Night of the Living Dead – A Post Mortem

The zombie genre is considered a staple of horror in modern cinema, however, it wasn’t always this way. In this short essay we will explore the creation of George A Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968) and how it left an everlasting mark on the horror genre by birthing the zombie film.

            Firstly, we must explore the creation of Night of the Living Dead and to do this, we must look at its creator. Romero graduated Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh in 1960, leading him to work on commercials and a few short films. However, this wasn’t for Romero, who wanted to make his own feature length movie. Together with nine of his friends, he formed Image Ten Productions in the late 1960s, which managed to raise a budget of $114,000 for the project according to IMDB (2017). Night of the Living Dead was originally pitched as a horror comedy, but eventually experienced a tonal shift into what we see today. The fact that Romero used an independent production company meant that he had more creative freedom over the final product of the film, which ultimately meant he could go further off the mainstream, something the final product of the film is famed for.

Even with the extensive fund-raising Image Ten did, the budget was still very low and cuts had to be made. One way of saving money was to film in 35mm black and white and whilst this decision was made purely as a economic one, it actually benefited the final product greatly. According to Maddrey (2004), states that the black and white gave the movie “the unflinching authority of a wartime newsreel” and adds that “it seems as much like a documentary on the loss of social stability as an exploitation film”. With the filming being done w%Sithout colour, it opened up a lot more avenues of money saving, such as using chocolate syrup as blood (a practice used in Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960)) and using old clothes from thrift stores to clothe the zombies.

When finally released, Night of the Living Dead made around $30 million in box office. However, its initial release was met with severe controversy, specifically because there was no real age rating at the time, so young children who were used to watching low budget horror movies for kicks were met with something truly terrifying. Despite this, it was met with critical applause, and still to this day is held as a classic, holding a 96% user rating on film rating site Rotten Tomatoes.

            Secondly, now that we have established the creative process of Night of the Living Dead and its release success, we will look at how it created one of the biggest horror genres, the zombie film. Following Night of the Living Dead, Romero himself directed two more zombie films shortly after; Dawn of the Dead (1978) and Day of the Dead (1985), with The Crazies (1973) being of a similar theme too. Even later into his career he directed Land of the Dead (2005) and Diary of the Dead (2007). However, the real legacy lies not in Romero’s career, but in the hundreds of others that he inspired and influenced. One of his biggest influences started in comic books but later became one of the biggest shows in U.S. history, The Walking Dead (2010 – ongoing). The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman has said on multiple occasions that Romero was a huge inspiration to his work, and even wrote a letter honouring him after his death. Not only did Romero inspire this behemoth of a show, it also inspired Shaun of the Dead (2004) directed by Edgar Wright. The movie is tonally completely different from Night of the Living Dead but without it, it likely wouldn’t exist.

            To conclude, Night of the Living Dead is one of the most culturally significant horror movies of the 1960s, spawning a huge genre in modern cinema. Zombie movies are everywhere, and the trope has spread to video games too, where it is also a huge genre. Romero laid out a legacy from his first feature length film, and followed up on it until his death in 2017.

Jack Monk

Bibliography:

Books:

• ·         Maddrey, Joseph (2004). Nightmares in Red, White and Blue: The Evolution of the American Horror Film

Websites:

• ·         IMDB.com (Accessed 2017, used for multiple references)

• ·         Rotten Tomatoes (Accessed 2017)

Films:

• ·         George A Romero, Night of the Living Dead (1968, Image Ten)