7 reviews left before I finish this section and start the below 150 and within 3 sections of the end and the mythical 141st review which signals the top of the slope for me and it’ll be downhill from then on. Moving on the actual reason you are reading this and this is the review for Night Of The Living Dead and don’t let the title confuse you this is not a comedy! but a horror from way back in the black and white days of 1968. This is a Horror movie classic release two years after the Hammer Horror team released the Plague Of The Zombies but copying was never mentioned about this movie as this was a Romero classic. Which has spawned another 3 films that I am aware of and another two that are in production. This was produced on a budget of $114k it went on to make $30m at the box-office and securing its place in Horror icon history for ever. It scores are not close enough for the scoreboard but that is because of me and IMDb being very similar with the giving this a 7.9 but Rotten Tomatoes absolutely loved this movie scoring it an almost perfect 97%. Starring Judith O'Dea, Duane Jones, Marilyn Eastman, Karl Hardman, Judith Ridley and Keith Wayne who personally I have not heard of any going onto any other movies with the exception of Duane Jones but not that great. I will talk about Duane Jones a bit later well after I get through the plot.
The world has been taken over by the Dead that are rising again and now hungry for human flesh. Do I stop there? Potentially I could but I would not be doing justice to the icon beginning Cemetery scene. Where Barbara and her brother Johnny have driven to Pennsylvania to visit their fathers grave. Johnny is moaning about the time it takes to get there for 10 minutes at the grave before driving home no doubt in the dark. In the graveyard Barbara gets spooked just by being around the graves and Johnny makes fun of her saying that they are coming for you bar-bar-rai. Looks there is one now as he sees a man staggering across the cemetery. Little does he know that this is actually ‘one of those monsters’ that does intend on eating Barbara. He finally steps in when this guy lunges for Barbara but after a struggle he ends up getting knocked out after cracking his head on a headstone. It is during that struggle, that Barbara sees her chance to flee and ends up running into a house of a stranger. In there is a black guy who basically has things worked out and is the only sane one in this movie. Barbara has gone to cloud cuckoo land and this guy has a plan. He starts boarding up the windows and securing the house. Is it his house, No but he knows what he is doing. After securing everything randomly two guys and a girl appear from a door in the living room. One carrying a gun they explain that the guy with the gun’s daughter and wife are in the cellar as the daughter is not well and the wife is looking after her. A lot more Zombies are rocking up outside to try to get in and with more people in the house is doesn’t mean its safer it just means there are more people to argue with. The guy wants to stay in the cellar and board it up and just stay down there. The others want to board the house up just so they have an escape option if needed. Well I really want to tell you the whole story but I don’t want to give away who survives and who doesn’t but this should be enough of a story for you. A now classic story of a zombie apocalypse with a group of people banding together in a house just to stay alive.
This is a classic movie and the story is going to stand the test of time simply because it already has. The special effect on the other hand weren’t too good to begin with and they may fade with time. The story here set up countless imitations and follow on stories for me I fell in love with the second one as that was the one that I saw first and for me was the best. The third had lost the charm and in some ways lost its way. This was the strong base for those other movies to build on and build they did. This is a great story it is old it is black and white but it does tell a story beyond zombies trying to eat people but you have to give this one a chance if you are ever going to try and work this one out.
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