Just perfect...

Fantastic!

Better Late Then Never

A different way of telling a story

George Romero's black & white cult low budget zombie film, Night of the Living Dead is now regarded as a seminal classic.It is not a great film. The acting is ropy, the zombie effects are not that good and it is too talky. However it did rewrite the rules for low budget horror films.Two siblings are visiting their father's grave and are attacked by a strange looking drifter. The woman, Barbara (Judith O'Dea) runs to an abandoned farmhouse to escape him.Ben (Duane Jones) a black man also escapes to the farmhouse where she meets Barbara who is in shock. Ben barricades both of them inside the farmhouse by reinforcing the doors and windows.They encounter several other people who have been hiding out in the cellar. They learn on the radio that radiation contamination from a space probe has somehow reactivated the brain of dead people. These people were now devouring the flesh of the living who themselves would come back as zombies.It is a classic base under siege scenario with various types of people bickering, arguing and reluctantly joining forces. The film is notable that the lead is played by a black actor who is ordering the other survivors around, even shouting at them. In retrospect that looks like a brave piece of casting.Jones does give the film's best performance. O'Dea is pretty bad though, the zombies are more animated than her.

No need to echo consensus points. What a tribute to a bunch of non-Hollywood folks getting together to make a movie, (Romero's first). Seems like everyone in the cast already knew someone else there. The production was certainly a long way from the usual Hollywood spore, and one of the first really successful indies. Things just seem to come magically together, from casting, to great camera work, to spooky effects. My knuckles are still white from the latest viewing. I keep thinking there is some provocative subtext to the story, especially with Afro-American Jones in the lead role and playing a real hero. But I still can't find one. Instead, I think it's exactly what it appears to be: one heckuva fright film. The first and last parts are the best, concentrating on shudders the way they do. The middle part is more like human interest, random characters thrown together having to sort things out. Anyway, Romero did for Zombie films what Lugosi did for vampires. No, it's not as gory as most fright films of today. But the technique is perfect for the material, so catch how a bunch of near-amateurs manage to trump the professional Hollywood crowd.

Here is the cult classic of independent horror films, the 1968 "Night of the Living Dead". How low budget is low budget? Basically all you need is some extras, a few cars, an abandoned rural farmhouse and a great story spun around a few characters and a possibly radiation causing the unburied dead to rise. No big name stars, a masterful spine-tingling script which derives straight from your nightmare, and an imaginative director and cinematographer, coupled with a make-up artist who works well on tens of "zombie" extras. Especially fine are Duane Jones's performance as the leader of the gang, and Karl Hardman's as the cowardly, selfish father of the stricken child.The narrative is well structured, the ending in particular is grisly and the body count is high, in essence the denouement is ultra pessimistic, but all in all this is a very worthy entry into the zombie horror film. Not to be watched with any kids under the age of 12.

Honestly I can handle many black and white films well but this astounded me! Barbara and her brother go down to a grave site very far from where they had came when it all happened and that's when thongs go downhill. This film really had good effects for a indie film and shaped our world on what we call zombies. A 7/10 for great effects, acting, and the story which kept me watching.