return of the Living Dead". It's funny and has non-stop action (and a bigger budget for some impressive make-up effects).
...in the end humans kill off our main character, not zombies. - Meg
That's not true. Barbara, who was warned by her brother that they were "coming to get (her)." was killed by the zombies*. As a matter of fact, it's Barbara's brother, Johnny, who does the actual killing.
Ben kills her when he takes shelter in the basement. - me
Wrong. Ben doesn't kill her. She attacks him upstairs and throws away from him. She's left with the other zombies outside of the basement. He does kill Harry and Helen Cooper in the basement, however.
Johnny’s not very good at math, is he? He tells Barbara that it’s a three hour drive back home and that they won’t be home ‘til after midnight. At that point, according to Barbara, it’s 8 o’clock. Eight plus three is not 12. It’s eleven.
Even taking daylight savings time into consideration, it’s awfully bright outside for 8 o’clock. What’s worse is how dark it suddenly becomes shortly after Barbara finds her way to the house where everyone hides. There is no gradual lessening of light.
Shortly before getting ready to leave his car, Johnny takes his gloves off. He lays them on the dashboard of the car. Yet, later on, just after the sound of thunder, Johnny’s putting his gloves back on. Does he carry an extra pair of gloves on him? He left the first pair on the dashboard.
At different points in the movie, these things happen: Ben sets one of the zombies on fire. He lights a chair and throws it outside. Later, he has Harry Cooper throw Molotov cocktails out a window. The gas from the pump ignites. The truck Tom and Judy are in catches on fire. Yet, each and every one of these fires seem to extinguish themselves. They do not, as one might expect, burn down the house and half the countryside.
The apparent cause of the dead rising up to attack the living is “some strange radiation”. What is this, the Marvel Comics Universe?
The positions of Ben’s hands, the zombies’ hands and the gun changes continuously from one shot to the next while Ben is struggling to keep the zombies out of the house the first time.
At three in the morning, we see a live broadcast on TV in which some people who are hunting the zombies are interviewed. The interview takes place outdoors in the same state (Pennsylvania) the film is set in. But in broad daylight. At 3 a.m.!
*Please note that the word “zombie” is never used to describe the reanimated corpses in this film. They are objectified with such terms as “them”, “those things”, etc. But they are never formally called “zombies”.
“They’re coming to get you, Barbara!”
At the top of the house stairs, there is a corpse. Why doesn't it ever come to life?
Shortly after Ben arrives, a zombie enters the house and tries to attack Barbara. Ben kills it using his tire iron. As Barbara approaches the zombie, watch his eyes. They move. The zombie looks to the right.
To secure one of the doors to the house, Ben nails another door in front of it. The walls of that house must be pretty sturdy to hold that door in place. I mean, have you ever picked a door up before? Those things are heavy! I wouldn't think you could nail a door to the wall of the average house. It'd fall off the wall almost immediately.
I love it when Ben tells Barbara, "This place is boarded up pretty solid." Right behind him is a window that the zombies could easily use to enter the house.
How do the zombies know that there are people in the house to begin with? One or two maybe three flocking around the building I can see. But 10, 20, 30 of them? How do they know to flock towards that house?
And why does it take so long for the zombies to decide to break into the house? The one that attacked Barbara at the cemetary immediately tries to break into the car to get to her. You'd think that instead of spinning around, walking in circles, wandering aimlessly, the zombies would start trying to tear the place apart to get in. Yet it isn't until nearly the end of the film that they make a real effort to do so.
The 30th Anniversary Edition of this film contains two versions of NotLD. One is the original 1968 edit. It does have a new soundtrack score (the original score made of music that was in public domain, IIRC). That score can be quite intrusive at times. It seems to call attention to itself here and there.
The second version is an edit with added scenes. These scenes (a total of about 15 minutes worth) were shot specifically for the 30th Anniversary Edition. These scenes are annoying and useless. They look too modern, so do the actors who appear in them. In a couple of cases they interefere with the rhythm of the film, almost causing the film to come to a screeching halt. In one of the final added scenes (it takes place a year after the events of the flick), a Reverend Hicks, who was attacked by a zombie, is in a mental institute. In the background is a sign stating that smoking is prohibited. I don't think that such a sign would have been there back in the 1960s. (Hicks btw, looks like Aliester Crowley: bald headed with a goattee. Definitely an '80s/'90s look rather than '60s. The actor who played him composed the new score.)
"Yeah, they're dead. They're all messed up."
About the corpse that Ben killed with the tire iron - the one that snuck into the house. Just after Ben killed him (re-killed?), his eyes are shut. In the next shot of him, his eyes are wide open. Then they shift to the right.
The sounds of Ben hammering the boards into place is often out of sycnh with his actions.
Why does this farmhouse have so many fuse boxes in it? You can see them in the cellar sequence where Judy replaces Helen in watching over Karen, the little girl.
The zombies break the headlights of Ben's truck. Yet when Ben, Tom and Judy go to take the truck to the gas pump, the headlights are once again intact.
They also clearly used two trucks in the film. Just as the truck drives up to the gas pump, the tailgate is visible and it has no writing on it. In the next shot where you can see the tailgate, in plain white letters is the "Chevrolet" logo.
"Yeah, they're dead. They're all messed up."
At the top of the house stairs, there is a corpse. Why doesn't it ever come to life?
Its brain was already destroyed, before they came to the house, IIRC.
I know they say that on the commentary track, but there really isn't any way of knowing that just from watching the film, Anon. An alternate explanation is that the corpse had been dead awhile. All the ones that were coming back to life were "the recent dead". But again, it's not specified in the flick that this is the case for the body at the top of the stairs.
"They're coming to get you, Barbara!"
I know they say that on the commentary track, but there really isn't any way of knowing that just from watching the film, Anon.
Well, beg to differ, as that was my impression, and I've never watched a version of this movie with a commentary track.
I've seen it hacked to bits on TV, and also have seen it on a bare bones dollar store DVD version with some other public domain horror movie on the same disc. I believe this version was complete, as the running time matches that I've seen given for other versions I've been told are complete. The picture wasn't that great, but hey, it was like a buck.
Could be then. I posted the nit before I watched the commentary track. The track features Bill Hinzman (one of the investors and the guy who played the graveyard zombie), John Russo (co-writer of the film) and Russ Steiner (Johnny). When they got to where the corpse at the top of the stairs was shown, they talked about how some people have wondered that corpse didn't come back to life. Their explanation was the same as yours. They said, "We just figured that too much of its brain was gone." Personally, I wouldn't have thought so. I'm not saying that's not the answer. Just that it wasn't really indicated by the film. At least not to me, anyway.
As far as the quality of the film itself goes, they talked about that, too, on the commentary track. Seems the distibutors got cheap with the film stock. The result is the familiar grainy look the film has always had. ('Til the 30th Anniversary Edition, that is.) Personally, I like the grainy look. It adds to the creepiness of the movie.
"Yeah, they're dead. They're all messed up."
Don't forget about the Elite DVD version (the on e with the Romero commentary and the origional music), the DVD's main menu even has a little joke about it, when you start the DVD you see grainy, jumpy, washout out film footage of the opening shot of the film, than the screen explodes into the good cleaned up transfer of the same shot, than the elite entertainment logo.
The 30th anniversery special edition has one version of the film with new scenes (ala George Lucas) and another version of the film with new music. Romero wanted nothing to do with the re-edit or rescoring of his film but couldn't do much about it because it's in the public domain. BTW Russo / anchor bay entertainment could copyright the new version of the film since it's a new production that uses existing public domain footage. Also John Russo was producer/co-writer on the film and holds the rights to the name "living dead" that's why Romero's sequels were been day/dawn of the dead and Russo has made "Return of the living dead" and "children of the living dead".
Good movie, but I've got some problems with it.
First of all, why is there only ONE zombie at the cemetary? There should be tons of them; that is where they come from, isn't it?
And the earth around the graves isn't disturbed either! I mean, if a bunch of dead people just dug themselves up, would there be a lot of holes and piles of dirt everywhere? Or did the zombies take the time to fill in the holes?
If the zombies came out of the coffins and through six feet of earth, they must be pretty strong. But they aren't strong enough to break through a measly little door! Okay, so it's boarded up- big deal! They broke through SOLID wooden coffins covered with dirt! A few boards shouldn't be a problem.
Finally, why oh why did the girl's mother not see that her daughter had turned into a zombie? I mean, first of all, the kid was EATING the father!! Is there a clue somewhere here?
First of all, why is there only ONE zombie at the cemetary? There should be tons of them; that is where they come from, isn't it?
And the earth around the graves isn't disturbed either! I mean, if a bunch of dead people just dug themselves up, would there be a lot of holes and piles of dirt everywhere? Or did the zombies take the time to fill in the holes? - mertz
According to the commentary track, the zombies are the recently dead. So they would not be in their graves yet. (But did that many people really die at that time? Was a mass murderer passing through the neighborhood?)
If the zombies came out of the coffins and through six feet of earth, they must be pretty strong. But they aren't strong enough to break through a measly little door! - mertz again
For that matter, the zombie in the cemetary was strong enough to smash the window to Johnny's car and yet, the zombies aren't strong enough to break down the door as you mention.
Finally, why oh why did the girl's mother not see that her daughter had turned into a zombie? I mean, first of all, the kid was EATING the father!! Is there a clue somewhere here? - mertz once more
I thought Katie, the little girl, had killed her mother, Helen, before killing Mr. Cooper, her dad? Beyond that, you do bring up some could points.
"Yeah, they're dead. They're all messed up."
Contrary to what most Hollywood movies and TV shows would have you believe, there is more than just dirt on top of coffins. They're usually sealed with large concrete slabs, and there's no way a zombie could get through that.
Zombies are no stronger than normal humans. Have you ever tried breaking down a door? Sure, it's possible, but not nearly as easy as Hollywood would have you think.
The mother did realize her daughter was a zombie, but it sent her into shock. She couldn't deal with it. (And yes, Benn, I do believe the girl killed her before the father).
Johnny’s not very good at math, is he? He tells Barbara that it’s a three hour drive back home and that they won’t be home ‘til after midnight. At that point, according to Barbara, it’s 8 o’clock. Eight plus three is not 12. It’s eleven.
Perhaps they cross a timezone beteen the cemetary and home.
Even taking daylight savings time into consideration, it’s awfully bright outside for 8 o’clock.
Not if it was summer. I don't know about where you live, but where I live in the summer 8pm is still has complete daylight, barring a storm, of course.
"is still has"
Sheesh, I should proofread better...
Perhaps they cross a timezone beteen the cemetary and home. - Aonymous
In Pennsylvania? This movie takes place in Pennsylvania. In order to cross a time zone, Johnny and Barbara would have had to driven through a couple of states. Not very likely in the time quoted I think.
Not if it was summer. I don't know about where you live, but where I live in the summer 8pm is still has complete daylight, barring a storm, of course. - Anonymous
I'm in the Central Time Zone, and if it's anything like the Eastern Time Zone this movie takes place in, then I think it's very unlikely there'd be that much sunshine at eight o'clock at night. Can any east coasters confirm this?
"They're coming to get you, Barbara."
Pennsylvania? Okay, maybe no timezones. They just aren't mathemeticians.
And I live in the Eastern Time Zone. As I said before, in the summer, still light at 8pm. Doesn't even start getting dark until 9 or later, sometimes not fully dark until 10.
Regarding the nighttime scenes in this film looking like daylight: I dunno if Romero did this or not, though I kinda doubt it, seeing just how low budget this film was, but using certain filters on the cameras one popular technique directors utilize is called shooting-day-for-night, which is pretty self-explanatory. I used to wonder why there were such great shadows on the ground or the outside of building walls in those scenes in films that took place at night. It'd always look like dusk or dawn to me instead of like midnight or whatever. I only found out about that technique, IIRC, from Mimi Leder's audio commentary on the Deep Impact CE DVD I recently saw but not sure cuz I watch so many. It might've been another but that one seems to be the one I best recall hearing someone mention that technique on.
Actually day for night is a big low budget trick. All you have to do is use ND filters and close the smaller to create the look (even though it usually looks fake) Shooting at real night is hard because you need to light things, shooting during the day is easier because you can use the sun's light.
It has only been recently (thanks to digital sky replacement and digital color timming) that day-for-night can really look real
It has only been recently (thanks to digital sky replacement and digital color timming) that day-for-night can really look real
I've seen some things doing it that new way you describe and it always looks really crappy to me. Yeah, the old way was obviously lit, but the new way is obviously tinkered around with in the computer.
Regarding the time zone issue, around here (I live in the same timezone the movie takes place in) it's been daylight at 8pm ever since Daylight Saving time started.
One day in April we had something very odd happen. Daylight, at 8pm, with snow coming down. You don't get all three of those together very often! Of course the snow didn't stick or amount to much, but it was quite odd.
Anyway, now we're at the point in the year where it's not getting dark until a while after 9pm, so it is quite plausible to still be completely light out at 8pm.
I like the 1990 version, and how they made Barbara into a real bada**.
All through the movie, she suggests that they could get away by just walking by the slow moving zombies. And she was right. If they had listened to her, more of them might have lived.
Unlike her counterpart in the original film, this version of Barbara survives the events of this movie.