Night of the Living Dead, 1968



Drive in total:

Breasts: 0 (Sadly)

Deaths: 7



Thats right, Im doing the great original Romero classic Night of the Living Dead. Ive gotten tired of these crappy B flicks that arent even horror movies but cheesy love stories that happen to have an element of the occult thrown in to dupe talented young writers trying to watch a horror movie a day and review them for university site into renting them because he bases his decisions on what movies to rent solely on the cover art. So Ive decided to go through my personal stash of horror films so as to not be unpleasantly surprised by plot and character development over more important aspects like gore and boobies. Those are infinitely more important. Especially the boobies.



Barbara and Johnny are driving to the cemetery to leave flowers on their fathers gravestone. When they get there, Johnny decides to goof around with Barbara and tries to scare her. Barbara gives us some classic 1968 dialogue like, you are ignorant, and you are acting childish. Johnny spots a guy wandering around and works him into the flim flam. When the guy turns and attacks Barbara because he really is a reanimated corpse, Johnny jumps to her aid. He struggles with the zombie, but their tussle is ended shortly by Johnny smacking his head on a gravestone. Barbara panics and flees to the safety of the car. Unfortunately for her, Johnny still has the keys, and the dead man has found a pretty new rock to break the window with to get at Barbaras pretty human flesh. She pulls the parking break and shakes him off but also wrecks the car. Realizing the dead are gaining in numbers and chasing her, she runs to an abandoned house. Once inside, she begins to freak out. Enter Ben, the coolest character in a horror movie before The Evil Dead. Ben comes along with a tire iron and an actual plan.



Thats the best part about this movie. The two choices they have are actually good choices. Its not lock ourselves into an impenetrable underground bunker fortress or go into the lair of the gigantic plague spewing zombie creatures. The decision is between do we barricade ourselves into the basement, or do we board up the windows. Both options have their strong points. If they stay in the basement, they can reinforce the door really well. If they board up the windows and stay upstairs, they can escape if they get overrun. Its quite a conundrum.



This film set the standard for the zombie horror movie. Actually, Romero was scheduled to direct Resident Evil. He didnt get to though, because they rejected his version of the script. They fired him and hired a new director (Paul W. S. Anderson) who wrote the crappy script that you and I all know and loathe. Thats why it sucked so bad. If Romero had directed, it wouldnt have been such a production. It would have followed the original story line that the Resident Evil series set. The original story line didnt involve some stupid hive or any artificial intelligence that takes the shape of some little smart mouthed, annoying English girl. Romeros script involved Wesker and Barry and Vickers and the rest of the Resident Evil family. It would have been a much better that way.



What weve learned: Let Romero do what he wants. Hes the best there is when it comes to zombie horror.



10 out of 10

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