Night of the Living Dead
Tags: suspenseful, grindhouse film, gothic, murder, allegory, cult, horror, violence, tragedy, revenge

Plot synopsis:
Bickering siblings Johnny and Barbra are traveling by car to a rural cemetery, where they visit their father's grave. Johnny teases his sister's fear of the cemetery after dark, saying "They're coming to get you, Barbra!" They are approached by a pale-faced man who stumbles toward them and attacks Barbra. Johnny pulls the man off of Barbra and struggles with him, but is knocked unconscious and possibly dead after tripping and hitting his head violently on the edge of a gravestone. The man then pursues Barbra back to the car, but Barbra cannot start it because the keys are in Johnny's pocket. She takes the car out of gear and it begins to drift away on its own, but she accidentally steers it into a tree. She abandons the car and runs down a roadway to a nearby farmhouse, with the man still pursuing her. She discovers the house seemingly deserted, and the phone is out of order. Her attacker stumbles around the outside of the house looking for her, and is joined by several others. They all seem to be in a kind of trance, behaving in an animalistic way. Exploring the house further, Barbra makes a gruesome find at the top of the stairs: a human body that seems to have been partially devoured by something.In a panic and attempting to flee the house, Barbra is intercepted by Ben, who arrives in a pickup truck and attacks the mysterious figures with a tire iron. Barbra is further driven into hysteria when she sees Ben violently smashing the skulls of the strange men who keep trying to get into the house. Ben urges her into action and the two of them begin boarding up the doors and windows from the inside with dismantled furniture and scraps of wood. They awkwardly trade their stories; Ben seems to be a drifter who was passing through the area when suddenly a wave of unexplained violence began unfolding. He tells Barbra about a scene of mayhem that he encountered at a diner, and Barbra tells him about the incident with Johnny in the cemetery. When Barbra becomes hysterical and wants to go out after Johnny, she strikes Ben and Ben hits her in the face. Barbra passes out in shock.Ben goes upstairs and finds a rifle and a radio as Barbra lies incapacitated on a couch in the living room listening to the radio report. Emergency broadcasters tell stories of widespread violence and mayhem being committed by people who seem to be in a 'trance'. Suddenly, Barbra is startled when the cellar door opens and two men emerge from the basement. Ben is attracted by her screams and they confront the newcomers. An older middle-aged man introduces himself as Harry Cooper, and the younger man is named Tom. Harry says that he has his wife, Helen, and his daughter, Karen, are in the basement as well. Karen has been hurt and cannot be moved. Tom has a girlfriend named Judy, also in the cellar.Immediately the group begins bickering. Ben is furious with Tom and Harry for not coming out earlier to help him barricade the house. Harry is an irrational and domineering man who insists that they all barricade themselves in the cellar and wait for help. Ben refuses, saying that if their attackers ever got into the cellar, it would be the end of all of them, as there is only one entrance -- if they stay upstairs they have a "fighting chance" to hold off their attackers outside. Harry angrily retreats to the cellar with Helen and Karen, and Judy comes upstairs to be with the rest of the group. When his wife, Helen, learns about the group and that they have a radio that keeps them informed, she insists that they go upstairs into the house to help out.Radio reports explain that an epidemic of mass murder is sweeping across the eastern seaboard of the United States. Later, Ben discovers a television and the whole group watches the emergency broadcaster who reveals that the murderers are recently deceased human beings who have returned to life and who are consuming their victims' flesh. Experts including scientists and military generals are not sure of the cause of the reanimation, but one scientist is certain that it is the result of radiation emanating from a Venus space probe that exploded in the Earth's atmosphere. The report instructs that a gunshot or heavy blow to the head will stop the "ghouls" and that posses of armed men are patrolling the countryside to restore order.The TV broadcast provides a constantly scrolling list of local towns that contain "rescue stations" to provide citizens with protection and necessities. Ben notices a nearby town called Willard and devises a plan to escape using his truck, but it needs refueling. While Harry throws Molotov cocktails out a second floor window at the walking dead outside the house, Ben exits the house armed with the rifle and a flaming torch. Tom and Judy offer assistance, but when they arrive at a fuel pump near the house, Tom carelessly splashes gasoline on the torch, starting a grass fire that quickly spreads to cover the truck. Judy's sleeve is caught on something inside the truck which explodes with Tom and Judy inside. Ben runs back to the house to find that Harry locked him out. He kicks the door open and forces his way inside, and after Harry helps him board up the front door again, he punches Harry repeatedly for his cowardice. As Cooper watches in horror, some of the living dead begin eating Tom and Judy's charred remains.A little later, another broadcast comes on the television, showing a local news reporter (Bill Cardille) interviewing a local sheriff (George Kosana) about the search and rescue operations that are underway in the area. Another news report indicates that the levels of the "mysterious radiation" in the area have been increasing, suggesting that the phenomenon is going to become even more widespread than it already is, but also that the situation is going to be under control soon. At that moment, the house goes dark when the area loses power. Perhaps triggered by the darkness, the ghouls surrounding the house begin to attack, attempting to break through all of the boarded up the doors and windows of the house. Ben manages to hold them back, but drops his rifle. Harry seizes the fallen rifle and turns it on Ben. Cooper orders his wife to go down to the cellar. Ben manages to wrest the rifle away from Harry and then shoots him. Harry stumbles into the cellar and dies, approaching Karen's seemingly lifeless body.Helen also attempts to hold off the zombies, whose great numbers are beginning to overwhelm the barricades over the windows and doors. Barbra suddenly throws herself into the battle, and Helen escapes back into the cellar, where she discovers that her daughter has been transformed into one of the living dead and is consuming part of Harry's corpse. Karen stabs her mother repeatedly with a cement trowel, killing her, before going upstairs.Meanwhile, the undead finally break into the house and Barbra sees her brother Johnny among them. The resultant shock causes her to lower her defenses and she is carried away into the zombie horde. Ben retreats into the cellar, locking the door behind him (which, ironically, was Harry's plan all along). He shoots the reanimated Harry and Helen Cooper.In the morning, a posse approaches the house and proceeds to kill the remaining zombies. Hearing the commotion, Ben cautiously goes up the cellar stairs into the living room, but is shot in the head by an overzealous posse member who mistakes him for a zombie. His body is carried from the house and burned with the zombie corpses.

Review: Very nicely shot, mostly well acted, NOTLD grabs your attention from the very beginning to the very end - and what a classic end it is.The story begins with Barbara (Judith O'Dea) and her brother visiting the grave of a friend of their mother, and takes off almost immediately, as they are attacked by a horde of cannibalistic zombies.
The human side of this film is an interesting and accurate character study concerning what happens to people whose very lives are threatened.The horror of this film is, unlike a lot of its recent descendants, less a matter of blood and gore than a matter of the real active horror of realistically depicted scenes of murder, death and cannibalism.
Her brother attempts to fight him off but ends up being killed in the process and Barbara escapes to a farmhouse nearby.That's how this incredible, highly influential masterclass in horror film making begins.
As far as modern low budget horror films go, this is nearly the best of them, surpassed only by Sam Raimi's masterpiece "The Evil Dead"."Night of the Living Dead" isn't scary because of the zombies (although the flesh eating sequences are still among the greatest and most horrifying horror scenes ever made).
This is the classic low-budget horror film that is the model for recent hits such as the Evil Dead and The Blair Witch Project.
This is the film that re-wrote the rules of the horror genre as it went along, whilst acting as both social critique and fond homage to 'The Birds' as well.Romero set in place a steady breakdown of all our assumptions of the horror film, which he then utilised to full effect through the rest of this film and the two superb sequels that followed.This is perhaps one of the greatest low budget cult movies ever made, certainly one of the most influential, and in its brutally harrowing documentary style conclusion a harsh statement on American racial attitudes.
This didn't need an "A" grade cast and a huge budget to become one the world's greatest and most influential horror movies.This is the simple story of seven strangers who board themselves up in a farmhouse from the ravenous hoards of flesh eating zombies that are rising.
The budget was low.The actors were not the top of the heap,yet Night of the Living Dead is a very effective horror film.It was the film that no doubt set the standard for horror films of today.The whole idea of freshly dead corpses returning from the grave to feed on the living makes my hair stand up,even without the movie.I find myself comparing this film with 1999's The Blair Witch Project.They are similar,not in what they are about,but in how they were made.Both films took very little money to make,used no big name actors,and were very successful and effective in presenting their respective stories.Night does get rather gory and disgusting in places,but overall is worthy of the title of "classic"..
"Night of the Living Dead" is the most iconic zombie film ever made.The movie is outstanding for it's genre and film type.
I think if this movie would have been in colour then it would not have the strong appeal and overall creepiness to it that the B&W gave.This is a wonderful late at night film that I would highly recommend to fans of the horror genre.
Today I have just seen a colorized version and despite my preference for the original black and white classic, I have nothing to say against this latest version."Night of the Living Dead" is the debut of the cult director George A.
And for it's time this low budget independent picture was a masterpiece that helped change the landscape and gave upcoming horror films a new path to follow.
And yet that was all it took for George Romero and a number of friends of his in Pittsburgh to make what is without a doubt one of the most significant horror films of all times, the 1968 shocker NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD.
Detested by a lot of critics in its day for several scenes of unsettling gruesomeness (though Herschell Gordon Lewis' gore films earlier in the 1960s beat him to the punch for true stomach-turning horror), the film is now understandably highly prized of its relentless, logical approach, and for being so utterly uncompromising.Not much more needs to be said about the plot: it merely involves seven people who have barricaded themselves inside a rural Pennsylvania home after having been attacked by flesh-eating ghouls who have returned to life from the dead as the result of an exploded Venus probe bringing back a dangerous and unknown form of radiation.
What Romero and his co-scenarist John Russo (who took partial inspiration for this film from Richard Matheson's classic 1954 end-of-the-world vampire novel "I Am Legend") show, however, is the strain built up by the way the characters, especially the ones portrayed by Duane Jones and the film's co-producer Karl Hardman, react to the horror that engulfs them...whether to stay on the ground floor, or to hide in the cellar, and how best to escape even as more and more of the undead surround the place.
As it turns out, of course, there is no real way out, and there is no actual good end to the whole horrible situation.Romero, who would continue his travail through the world of the undead through several sequels over the ensuing four decades, shot this film in black-and-white largely on location just outside of Pittsburgh over several weekends in the second half of 1967.
NIGHT has, in many ways, the feel of a 1950s "invasion" film (think INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS), but its setting of an isolated house under siege clearly has its roots in Alfred Hitchcock's 1963 classic THE BIRDS; and the scenes of the ghouls munching on human flesh, though brief in nature, were then, and in many ways still are, shockingly contemporary.
The cast of primarily amateur actors does well at being totally naturalistic, and the low budget look of the film gives it a documentary feel that hadn't been seen in horror films before, but which would be revisited in THE Texas CHAINSAW MASSACRE and THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT.Even after four decades of parody, imitation, and sequels, NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD is still not for those with weak constitutions, and for those who have seen far more graphic shockers, it will likely seem painfully old-fashioned.
I had seen other scary movies before, but I think what makes this film so frightening is that there is a somewhat scientific explanation involved and that the horror is occurring to average people.
Director George Romero is, and always will be, the king of the flesh-eating zombie movies.This is the gold star of low budget horror flix.
Note: There will be a full review of "Night of the Living Dead" coming soon, but until then, here's this, which will probably be deleted after I write a full-lenghth one.Night of the Living DeadClassic "zombie movie that started them all" about a young lady visiting a graveyard who seeks refuge in a nearby home with an assortment of various other passersby who find strange creatures attacking them from outside the house.
The grandfather of low budget horror films, George Romero's classic Night of the Living Dead started a whole new genre of horror.Folks become trapped in an isolated country house by an army of walking, flesh-eating corpses.Night of the Living Dead is simply one of the most effectively terrifying and completely captivating horror films ever made!
In fact few horror films ever reach the terribly scary heights of Night of the Living Dead.The films cast is great.
The good supporting cast includes Karl Hardman as a hateful refugee, Marilyn Eastman as his wife, and Keith Wayne as a young man seeking escape.Through and through, Night of the Living Dead is one of the greatest genre films ever made!
This powerful and classic horror film is the Romero's directorial debut with low budget.
Night of the Living Dead: The Definitive Zombie Movie.
Romero is one of the most well-known and profitable directors of the genre, thanks to half of his films being the "Dead" movies.
Other movies in his career, such as "Martin" and "The Crazies," are notable, but it's Romero's first film, "Night of the Living Dead," that gets all the attention.
In a time when hilariously awful B-grade horror films were being produced, "Night of the Living Dead" was a shocking surprise, and still is.
But still, this is an entertaining movie, and taking into consideration the year in which it was made and released, was quite a bold venture into the cinema.Without delving too deep into the storyline, as I assume that as a horror fan you will already be more than familiar with "Night of the Living Dead" in one of the many variants it has come in.
The same is true for two other powerful horror movies, "The Exorcist" and "Psycho." All three are nasty pieces of work; this one is merely the crudest.George Romero directed, co-wrote and co-produced this exploitation film on a shoestring budget with bad actors.
It took me along time to watch this classic, I've seen more of the modern zombie movies over the past 20 years.
Night of The Living Dead, the king of all zombie films.
It's no longer scary, it's dull, and this movie was dull enough already--if it was going to be re-thought, care should have been taken to improve the dull "talky" moments in between zombie attacks.In the final analysis, this "new" version (that's several years old now) has a couple of moments of good gore and make-up, but nothing worth checking out.
I have never particularly enjoyed NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, as it's not a genre that I particularly care for--after all, if you've seen one brain-eating zombie film, you've seen them all.
But it did have a simple but clever script, good special effects given the budget and time in which it was made, decent direction and scared the crap out of audiences--something many horror films fail to do.
It may be tame by today's horror movie standards, but it's still fun and paved the way for a host of sequels, zombie films, remakes and pale imitations.
I've seen "Night of the Living Dead" a couple of times by now and I believe that this movie, historically important as it - undoubtedly - is, doesn't hold up very well.
This has to be one of my favorite horror films of all time and the best movie franchise.
And that about sums up what I think of this film's impact on the horror genre.The dead come back to haunt the living.
Compared to most horror films these days, Night of the Living Dead is quite primeval.
Night of the Living Dead owns its reputation as one of the most important horror films ever made.
I started getting them as a teenager, put into the same situation as the film – one among a small band of people trying to survive a zombie apocalypse, surrounded by an increasing number of the living dead.Aside from the nightmares, this is my #1 horror movie because it creates an atmosphere of absolute dread – something that I appreciate in a movie (thus my screen name AnDread).
I had never seen any movie end like that.For such a low-budget film, Romero does a fantastic job using sound, lighting, practical effects, and performances to maximum advantage.
Streiner and Kosana speak two of the most memorable lines in horror movie history – "They're coming to get you, Barbara," and "They're dead, they're all messed up." And to many, Schon's big scene is one of the most disturbing scenes in all of horror cinema.The black and white cinematography also adds to the bleakness of the film; for me, the often washed-out look and dark lighting make the zombies more frightening than in any of the subsequent films, with skin tones of blues, greens, and grays, and bright red blood flowing.
Or are they going to destroy each other, before the ghouls even reach them?"Night of the Living Dead" is one of my favorite movies of all time.
You'll soon realize that this movie might be cheap, but surprisingly artful as well."Night of the Living Dead" was a watershed for modern horror because it was insanely gruesome for the time: There are zombies hunting people and eating the flesh of their prey.
Barbra finds refuge in a farmhouse, along with some other people...The movie that started the zombie-horror genre.
He uses a little gore but not "over the top" like most zombie movies.Over all, Night of the Living dead is THE BEST movie of the zombie genre.
matricide and cannibalism, which were considered unacceptable at the time), and voilà, here we have "Night of the Living Dead".I understand that most critics were not exactly infatuated by the graphic special effects back in the day, but the real horror of the film lies deep between the lines.
All these visions were brought even further on the follow-up, "Dawn of the Dead", which to me stands as Romero's best and also the ultimate horror film of all time..
Good, atmospheric zombie horror from the late '60s, the first in George Romero's famous "living dead" trilogy.
A young woman named Barbara is visiting her dead father's grave with her brother Johnny when...This film has so much of a great reputation amongst horror fans and cinema scholars alike.
Night of the Living Dead to me, remains one of the greatest horror movies of all time.
The opening scene is absolutely amazing and comes from out of nowhere George A Romero directed this masterpiece and this is the original of the zombie movies.
This is their first encounter with what we will later call "zombies."'Night of the Living Dead' is, like many horror classics, a movie that is eventually scary.
It gives the film layers and makes it more than just a well-crafted zombie flick.It's an additional element like this that makes 'Living Dead' an all-time horror classic..
one of the most influential movies, not just to the zombie film but the horror genre itself.
This is a personal favourite of mine and has to be one of the most influential movies, not just to the zombie film but the horror genre itself.
Here is the cult classic of independent horror films, the 1968 "Night of the Living Dead".
Romero created the original zombie movie which is considered one of the greatest horror movies of all time and it holds up even today and the story follows a group of surviors who are dealing with a apoclypse where the dead have come back.Duane Jones plays Ben the lead survior and a black man who due to the colour of his skin and being around white people means that he will be judged and not trusted.Judith O'Dea is Barbra who is our leading lady and she slowly goes crazy as the events of the movie takes place and she defently has earned theposition of a amazing actress.
George A.Romero's Night of the living dead is the original zombie movie that has spawned a million sequels, remakes, re-imaginings and copy cats but whether or not it's the best of the bunch divided us.
Horror today in the main relies on special effects and before that relied on make up; an amazing example is Rick Baker's Oscar winning work on 'An American Werewolf in London'; however when watching 'Night of the Living Dead' you will notice that the 'zombies' do not generally have heavy make up on, and yet they still manage to remain scary.
Before I start, I would like to say that I was not Fan of Black and white movies, before watching this movie i did try to watch 13 Ghost and The House on Hauted hill which were both in black and white, i just could not get into those movies.As this movie was in Black and White, it did put me of for while and I could not wait any longer and this was movie that got into watch Black and White movies.Now back to this movie The plot The dead come back to life and eat the living in this low budget, black and white film.
Romero's "Night of the Living Dead" is not standard horror.
Many horror film's have since followed in Romero's footsteps, but none have ever, and will ever match the uniqueness of Night of The Living Dead.The plot is simple and practical.
One of the many brilliant traits of the the film is the way it is shown, in grainy black and white for a more haunting and almost ancient cinematic effect, like the classic horror films with Lugosi and Karloff.Night of the Living Dead is a sensation.
The 1968 movie is a classic with better performances and shots.The plot of the movie is about how dead people recover life like zombies and go after the human beings to kill and eat them.
If you stop and think about it, horror films to this day do not have the impact that Night of the Living Dead did.
The dead come back to life and eat the living in this low budget, black and white film.
Romero's Night of the Living Dead was and always will be one of the greatest and most influential horror films of all time.
Every horror fan should own this film and every person interested in old movies should also take a look.
I would like to praise George Romero again and again for making one of the finest horror films the world has ever seen.
The basic idea is not new (not even back then) but this movie is better than all the other zombie films I have seen.
Night of the Living Dead is different in every way from any movie of its kind up until its release in 1968.