# Has there ever been a zombie movie as scary as the original "Night of the Living Dead"? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 10, 2010, 4:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-there-ever-been-a-zombie-movie-as-scary-as-the-original-night-of-the-living-dead/538878 "2010-05-10T04:53:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2010, 4:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-there-ever-been-a-zombie-movie-as-scary-as-the-original-night-of-the-living-dead/538878/1 "2010-05-10T04:53:05Z")
Never mind the “slow zombie vs. fast zombie” debate. I just think the original _NOTLD_ out-frights everything, even Romero’s own later work in the franchise. Sure, other zombie films had **more** gore, more killing-and-eating, more heroic zombie-fighting action, more everything. But the original was just perfect for sheer chill. Moody black and white, mindless shambling corpses, the world suddenly turned upside down and **not even an attempt at an explanation,** creepy live characters, a little girl who . . . Well, I won’t bother with spoilers. The point is, mood and characterization can have a much more visceral impact than over-the-top technicolor gore. Anyone disagree? ---
**Author:** ![wedgehed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8edcca/32.png) [@wedgehed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wedgehed)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2010, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-there-ever-been-a-zombie-movie-as-scary-as-the-original-night-of-the-living-dead/538878/2 "2010-05-10T04:59:16Z")
Just curious, how do you rate _I Walked with a Zombie_? ---
**Author:** ![Rhythmdvl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/85f322/32.png) [@Rhythmdvl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rhythmdvl)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2010, 5:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-there-ever-been-a-zombie-movie-as-scary-as-the-original-night-of-the-living-dead/538878/3 "2010-05-10T05:03:20Z")
heh heh heh … posted by _BrainGlutton_. I don’t disagree, though my first flick in the series was the original Dawn of the Dead — much scarier due to my age at the time. Does anyone else have trouble visiting a cemetery and not saying “they’re coming to get you Bar-ba-ra…”? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2010, 5:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-there-ever-been-a-zombie-movie-as-scary-as-the-original-night-of-the-living-dead/538878/4 "2010-05-10T05:12:19Z")
> [@wedgehed](#): > > Just curious, how do you rate _I Walked with a Zombie_? Never saw it. Now that I look it up on [Wikipedia,](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_walked_with_a_zombie) it is from 1943 and is about actual, you know, zombies, from Haitian folklore – (non-cannibalistic) corpses magically reanimated by voodoo priests to be their slaves. Which really puts it outside the genre we’re talking about. I thought of this thread because I heard Romero interviewed on NPR today. Apart from defending “slow zombies” as more viscerally menacing than “fast zombies,” he noted that he did not originally think of his living dead as “zombies,” as they had nothing to do with the Haitian folklore, and the only explanation for them he ever had in mind was, “When Hell is full, the dead will walk the earth!” (A phrase never mentioned in the movie, but prominent on the posters.) But the media called them that and it stuck. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2010, 5:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-there-ever-been-a-zombie-movie-as-scary-as-the-original-night-of-the-living-dead/538878/5 "2010-05-10T05:17:30Z")
I know, as a kid, I had nightmares about _NOTLD,_ **just from the posters and trailers,** before I ever saw the movie. I never had nightmares about any later living-dead movie. ---
**Author:** ![marshmallow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@marshmallow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/marshmallow)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2010, 5:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-there-ever-been-a-zombie-movie-as-scary-as-the-original-night-of-the-living-dead/538878/6 "2010-05-10T05:34:41Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > mindless shambling corpses People who looked like they were in a flour factory accident. > [@](#): > > …the world suddenly turned upside down and **not even an attempt at an explanation** … When they’re listening to the radio it says it may have been caused by a satellite leaking radiation all over the world. That darn zombie radiation! > [@](#): > > The point is, mood and characterization can have a much more visceral impact than over-the-top technicolor gore. Anyone disagree? You’re right. But I don’t think most people are really scared of gore besides small children and old women. That stuff is just for the pointless grossout. NotLD is cornball because of how dated it is. But 95% of zombie movies are cornball on purpose. IMO if you want a moody zombie experience the only solution is in a video game. ---
**Author:** ![BigBertha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/d78d45/32.png) [@BigBertha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigBertha)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2010, 5:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-there-ever-been-a-zombie-movie-as-scary-as-the-original-night-of-the-living-dead/538878/7 "2010-05-10T05:40:11Z")
To answer the OP, yes there was, it was called Helter Skelter. ---
**Author:** ![aldiboronti](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc348/32.png) [@aldiboronti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aldiboronti)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2010, 5:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-there-ever-been-a-zombie-movie-as-scary-as-the-original-night-of-the-living-dead/538878/8 "2010-05-10T05:55:15Z")
I never thought Night of the Living Dead particularly scary, so yes, I’d say there are several scarier zombie movies - Lucio Fulci’s classics (_Zombie Flesh Eaters_, _City of the Living Dead_, _The House by the Cemetery_) for a start. ---
**Author:** ![Unauthorized\_Cinnamon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/bc8723/32.png) [@Unauthorized\_Cinnamon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Unauthorized_Cinnamon)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2010, 11:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-there-ever-been-a-zombie-movie-as-scary-as-the-original-night-of-the-living-dead/538878/9 "2010-05-10T11:07:12Z")
I mostly agree with you. However, the first ten minutes or so of the Dawn of the Dead remake are incredibly chilling. They used the fact that the characters don’t know they’re in a zombie movie, but we do, to build tension beautifully. I remember they showed that bit on USA or something the week it released. After watching it, I wasn’t sure I could take watching the whole movie! (The rest is much more typical, with lots of tongue in cheek, and stuff like Richard Cheese singing “Down with the Sickness.”) ---
**Author:** ![singular1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ba9def/32.png) [@singular1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/singular1)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2010, 11:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-there-ever-been-a-zombie-movie-as-scary-as-the-original-night-of-the-living-dead/538878/10 "2010-05-10T11:19:14Z")
I first saw this in a drive-in - I was 16 years old. I grew up in Erie, PA, so the news reports in the movie really freaked me right the fuck out - the setting was only ninety miles away, and the _zombies were headed right for my town!!!_ Whew, that was some scary fun! ---
**Author:** ![Shoeless](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shoeless/32/7099_2.png) [@Shoeless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shoeless)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2010, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-there-ever-been-a-zombie-movie-as-scary-as-the-original-night-of-the-living-dead/538878/11 "2010-05-10T13:52:59Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Never saw it. Now that I look it up on [Wikipedia,](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_walked_with_a_zombie) it is from 1943 and is about actual, you know, zombies, from Haitian folklore – (non-cannibalistic) corpses magically reanimated by voodoo priests to be their slaves. Which really puts it outside the genre we’re talking about. I thought of this thread because I heard Romero interviewed on NPR today. Apart from defending “slow zombies” as more viscerally menacing than “fast zombies,” **he noted that he did not originally think of his living dead as “zombies,” as they had nothing to do with the Haitian folklore** , and the only explanation for them he ever had in mind was, “When Hell is full, the dead will walk the earth!” (A phrase never mentioned in the movie, but prominent on the posters.) But the media called them that and it stuck. I saw the original “Night of the Living Dead” on TV not too long ago (actually, it may have been Halloween night, now that I think about it) and one thing that struck me was that they never referred to the zombies as “zombies”. I think “ghoul” was the prevalent term throughout the film. ---
**Author:** ![Unauthorized\_Cinnamon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/bc8723/32.png) [@Unauthorized\_Cinnamon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Unauthorized_Cinnamon)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2010, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-there-ever-been-a-zombie-movie-as-scary-as-the-original-night-of-the-living-dead/538878/12 "2010-05-10T14:19:32Z")
> [@Shoeless](#): > > I saw the original “Night of the Living Dead” on TV not too long ago (actually, it may have been Halloween night, now that I think about it) and one thing that struck me was that they never referred to the zombies as “zombies”. I think “ghoul” was the prevalent term throughout the film. Ed: Are there any zombies out there? Shaun: Don’t say that! Ed: What? Shaun: That. Ed: What? Shaun: That. The ‘Z’ word. Don’t say it. Ed: Why not? Shaun: Because it’s ridiculous! ---
**Author:** ![Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tapioca_Dextrin)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2010, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-there-ever-been-a-zombie-movie-as-scary-as-the-original-night-of-the-living-dead/538878/13 "2010-05-10T15:25:19Z")
For me, the reason Night of the Living Dead is scary is that no one can escape the zombie apocalypse. They might be brainless, they might be slow, but they absolutely will not stop. The only film that comes close is 28 Days Later. ---
**Author:** ![kopek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kopek/32/337_2.png) [@kopek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kopek)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2010, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-there-ever-been-a-zombie-movie-as-scary-as-the-original-night-of-the-living-dead/538878/14 "2010-05-10T16:24:21Z")
I’ll call “The Last Man on Earth” a tie. ---
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2010, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-there-ever-been-a-zombie-movie-as-scary-as-the-original-night-of-the-living-dead/538878/15 "2010-05-10T16:33:50Z")
> [@marshmallow](#): > > …When they’re listening to the radio it says it may have been caused by a satellite leaking radiation all over the world. That darn zombie radiation!.. The Venus probe was added to the script at the last minute; Romero’s partners insisted on there being some sort of explanation. Romero’s preference was that there be **no** explanation at all. He regreted writing the probe into the scrip which is why none of the sequels have any reference to it; just characters speculating about other causes. [QUOTE=Tapioca Dextrin] For me, the reason Night of the Living Dead is scary is that no one can escape the zombie apocalypse. They might be brainless, they might be slow, but they absolutely will not stop. The only film that comes close is 28 Days Later. [/QUOTE] You have a point, but if you think about it Night arguably has the most uplifting ending in the [del]trilogy[/del] [del]quadrilogy[/de] series. Sure all the main characters die, but the authorities do appear to have the situtation under conrol at the end (of course we later learn they didn’t). All the other films have surving characters, but the situtation for humanity as a whole is much bleaker. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2010, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-there-ever-been-a-zombie-movie-as-scary-as-the-original-night-of-the-living-dead/538878/16 "2010-05-10T16:46:51Z")
> [@Tapioca\_Dextrin](#): > > For me, the reason Night of the Living Dead is scary is that no one can escape the zombie apocalypse. They might be brainless, they might be slow, but they absolutely will not stop. The only film that comes close is 28 Days Later. The concept there is not as scary, because, being essentially living humans driven made by some kind of uberrabies, the “zombies” in _28 Days_ **will** stop when they starve to death, as most of them inevitably will. But zombies animated by some mysterious supernatural force might keep going forever. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Excellent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f19dbf/32.png) [@Mr.Excellent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Excellent)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2010, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-there-ever-been-a-zombie-movie-as-scary-as-the-original-night-of-the-living-dead/538878/17 "2010-05-10T17:13:34Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > The concept there is not as scary, because, being essentially living humans driven made by some kind of uberrabies, the “zombies” in _28 Days_ **will** stop when they starve to death, as most of them inevitably will. But zombies animated by some mysterious supernatural force might keep going forever. Fair point - but I think the thing that made 28 Days Later uniquely scary was how _fast_ the virus acted. This meant that the protagonists could go from “ho-hum, life is fine and we’re enjoying a post-apocalyptic road-trip” to “OH NOES!” so fast that no one would really know what was going on. The sequel, 28 Weeks later, did a great job of demonstrating this in its first scene, in which: A group of survivors are hiding in a blacked-out farmhouse. A little boy runs to the house, fleeing the Infected, and the survivors let him in. Sadly, the Infected pursued him, and find the house. One of them manages to grab a survivor’s arm through a loose plank and bite - and then the whole house turns to chaos, with no one really knowing who’s been bitten (and thus on their way out) and who’s still safe. ---
**Author:** ![shy\_guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a6a055/32.png) [@shy\_guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shy_guy)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2010, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-there-ever-been-a-zombie-movie-as-scary-as-the-original-night-of-the-living-dead/538878/18 "2010-05-10T17:54:14Z")
_28 Days Later_ is scarier. “The zombies will eventually starve to death” doesn’t make them any less scary considering that an entire country was devastated long before that even started to happen. God knows I love _NotLD_ and have seen it about a hundred times, but it’s just too _old_ to actually be scary. I’m incredibly impressed by the movie and some of its images and ideas are certainly chilling, but the style of acting is just too dated and silly and the special effects are too bad for me to take it seriously enough to be scared by it. _28 Days Later_ has better actors, better special effects, and pretty much does everything _NotLD_ does but better. Tons of credit to the prior movie for doing it first and spawning an entire genre of movies and hundreds of imitators, of course, but it isn’t as good. ---
**Author:** ![WOOKINPANUB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wookinpanub/32/132_2.png) [@WOOKINPANUB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WOOKINPANUB)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2010, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-there-ever-been-a-zombie-movie-as-scary-as-the-original-night-of-the-living-dead/538878/19 "2010-05-10T19:33:38Z")
> [@kopek](#): > > I’ll call “The Last Man on Earth” a tie. Seconded. My memory of the details of the film aren’t as keen as they should be but I sure as hell remember the feeling while watching it. Maybe because it was slightly less campy than your usual zombie flick, maybe because it starred the impeccable Vincent Price or maybe just because it was so incredibly sad (remember the poor little doggie?). This is always the first, best movie that comes to my mind when contemplating the zombie genre. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2010, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-there-ever-been-a-zombie-movie-as-scary-as-the-original-night-of-the-living-dead/538878/20 "2010-05-10T20:24:07Z")
Ahh, one of my favorite movies! I loved that redneck sheriff (who learns how to kill the zombies):“ya gotta shoot 'em in the head…two shots between the eyes” His other great line :'hey…somebody have a barbeque here?"😃 [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-there-ever-been-a-zombie-movie-as-scary-as-the-original-night-of-the-living-dead/538878.md?page=2)