1.Most reviews said the ending was the protagonist getting shot by bigots, I didn’t really pick that up. It seemed more like he was shot because they assumed he was a zombie, am I alone in this?
2.How come the later movies make a big deal about the zombies using tools, when in the very beginning they seem to have no problem with this? Ex. bricks and even knives.
3.Between this movie and Dawn they seem to have become less energetic too.
2&3) George Romero had no inkling of sequels when he made “Night of the Living Dead” and had not thought through the implications he fleshed out in his later movies.
Disclaimer: I haven’t seen any of Romero’s zombie movies since the 1978 “Dawn of the Dead” and am just working from vague recollections and general principles.
2)+3) Not sure about tool using in Dawn, but in Day it has been a while, and it’s explained that the zombies are beginning to learn, and that they can recall certain things from their lives e.g. using a gun. As for being sluggish, I actually thought they’d become more spry, at least in Day.
As for whether he was shot by “bigots,” I don’t know that it’s fair to say that. The sheriff and his posse or deputies or whatever you want to call them were definitely good ol’ boys, but there’s nothing textual that says their shooting Ben was racially motivated. His death and subsequent cremation, having been very deliberately been shot in the style of newsreels/photojournalism, definitely resonated with a public fresh from seeing images of Vietnam War dead, water hoses and dogs set upon civil rights marchers and (later) Kent State. IMHO the ending of NOTLD would have been just as shocking and powerful regardless of the race of the actor or character.
The trowel scene in NOTLD always bothered me precisely because it’s a fairly sophisticated use of a tool, far more so than breaking a window with a rock.
The very first zombie in the graveyard in NOTLD is very spry indeed, whereas subsequent zombies from the same flick are generally more slow-moving. It may be thought of as akin to a shark attack. When the shark is just swimming around, it may move fairly slowly, but when it goes for the attack it gathers momentum for the strike. Same thing with zombies. When there’s no specific target they move slowly, then speed up when their prey presents itself.
I didn’t even see a whole lot of racial tension in the movie. Nobody really seemed to care that Ben was black. Quite frankly, when the unholy hoards of undead are literally banging on the front door race suddenly doesn’t seem so important an issue.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen the movie. The zombie that takes out Barb’s brother goes after her. She locks herself in the car and the zombie starts banging on the window. He stops banging on the window, looks around, and picks up a brick to use as a tool. That would seem to suggest some basic cognative thought at the very least. Certainly that kind of abstract thinking would make the use of a trowel as a stabbing implement more reasonable. What’s weird is why didn’t other undead use tools?
Marc
I give credit to Romero for not claiming post fame that he intended to send that message unlike certain other film makers who seem to revise their history everytime someone comes up with a new interpretation.
Now as to what the audience sees, that is a different story all together. It doesn’t matter what the creator intends it is how it is received. If you have a strong lead character who is black in the late 1960s and is in conflict with a white male the audience of teh time is bound to notice. Add the scene with the good ol’ boy police and contrast that to the clashes in the South over the civil rights movement and you can’t help but have people see a deeper message.
As for the movement… well it has always been inconsistant through out the movies. In the commentary for DoD Romero mentions he never gave much direction to the extras how to be Zombies so each person did their own thing.
The tool use has been used through out, mostly for bludgeoning. In DoD the patch eyed scientist on the TV does make note of the use of tools “in the most rudimentary sense”
If you watch it from the perspective of the late 60s… seeing a young black man stand up and argue and fight an older white man… That’s pretty brazen.
As a sidebar, anyone have anything to say about the remake Savini did in the 90s?
I actually really like it.
Savini should stick to make-up and overacting. I found his remake grossly inferior to the original.
I saw it before I ever saw the original. Nowhere near as powerful and creepy as the original, but I certainly enjoyed it. Then again, I enjoy almost all zombie movies, so I’m not a good judge.
IIRC, the 30th anniversery edition has a commentary track which includes the screen-play co-author, and some other people who made the original. (Unfortunately, Romero wasn’t there…is he even alive?)
Anyway, the co-author said that they had a friend of theirs cast as the male lead. The actor who got the job was on break from some acting school, and someone who knew him mentioned him…or something like that. I got the impression the change was sort-of last minute, and they simply did it because the guy was the better actor.
On the commentary track they did laugh at how fast the cemetery zombie was and that it had the sense & strength to pick up the rock, becuase it didn’t match the rest of the zombie bit about being so slow & stupid—and that the zombie could overpower a grown man. (Considering the tinsile strength of skin, I suppose they have to have some strength to tear someone apart.)
What long-term memory I have to forget #3 while remarking on #2. Heh. Anyway, the makers did laugh about how the cememtery zombie didn’t match the zombie behavior in general. I got the impression that there wasn’t a reason, but it was just a movie mistake.
The commentary track on that one is really interesting, IMO.
His latest zombie opus, Land of the Dead, played in theaters a couple of months ago.
How about when Barbra started freaking out and Ben started slapping her? I had seen Night many times and I never thought anything of that until I listened to the commentary. What did that look like to people in the sixties!?
And the white guy turns out to be right [about their hiding place]! I saw Romero discussing Day and they talked about this. He thought it was kind of funny how everyone who was talking about the racial overtones missed this point.
Count me in; there’s a lot to like about Savini’s remake, including Pat Tallman and her enormous eyes, and Tony Todd doing a great job as Ben. Savini (who was a combat photographer in Viet Nam) said he wanted to emphasize the awareness of real death, so that the zombies would be objects of true horror and pathos, not just generic monsters. Some of Ben’s dialogue is the best description I’ve heard of what it might be like if this stuff happened in real life: “This is something nobody’s ever seen, and nobody’s ever heard of before. This is Hell on Earth. . . this is pure Hell on Earth.”
Any effective horror movie becomes a period piece; if you watch it thirty years later, it gives you a window into the deep fears that people weren’t expressing openly. With Night of the Living Dead, I see a fear of the social order breaking down, etc.
I haven’t gotten a DVD of the original movie yet because I’m confused by the numerous different editions. Can somebody recommend the best version?
Yeah – that’s one of the subversive elements in the movie. The hero, Ben, makes bold plans that go wrong at every point, winding up with people getting killed – and he ends up down in the basement, which was Cooper’s idea. Romero played on movie conventions – the viewer tends to see Cooper as the “bad guy” because he’s snappish and argumentative, but he isn’t a villain, just scared and crabby.
In all the Romero zombie movies, the real problem is people’s inability to support each other and work together for the common good.
BTW, does anyone know if the sheriff at the end was a local, or just an actor? Because he had the Western PA accent nailed.
I imagine that he was a local because it was tremendously low budget.
www.archive.org has a download. Apparently it’s been in the public domain since it was created on account of them not attaching a copyright notice… Still can’t figure out how that works though. That’s part of the reason you see so many editions.
You want the Millennium Edition DVD, which was made from the original negative.
Don’t be confused. I don’t follow him or his work. I only know that TNOLD is 'effing brilliant. I saw DayOTD, and it sucked. Other than those two, Romero is a black box to me. I couldn’t even pick him out of a line up.