October 1st marked the 50th anniversary of George A. Romero’s groundbreaking horror movie Night of the Living Dead. It’s one of the most iconic and terrifying horror movies ever made.
Zombies were merely mindless lackeys of voodoo priests in horror movies up until Night of the Living Dead came out in 1968. Made independently on a very low budget ($112,000), the film became very successful and changed the horror genre forever.
A brother and sister are out in the country visiting their late father’s grave when a strange man attacks them and kills the brother. The sister Barbara (Judith O’Dea) runs for it and ends up in a farm house where Ben (Duane Jones) arrives as more the creatures show up and starts boarding up the house. They discover that the dead have returned to life and want living human flesh. The only way to kill the creatures is do destroy the brain.
The movie is intense. The small setting, inside a house that’s being besieged by swarms of the dead is extremely claustrophobic. The zombie genre was kick started from this film and Romero himself revisited it himself five more times. Zombies have flooded the screens since. Here’s my original 31 Days of Horror post.
