by Julian Spivey

Many film fanatics and critics alike will tell you that George A. Romero’s very low budget 1968 film Night of the Living Dead is the most important film in the horror genre’s history.

Night of the Living Dead is important because it was the film that broke ground and went were no horror film had ever dared go before. Sure, there had been other zombie movies in cinema history; Bela Lugosi starred in White Zombie as far back as 1932. However, the way Night of the Living Dead was done was original. It is touted as the first mainstream American horror film to truly delve into the world of horror by showing gruesome and gory images. Images that were controversial for its time as they shocked and repulsed audiences with its scenes of zombies eating long strings of human intestines and risen from the dead daughters feasting on their own father’s arms.

Romero filming on a very low budget as it was an independent film used black and white cinematography at a time when almost every film was being released in color. The black and white cinematography gives Night of the Living Dead an eerie quality that would have been lost in color.

The plot of the film revolves around a group of seven strangers all wind up in an abandoned farmhouse in the middle of nowhere as they are being chased by dead humans that have risen from their graves reportedly due to radiation from a NASA experiment gone totally wrong. The group of people is led by Ben, played by Duane Jones. It is thought by many that Romero was making a racial statement by choosing an African-American actor as the lead role, something that was rarely seen at the time. This may indeed by true, but Romero has always said that Jones was chosen simply because he was the best actor available for the role. Tensions soon rise between the group of strangers when Harry Cooper, played by Karl Hardman, has issues with Ben’s leadership in the group. The battle for group supremacy becomes almost as big of a struggle as the group’s fight for survival from the flesh hungry zombies.

Night of the Living dead with its low budget brilliance, excellent black and white cinematography and innovative depictions of gore and death in film make it the holy grail of all horror films. The film’s final scene is also one that stands the test of time as one of cinema’s greatest and without a doubt most shocking scenes ever.

Due to a copyright mistake upon the Night of the Living Dead’s release the film fell into the public domain. Because of this the film was legal to be sold by any company that wanted to package it. As a result of this there are an abundance of copies of the film floating around on the cheap. Unfortunately, due to the poor cheaply made quality many of the film’s copies don’t fully extend the greatness of Romero’s masterpiece to today’s audiences.