From the Vaults: Night of the Living Dead

Note from the Cap'n: I wrote this in October of 2006, so it's a long way away from my normal "style," such as it is. It's a recap / brief analysis of Night of the Living Dead and (partially) Dawn of the Dead.

Film Report:

George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead

While considered the godfather of the “zombie” film, it is interesting to note that in the combined running times of Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead, George Romero only uses the term once. In fact, in Night of the Living Dead, the common terms used are either “ghoul” or “thing” (in Dawn of the Dead, this is further simplified to “they”). While Romero addresses the abject as dominant plot points in all of his “dead” movies, they are merely decoration for his larger commentary on society in general.

Both Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead are set in confined spaces (as is Day of the Dead, and to some extent, Land of the Dead). Although the spaces grow larger in each film, the point remains the same; presenting the space as a microcosm for the larger world. While both films present racial and sexual diversity, the intended effect changes as the series progresses. In Night of the Living Dead, we are introduced to Johnny (Russell Streiner) and Barbara (Judith O’Dea), brother and sister who drive to a remote part of Pennsylvania to visit their father’s grave. Johnny is almost immediately killed, and Barbara escapes to a nearby farmhouse, pursued by the ghoul who murdered her brother.

Shortly thereafter, we meet Ben (Duane Jones), who, when realizing his chances of driving to safety are slim, barricades himself inside the farmhouse with a shell shocked Barbara. It is important to note at this point that Ben is black, although at no point in the film is this ever drawn attention to, a somewhat radical notion considering that Night of the Living Dead was made during the height of the civil rights movement. To have a black man as your lead actor and not make any distinction between him and the rest of the cast is in and of itself a statement (Romero would continue this trend with Ken Foree in Dawn of the Dead). Ben is a voice of reason, using the radio to give context to this experience, and boarding up windows and doorways to keep the growing numbers of undead outside.

What Ben and Barbara cannot know is that they are not alone in the house. Hiding in the cellar are Harry Cooper (Karl Hardman), his wife Helen (Marilyn Eastman), their daughter (Kyra Schon), Tom (Keith Wayne), and Judy (Judith Ridley), who also arrived at the house as a result of the living dead. Note that none of the people hiding inside of this house are the people who live there. Ownership is not the issue in Night of the Living Dead, but rather the reactions and tensions between people trapped in a situation they don’t understand.

There is little information to draw on initially in the film; until identified by radio broadcast, the audience is unaware that the dead have returned to life (although the first appearance of a ghoul in a graveyard is a subtle hint) or the nature of these killers. The flesh eating aspect of the living dead, one which exists to further the abject nature of these creatures, goes wholly unaddressed when Johnny dies (he is killed from striking his head against a gravestone). The concept of the dead rising to eat the flesh of the living is a terrifying one; in our minds, we do not see them as the dead, but rather as reflections of ourselves. How can people we know return from the dead and want only to consume us?

Because the specific nature of their threat is unclear, each person has a varying reaction. Harry wants to lock his family in the basement and hide out until the threat subsides; his wife, upon the discovery that there are stations offering medical assistance, demands they leave to seek help for their injured daughter. Tom and Judy are confused, but come to believe Ben’s ideas are better than Cooper’s. Ben, who, to the consternation of Cooper, becomes the informal leader, first insists they stay inside the house, and then, learning the gas pump outside is accessible, formulates a plan by which they can all reach safety. Barbara, on the other hand, is an unintelligible mess, constantly talking about Johnny and incapable of taking any actions on her own.

When their plans go awry, inadvertently killing Tom and Judy, Ben returns to the house to find the power structure changed; Cooper’s paranoia leads to a final splintering as the dead close in on less fortified doors, and the siege of the living dead will effectively destroy their temporary union, leading, in all cases, to death. Cooper, in an act of defiance, takes Ben’s rifle, and as a result of the ensuing struggle, is mortally wounded. He returns to the basement to find something wholly unexpected; his reanimated daughter, who kills him and Helen. Barbara is finally reunited with her dead brother, only moments before being consumed in a mass of zombies. Ben escapes to the basement, and killing the reanimated Cooper family, he finds sanctuary at last.

While this narrative mounts, a second narrative begins off-screen, introduced on a television we find in the house, that of Sherriff McClelland (George Kosana) and the local police / militia efforts to subdue this undead uprising. The two storylines intersect with tragic consequences; after a long night in the cellar, Ben hears the sound of McClelland’s men outside of the house and comes upstairs, only to be mistaken for a zombie and killed, his efforts to stay alive subverted by one bullet.

It is easy to see how this film is a reflection of its time; after all, the undead could stand for any (and perhaps all) forms of social upheaval taking place in the late 1960’s (Vietnam, civil rights, etc), and the reactions of each character a reflection of how people dealt with shifts in society. Ben dies not because he chooses to adapt to the changing environment, but because he is mistaken as part of the problem. The unspoken nature of his race is now evident; Ben is mistaken for the living dead not out of malice, but ignorance. As a result, his death is more potent than that of the other characters, and cannot help but be linked to the bigger picture. Just as Romero attacks rampant consumerism in Dawn of the Dead, he approaches racism, war, and social upheaval in one fell swoop. Is it so difficult to imagine the living dead as severely wounded Vietnam veterans? (In Dawn of the Dead, it seems they stand for the have nots in the class system) While the fear of death and the abject is enough to keep us startled and aware of our protagonist’s plight, Romero has greater aspirations, which he continues in each of his zombie films, his saga of the living dead. The dead are a mirror with which to view ourselves, what we become and how we behave in the world. Whether greed, feminism, science versus the military, or reacting to terrorism by closing ourselves off, Romero will point the finger at humanity and the dead will rise again to bite it off.