Night of the Living Dead (1968)
★★★½ — Night of the Living Dead (1968)
There are horror films, and then there are horror films that change everything that comes after them. Night of the Living Dead, released in 1968 and produced on a shoestring budget by the Pittsburgh-based independent outfit Image Ten, belongs firmly in the second category. The premise is, on paper, almost wilfully simple: a group of survivors find themselves trapped in a remote Pennsylvania farmhouse as waves of reanimated, flesh-eating corpses close in around them. But what George A. Romero and co-writer John Russo did with that premise reordered the horror genre entirely, inventing the modern zombie as popular culture now understands it. Before 1968, screen zombies were largely the province of voodoo folklore and slow-burn Caribbean dread. Romero threw that template out and replaced it with something altogether more primal and more modern, something rooted in cold-war anxiety, social unease, and the nightly shock of news footage from Vietnam and the Civil Rights Movement. The film arrives in a year that was, by any measure, one of the most turbulent in post-war American history, and you can feel that turbulence running underneath every frame.
Romero was, at the time, primarily a maker of industrial films and television commercials around Pittsburgh, with no major feature to his name. Night of the Living Dead was shot on 35mm black-and-white stock, largely on location at a farmhouse in Evans City, Pennsylvania, by a crew that was small, resourceful, and in many cases working for deferred pay. The result is a film that feels rough and immediate in a way that a studio production simply could not have manufactured. Romero would go on to build an entire career around genre filmmaking, returning to the zombie world several times across the following decades (you can read thoughts on one of those later efforts in the review of Survival of the Dead, and he brought his instinct for dark, pointed storytelling to other corners of horror too, as covered in the piece on Creepshow). But this is where the mythology begins. One genuinely remarkable footnote in the film's history: a copyright notice was accidentally omitted from the original print, which placed the film into the public domain almost immediately on release. The consequences of that clerical error are still felt today.
The cast is a mix of largely unknown local actors and a handful of people with prior stage and television experience. Judith O'Dea leads as Barbra, a woman who spends much of the film in a state of traumatised withdrawal, while Karl Hardman and Marilyn Eastman (both of whom were also involved on the production side) provide some of the film's sharpest interpersonal friction as a couple sheltering in the farmhouse basement. At the centre of it all, though, is Duane Jones as Ben, the de facto leader of the group. Jones was one of very few Black leading men in American horror at this point in cinema history, and his casting was, by Romero's account, simply a matter of Jones giving the best audition. The character is written and played without condescension or tokenism, which made the casting all the more pointed given its cultural moment. For a broader sense of what else 1968 had to offer, the review of The Snow Woman is worth a look, and fans of horror across different eras might also find something of interest in the coverage of You Won't Be Alone. Right now, though, here is what Night of the Living Dead looked like through fresh eyes on Movies With Macca.
I first watched the colour version of this on a VHS I bought at a charity shop on holiday in Cornwall as a 10 year old boy. A masterpiece. Pure, unfiltered horror history. It’s almost impossible to overstate the impact of Night of the Living Dead. Without it, the modern zombie genre simply would not exist. No 28 days later, no The Walking Dead, no Resident Evil. The world would be zombie-less, and that’s just crazy to think about. George A. Romero didn’t just make a great horror movie, he created an entire genre. The idea of undead, flesh-eating corpses rising from the grave all starts right here. And the fact that the film fell into the public domain because of a clerical error is absolutely wild. One of the most influential films of all time, and anyone can just… use it. Remake it. Sell it. Show it. The idea that such a culturally defining piece of cinema was left unprotected is both tragic and kind of poetic. The film itself is still terrifying. (My girlfriend won't rewatch this as it frightened her so much). The bleak, grainy black-and-white cinematography gives it an almost documentary feel, making everything seem unnervingly real. The performances are fantastic across the board, but Duane Jones is on another level. He’s calm, commanding, and effortlessly cool that gives the film a gravitas that so many ‘60s horror movies lacked. His performance alone makes this worth watching. And that ending… my god. No happy endings here, just pure, nihilistic horror. Even nearly 60 years later, it still hits like a punch to the gut. Iconic, chilling, legendary.
That ending really does linger, and I think it gets to the heart of why this film has never really aged out of relevance. It refuses to comfort you. Most horror films, polished or otherwise, offer some form of release at the close, some signal that the world has been restored to something like order. This one doesn't bother with any of that. The nihilism isn't cheap or gratuitous, it feels earned, and it felt genuinely transgressive for its time in a way that still registers. Romero made a film that was angry at something, even if he never quite spelled out exactly what, and that anger gives it a weight that slicker, better-funded productions rarely achieve. If you haven't seen it, see it. If you have, it's probably time to see it again. Some films you revisit for comfort. This one you revisit to be reminded that cinema can still put you somewhere genuinely uncomfortable, and that's not nothing.
Rating: ★★★½ | Year: 1968 | Watched: 1999-03-03
Trailer
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Related on Movies With Macca
More from George A. Romero: Creepshow (1982) · Jacaranda Joe (2022) · BIOHAZARD 2 TV-CM (1997) · Survival of the Dead (2009)
More from the 1960s: Viy (1967) · Persona (1966) · Carnival of Souls (1962) · Daisies (1966)
More horror: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) · Viy (1967) · Nightmare City (1980) · Angst (1983)
More thriller: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) · Angst (1983) · The Long Walk (2025) · Punishment Park (1971)
