Night of the Living Dead

On Halloween, we’re briefly transforming Freaky Friday into Freaky Saturday with screenings of two zombie films: George A. Romero’s horror classic NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and the surreal cult favourite MESSIAH OF EVIL.

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD is a true milestone in the history of horror, a film that every fan of the genre must see. The premise is simple: a small group of people barricade themselves inside an old, abandoned farmhouse whilst a horde of flesh-eating zombies surrounds them. Setting aside the seemingly simple plot, the film was highly multi-layered, innovative and even controversial for its time. Casting a black actor in the lead role was certainly not the norm in the 1960s. At the time, there were also no age restrictions on screenings. The film was screened, as was customary at the time, as a Saturday afternoon matinee. Roger Ebert recalls his screening in 1969 as follows: “The kids in the audience were stunned. There was almost complete silence. The movie had stopped being delightfully scary about halfway through, and had become unexpectedly terrifying. There was a little girl across the aisle from me, maybe nine years old, who was sitting very still in her seat and crying”. No children allowed…

George Romero’s film differs from the zombie films of the 1930s and 1940s, such as WHITE ZOMBIE and I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE, in which the dead in Haiti and the Caribbean are brought back to life through voodoo rituals. No exotic locations here, just an ordinary farm with realistic characters. In fact, the word ‘zombie’ isn’t mentioned even once throughout the film. In this film, they are simply referred to as ‘flesh-eating ghouls’.

A lot of the genre tropes we still associate with zombies today are used here for the first time: they eat human flesh and can only be killed by a shot to the head. Virtually every zombie film made since 1968 owes a debt to Romero’s masterpiece in one way or another. Must watch!