A brother teases his sister in a cemetery: "They're coming to get you, Barbra." Two minutes later he's dead and she's running. Night of the Living Dead was shot in 1967 by a group of friends from Pittsburgh for around $114,000, and almost every zombie film since, from Dawn of the Dead to The Walking Dead, works from the rules it set. I watched it again this month. The effects are cheap, some of the acting is stiff, and the last ten minutes still left me sitting there in silence.
Watch the full movie free on the Internet Archive
Opens the film's page on archive.org, a non-profit library. Black and white, about 96 minutes.
Film facts
- Year: 1968 (premiered in Pittsburgh on October 1, 1968)
- Director: George A. Romero
- Writers: John A. Russo and George A. Romero
- Stars: Duane Jones, Judith O'Dea, Karl Hardman, Marilyn Eastman, Keith Wayne
- Runtime: About 96 minutes, black and white
- Made by: Image Ten, for roughly $114,000
The story, spoiler-light
Barbra (Judith O'Dea) and her brother Johnny (Russell Streiner) drive out to a rural cemetery in Pennsylvania to put a wreath on their father's grave. Johnny grumbles about the trip and teases her for being scared of the place, until a pale man stumbling between the headstones grabs her. Barbra gets away, half in shock, and ends up in an empty farmhouse with a body at the top of the stairs.
Ben (Duane Jones) arrives in a pickup truck soon after. He's calm and practical, and he starts tearing up tables to board the windows while more of the figures gather in the yard. Then it turns out they aren't alone. Hiding in the cellar are Harry and Helen Cooper with their daughter Karen, who's been bitten, and a young couple, Tom and Judy. The radio and the TV bring scraps of news: across the eastern US the recently dead are getting up, and they're eating people.
The real fight is inside the house. Ben wants to hold the ground floor, where you can see what's coming. Harry Cooper insists the cellar is the only safe place. They hate each other on sight, and the argument decides more than the creatures outside do.
My review: still the scariest argument in horror
What surprised me this time is how little the zombies matter. They're slow, there aren't many of them, and in daylight you can see the make-up. The fear comes from seven strangers who can't agree on anything, stuck in a house with no way out and a TV that keeps getting worse. Karl Hardman plays Harry Cooper as such a petty coward that I found myself angrier at him than at anything trying to get in. That's the trick. Romero makes you pick a side in a shouting match and then punishes everyone for it.
Duane Jones is the reason it holds together. Ben is smart and decisive, and he loses his temper exactly when a real person would. Romero cast a Black actor as the lead in 1967 and didn't rewrite the part to comment on it, and that choice makes the ending land very hard. Judith O'Dea gets less to do once Barbra goes into shock, which is my main complaint about the middle third. She spends a long stretch on the sofa staring at nothing.
The look is part of it too. Romero and his partners ran a Pittsburgh company that made commercials and industrial films, and the grainy 35mm black and white looks like news footage. The TV reports in the film add to that. In 1968 audiences were watching Vietnam on the evening news, and this felt like the same thing.
Scenes that still work
The cemetery opening, with the car, the wind and Johnny's joke, is a perfect little short film on its own. The first night siege, with Ben hammering boards while hands push through the gaps, is still tense. And there's the cellar scene with Karen and her mother, which was shocking enough in 1968 that Roger Ebert wrote about the children at a Saturday matinee who sat through it in tears. I'd add the truck sequence, where a plan that sounds sensible goes wrong in the worst way.
Cast
Most of the cast were friends, investors or people from the Pittsburgh scene. Karl Hardman and Marilyn Eastman, who play the Coopers, were partners in a local production company and also handled make-up and sound. Kyra Schon, who plays Karen, is Hardman's daughter. Russell Streiner was one of the producers as well as Johnny. Bill Hinzman, the cemetery ghoul, also worked on the camera crew.
How it was made
Ten investors formed Image Ten just to make this film. They shot most of it near Evans City, Pennsylvania, about 30 miles north of Pittsburgh, between mid-1967 and early 1968, using the real Evans City Cemetery for the opening. The farmhouse was due to be demolished, so they could wreck it. Chocolate syrup stood in for blood, which works fine in black and white. The music is mostly stock library tracks. The Walter Reade Organization picked it up for distribution and it went on to earn many times its budget. The Library of Congress added it to the National Film Registry in 1999.
Ending explained (spoilers)
Skip this section if you haven't seen it. The truck plan ends in fire and kills Tom and Judy. The dead break in, Helen Cooper is killed by her own daughter, and Barbra is dragged away by Johnny. Ben ends the night in the cellar he'd argued against, the only one left. At dawn a posse of armed men sweeps the fields, shooting the dead. Ben hears them and goes upstairs. One of them sees a figure at the window and shoots him in the head. The credits run over still photos of his body being dragged out with meat hooks and burned with the rest. Nobody in the posse ever knows what they did. Coming months after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., that ending hit audiences hard, and it still does.
Why it's free to watch
In 1968 US law required a copyright notice on published copies of a film. The working title was Night of the Flesh Eaters; when the distributor changed it, the notice that sat under the old title frame was removed too, so Night of the Living Dead entered the public domain on release. Wikipedia's list of US public-domain films records the reason as "Missing copyright notice due to an error from the distributor". The later Criterion 4K restoration is a separate, copyrighted release; the Internet Archive copy is an older transfer.
Is it worth watching today?
Yes, with the lights off and your phone in another room. Forgive the first ten minutes of stiff dialogue in the house. It gets meaner and better as it goes, and it's only 96 minutes. If you've only seen the 1990 Tom Savini remake, the original's ending is much harsher.
Watch the full movie free on the Internet Archive
FAQ
Is it legal to watch Night of the Living Dead for free?
Yes. The 1968 film has been in the US public domain since release because of the missing copyright notice, and the Internet Archive hosts a full copy.
Who directed Night of the Living Dead?
George A. Romero, his first feature. He co-wrote it with John A. Russo and went on to make Dawn of the Dead (1978) and Day of the Dead (1985).
Are they called zombies in the film?
No. The characters call them "ghouls" and "those things". The word zombie stuck later.
Is there a colour version?
Colorized versions exist, but Romero shot it in black and white, and that's how it should be seen.
How I checked this
I checked the public-domain reason against Wikipedia's US list and the film's own article, the budget and locations against the same article, and the Registry entry on the Library of Congress list. I rewatched the Internet Archive copy for the scenes above.
Sources
- Wikipedia: Night of the Living Dead
- Wikipedia: List of films in the public domain in the United States
- Internet Archive: Night Of The Living Dead HD
- Wikipedia: National Film Registry
- Roger Ebert: The Night of the Living Dead (1969 review)
Next on the list: The Last Man on Earth (1964), the Vincent Price film Romero borrowed from. More on our classic movies page.
Images are public domain or Creative Commons and are credited above.
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