Night Of The Living Dead:. Joe Kane

tinkering with traditional zombie rules. Mexico delivered Santo vs. the Zombies (1962), a.k.a. Invasion of the Zombies, pitting that most exalted, eponymous masked wrestler against energetic dead men in the employ of a criminal mastermind. That pic proved popular enough to inspire Santo to join forces with fellow grappler Blue Demon in Santo and Blue Demon Against the Monsters (1968), Santo and Blue Demon in the Land of the Dead (1969), and Invasion of the Dead (1973). Zombies would likewise surface in the Jess Franco-directed French/Spanish co-production Dr. Orloff’s Monster (1965) and Germany’s The Frozen Dead (1966), the latter fleetingly elevated by Nazi scientist Dana Andrews’s death-by-zombie-arms-protruding-through-a-wall. The tableau is similar to the nightmare sequence that opens Romero’s Day of the Dead, though executed with far less flair.

      Britain took its zombies a tad more earnestly. Sidney J. Furie’s Dr. Blood’s Coffin (1961) is a slowly paced Frankenstein-like affair, while the bleak doomsday quickie The Earth Dies Screaming (1965) offers some atmospheric shots of terminated townsfolk raised (once again) by alien invaders. The Hammer period piece The Plague of the Zombies (1966) represents the first film to show ghouls rotting before viewers’ eyes (unless you count Vincent Price’s famous facial meltdown in the earlier cited Tales of Terror).

      Plague of the Zombies (1966) represents the first film to show ghouls rotting before viewers’ eyes.

      It might be argued that Herk Harvey’s brilliantly terrifying art-house horror Carnival of Souls (1961)—with its relentless nightmare quality and haunting nocturnal images of zombie-like phantoms in perpetual pursuit of alienated heroine Candace Hilligoss, in a movie created by the operators of a Lawrence, Kansas, commercial/industrial film house—served both as Night of the Living Dead’s spiritual progenitor and basic business model. But the film that acted as its true template was the 1964 American-Italian co-production The Last Man on Earth. Based on Richard Matheson’s celebrated doomsday novel I Am Legend (also the inspiration for the 2007 Will Smith blockbuster of the same name as well as the 1971 Charlton Heston showcase The Omega Man), The Last Man on Earth arrives replete with slow-moving human corpses-turned-predators, boarded-up windows with the creatures’ hands thrusting through them, an infected child, human bonfires, and many other key elements that would soon surface in Night.

      But no matter how groundbreaking the walking dead imagery, even Last Man lacked the insidious black magic that would make Night of the Living Dead the most terrifying and enduring zombie movie ever.

      I caught that on television, and I said to myself, “Wait a minute—did they make another version of I Am Legend they didn’t tell me about?” Later on they told me they did it as a homage to I Am Legend, which means, “He gets it for nothin’.” George Romero’s a nice guy, though. I don’t harbor any animosity toward him.

      —Richard Matheson on Night of the Living Dead, as told to Tom Weaver

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      DUBIOUS COMFORTS: INTRODUCTION TO THE LIVING DEAD

      They’re coming to get you, Barbara!

      —Johnny (Russell Streiner) in Night of the Living Dead

      It was a dark and stormy night, Halloween season, out in rocky Montauk Point, Long Island. We had just left a wedding reception and had driven several blind blocks, through a drenching rain, powered by gale-force winds. Finally finding shelter at the Memory Motel (earlier immortalized by the Stones song of the same name)—and already three sheets to the wind and counting—I wanted nothing more at that exhausted moment than to fall into bed for a solid eight.

      First, though, from force of lifetime habit, I instinctively turned on the telly. And what grainy sight should greet my booze-befogged eyes? None other than Johnny and Barbara’s car just starting its doomed journey down that forlorn road to the old Evans City Cemetery, where the eternal, infernal nightmare would begin anew. As lightning and thunder thrashed outside, I obediently settled on the edge of the bed, instantly scared sober by that flickering tube. I dreaded every frame I knew I was about to reexperience, but I was powerless to resist.

      That night time-warped me to Times Square, more than a quarter-century before. I had glimpsed Night of the Living Dead adorning Deuce marquees, circa 1969, but, despite that cool title, took it for just another fright flick, one I was always too busy to drop in and see. When Night resurfaced in June 1970, however, at the Museum of Modern Art, where I had a student membership, it seemed a sure sign that this black-and-white indie from the Steel City had been deemed something special. This time I surrendered, eagerly joining an anticipatory audience of art-house lovers and horror hounds in MoMA’s auditorium.

      The film opened, natch, the same way it would on the Memory Motel TV, and as it had at several midnight shows I attended at New York City’s Waverly Theater during the ’70s, on VHS in the ’80s, DVD in the late ’90s, and during countless other broadcast airings and streaming video Internet showings: As soon as we sight that lonely vehicle, we sense we’re going on a journey and, given that title and bleak autumnal landscape, we’re pretty sure it won’t be a pretty one. As the car follows the gray brick road to the graveyard, we get the feeling we’re not in Pittsburgh anymore.

      Next, we peek inside and pick up on a conversation in progress between impatient big brother Johnny (Russell Streiner) and his prim little sis Barbara (Judith O’Dea). The tedium of their long and, in Johnny’s eyes, pointless drive to pay a perfunctory graveside visit to their deceased dad has reduced the twentysomething siblings to regressive role playing, with Johnny’s teasing Barbara and Barbara chastising Johnny for his immature antics. Sans a single excess frame, the scene perfectly encapsulates both the pair’s longstanding relationship and present situation.

      As with all of Night’s major characters, the viewer voluntarily fills in the rest of their backstories based on the few key clues provided. Johnny, we surmise from his suit, tie, and protruding pocket pens, is likely a low-rung white-collar worker. His acceptably longish hair, slightly stylish specs, and driving gloves indicate that the ’60s have encroached on him in a distant ’burb way. But he’s essentially a pretty straight dude, the type who would much prefer watching the Steelers on TV rather than visiting the grave of a father he claims to barely remember. Johnny is relentlessly, even deflatingly pragmatic, but also a bit of a joker.

      Barbara, with her conservative coat and proper demeanor, is probably a secretary or similar office support person. We determine that she’s somewhat repressed, almost certainly single, and a virgin. Both siblings, it would appear, still live at home with mom. And, most crucially, neither is played by a recognizable Hollywood thespian; both look like people we see in real life. Already, the film has taken on a distinct documentary feel.

      An almost subliminal hint of impending danger is subtly conveyed via a static-interrupted radio broadcast. Johnny, shrugging, switches it off, convinced that what he’s heard is merely a temporary technical glitch. While the siblings place a wreath at the gravesite, Johnny recalls a similar moment from their shared childhood, when his attempts to scare young Barbara aroused their granddad’s rage, provoking their elder to angrily predict, “Boy, you’ll be damned to hell!”

      When Johnny senses Barbara’s growing anxiety, he reverts to the same puerile behavior, mischievously invoking Boris Karloff, lisp intact, and uttering Night’s signature line, “They’re coming to get you, Barbara!” If we hadn’t guessed already, we know we’re in deep nightmare territory when Boris himself, or an unreasonable facsimile thereof, suddenly materializes, as if by black magic, behind them.

      At first, the film teases the viewer with that distant apparition: Is the figure important? Menacing? Or merely set decoration? We soon learn the answer when he clutches a vulnerable Barbara, stunning us with one of the primo shock moments in horror-film history. Johnny races to sis’s rescue, engaging the mysterious aggressor in a furious fight that seems all the more frightening for its raw, random choreography. This isn’t a Hollywood stunt show; this is an awkward, brutal battle to the death. When Johnny’s head hits a cement cemetery marker with an accompanying thud, the image chills with its abrupt finality. Barbara reacts just as instinctively, running to their car