Night Of The Living Dead (1968)

So it's Easter time and I thought 'we should deal with a film that really captures the whole Easter spirit and is kind of meaningful...'

And then I thought 'Nah. But I guess in a sick way Night of the Living Dead does have the whole resurrection of the dead thing in common with Easter, thus making it totally appropriate Easter viewing.'

I don't know how many zombie films I've seen, it's probably in the hundreds but Night of the Living Dead is one of the earlier ones (that said, these movies have been around since the 30s), it's the first in George A. Romero's zombie film franchise that has given us such zombie gore gems as Day of the Dead, Dawn of the Dead and the somewhat forgettable Diary of the Dead.

Night of the Living Dead is about a group of people who lock themselves in a farmhouse after the dead begin to comeback to life and start attacking the humans. They have to work together in order to survive the attack, however they don't all get along.

I don't know why but I found these zombies to be HILARIOUS, particularly the random naked one you can see in the trailer. At the beginning of the film they're semi-intelligent, they even resemble normal people. Only halfway through the movie they start to become more like what we have today. I'm sure it was terrifying back in the 60s but unfortunately that has been lost over time. Watching the zombies devour people was funny too, it looks like they're eating a ham bone or something, it's terrible but in a good way.

There's something Alfred Hitchcock-esque about Night of the Living Dead, it kind of reminded me of Psycho, you have the beautiful blonde woman being terrorised and the deliberately loud sound effects that punctuate the usual silence in order to frighten the audience. There isn't much dialogue and it's not particularly good, neither is the acting. They're all just way too hysterical and it gets annoying.

Sometimes it kind of borders on being a bit sexist, the women are portrayed as being completely useless or crazy, especially Barbra (Judith O'Dea) who acts like a complete idiot the whole time. The women seem to lead most of the male characters to their demise as well. What I also found interesting was the character Ben (Duane Jones), a black man who is the hero and has to deal with a very annoying group of white people, as well as group of predominantly white zombies. I'm guessing this would have been quite controversial in the day (particularly the end sequence, but I'm not going to ruin it for you). I'm just glad he wasn't some stereotypical 'black' character who was given a supporting role. It's good to see a black actor at the centre of a film, when you think about what was happening in terms of civil rights at the time.

It's worth watching if you like zombie films, but I wouldn't say it was my all-time favourite. If you're a zombie fan here's a list of all zombie movies for you to work your way through... Good luck