Night of the Living Dead (1968)

"Well... the television said that's the right thing to do!

Yes, I know, you were expecting Kill Bill, Vol. 2. Over the weekend, I promise! In the meantime, this: the first modern zombie film, establishing all the tropes of the genre as we know it today. From this point onwards zombies are no longer portrayed in terms of their Haitian origins- no voodoo dolls here: compare this to Hammer’s The Plague of the Zombies from Just two years prior. Fitting, then, the film should have a black lead in Duane Jones, although his eventual fate is so depressingly 1968 America.

The film is superb, in spite of its cast of unknown; brilliantly shot in glorious monochrome with fantastic camera angles and magnificent use of shadows. The musical score is highly effective, too. This is a proper horror film that does that old-fashioned thing of making you jump. The whole thing reminds me of the base under siege stories that were being done in Doctor Who at the time, complete with the small cast of flawed characters.

But this film, of course, establishes the tropes of the newish genre it’s creating. Everybody dies, of course, although it isn’t made explicit that civilisation is doomed, with some semblance of state authority remaining at the end. I suspect it is indeed doomed, though, in a world where anyone who dies for any reason will be almost instantly reanimated. Interesting, though, that the plague is said to be caused by mysterious radiation from a returning probe to Venus; it’s all very atomic age.

I can understand why this film is seen as such a horror classic. It really is that good. I only regret that it took the unfortunate death of the great George A. Romero to drive me to watch it