History Main / NightOfTheLivingDead

1968 horror film directed by George A. Romero and written by Romero and John Russo. One of the most influential horror films ever, it made zombies the staple monster of the ZombieApocalypse genre. Before ''Living Dead'', zombies were creatures of voodoo who obeyed their master, but Romero's zombies were [[OurZombiesAreDifferent something completely different]]: no explanation was given (besides a speculative HandWave about a space probe and [[ILoveNuclearPower radiation]]) for the zombies, but more than that, the film showed the increasing tension in society: the zombies weren't the only enemies, they were only the most visible ones.

After ''Night of the Living Dead'' became an unexpected success, Romero and Russo disagreed on what direction the sequel was to go in, so they decided to each do their own version: Romero's became the equally successful ''DawnOfTheDead'' (and not-quite-as successful ''DayOfTheDead''), while Russo made his films more comedic with the ''ReturnOfTheLivingDead'' pentalogy (which single-handedly introduced the concept of zombies eating brains).

Both series have had modern sequels: Romero directed the fourth film, ''Land of the Dead'', in 2005, and then made a sort of reboot, ''DiaryOfTheDead'', while the ''Return of the Living Dead'' films became less comedic and more {{Gorn}}. All three of Romero's trilogy have been remade, too, with varies degrees of success (the first remake of "Night" was actually written and produced by Romero himself and directed by close friend Tom Savini). Nevertheless, ''Night of the Living Dead'' stays one of the most iconic horror films of all time and many [[ShaunOfTheDead movies]], [[{{Angel}} television shows]], [[ResidentEvil video games]], [[WorldWarZ books]], and [[TheWalkingDead comic books]] owe their origin to its gruesome black-and-white imagery.

''Night of the Living Dead'' lapsed into the public domain because the original theatrical distributor, the Walter Reade Organization, neglected to place a copyright indication on the prints. In 1968, United States copyright law required a proper notice for a work to maintain a copyright. Image Ten displayed such a notice on the title frames of the film beneath the original title, ''Night of the Flesh Eaters''. The distributor removed the statement when it changed the title.

Because of the public domain status, the film is sold on home video by several distributors. As of 2006, the Internet Movie Database lists 23 copies of Night of the Living Dead retailing on DVD and nineteen on VHS. The original film is available to view or download free on Internet sites such as [[http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2956447426428748010 Google Video,]] [[http://www.archive.org/details/night_of_the_living_dead Internet Archive]] and [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85C2JnZOY4k YouTube.]] As of October 2, 2008, it was the Internet Archive's second most downloaded film, with 515,561 downloads.

The film was [[TheRemake remade]] for a second time in 2006 and shot in [[{{ptitle49fktc1oipjq}} 3D]]. Romero had no involvement with this remake and, unlike Savini's more faithful adaptation, it departs fairly radically from the source material.

In 1999, the original 1968 film was rereleased by Russo for its 30th anniversary without Romero's involvement, with new footage filmed and a new soundtrack composed. The altered version's continuity had a sequel in 2001 called ''ChildrenOfTheLivingDead''.

->''"[[MemeticMutation They're coming to get you, Barbara!]]"''

** Averted with Johnny in the remake. He torments Barbara but shows redemptive qualities by immediately seeing if the undertaker is all right and then fighting the first zombie encountered from attacking Barbara... resulting in him tackling the zombie and accidentally head kerplunking a tombstone which breaks his neck.

* WhoIsThisGuyAgain: Pretty much everyone but Barbara. People watching usually can only remember the characters as Black Guy, Bald Jackass, Mrs. Jackass, Kid, and almost everyone forgets there even ''were'' two teenagers in the movie.

->''"[[MemeticMutation They're coming to get you, Barbra!]]"''

* InformedWrongness: Cooper, the obnoxious Jerkass, is right about what to do (barricade the basement). Square-jawed hero Ben's plan to defend the house ends in disaster.

** Barbra makes it all of about 100 feet in the car before crashing it into a tree. She ''was'' just coasting after taking the emergency brake off. After all, Johnny has the key...

** In the original, if Ben had listened to Cooper, period. Cooper was right about barricading the basement. Ben's plan to defend the house fails, and he does wind up taking refuge in the basement in the end.
*** Maybe, but [[spoiler:Cooper's daughter had been bitten]]. They would have been trapped down there with her, and if they tried to put her down Cooper would probably have gone [[AxCrazy gun crazy]] on everyone.
** Also in the original, Ben's plan with the gas pump [[spoiler: would have worked had the cast not been TooDumbToLive]].

The film was [[TheRemake remade]] for a second time in 2006 and shot in [[{{ptitle49fktc1oipjq}} 3D]]. Romero had no involvement with this remake and, unlike Savini's more faithful adaptation, it departs fairly radically from the source material.

* AssholeVictim: Averted with Johnny in the Tom Savini's remake. He torments Barbara, but shows redemptive qualities by immediately seeing if the undertaker if ok and then fighting the first zombie encountered from attacking Barbara... [[spoiler: resulting in him tackling the zombie and accidentally head kerplunking a tombstone which breaks his neck]]

* CreepyBasement: Subverted; the cellar is the one truly safe place...at least [[spoiler:until Karen turns]].

* DistressedDamsel: Barbra is often accused of this, though she does succeed in running away from most of the zombies. It's just that when things calm down, she goes slightly catatonic.
* DownerEnding: [[spoiler:Ben alone]] survives the night, but is [[spoiler:shot by rednecks who supposedly mistake him for a zombie]].
** BittersweetEnding: The (first) remake by Tom Savini. Barbra manages to find help while Ben finally finds true (temporary) shelter in the basement. As he is listening to the radio, Ben finds the gas key and laughs as the power goes out. Come morning, [[spoiler:Ben has succumbed to his injuries and become a ghoul. Barbra also survives, but sees the utter lack of respect and common sense the rednecks have for the living dead.]]
---> '''Barbra:''' We're them. We're them and they're us.
*** Don't forget that, in the remake, [[spoiler: Harry Cooper]] managed to survive by locking himself in the attic (and all the others outside it, where [[spoiler: all but Barbra fall to the zombies]]); when he hears someone [[spoiler: kill Ben]], he comes out and is happy to see [[spoiler: Barbra still alive. She then shoots him in the head and tells the zombie hunters to throw him on the fire.]]
* EveryCarIsAPinto: Seriously there no way that truck would've exploded that fast especially when the ''back'' of it was the only part that caught fire, nowhere near the gas tank.
* GoryDiscretionShot: Sometimes used, sometimes averted. Especially in the first film, this shocked audiences, who weren't expecting to see so much gore.
* HeWhoFightsMonsters: [[spoiler: Barbra]], in the remake.
* HeroicBSOD: Barbra. In the remake, however, this is subverted when she becomes [[spoiler: just as much a survivor as Ben and even lives through the end.]]

* JerkAss: Cooper, in both versions.

* NotHisSled: Used ''twice'' in the Savini remake (see Downer Ending, above).
** The first attack was also changed to remain surprising. In the original, the [[MeaningfulBackgroundEvent man shambling in the background]] is a zombie that attacks Barbra (quite a shocker in 1968). In the remake the man is an alive, but deeply confused hearse driver. Then a zombie attacks ''Johnnie''.
* NotUsingTheZWord: The undead cannibals are referred to as "ghouls" by the radio/TV people and "those ''things''" by the main characters, but the word "zombie" is never used. Working titles for the film were actually ''Night of Anubis'' and ''Night of the Flesh Eaters''.
** It should be noted that Romero and Russo themselves never thought of the creatures as zombies, since the popular idea of zombie-as-cannibal had not yet been formed, making this a proto-{{Trope Maker}}.

* OurZombiesAreDifferent: As stated earlier, this film invented the modern perception of zombies as cannibalistic monsters - before it, they were voodoo slaves. A keen viewer will also notice that some of the zombies in the beginning don't perfectly fit the "slow, dumb shambler" model that is associated with Romero's zombies - namely, they reach for a car's door handle, they pick up a rock to smash against a window, they deliberately smash a car's headlights, and oh yeah, one of them ''runs''.
** The girl who played Karen to this day says that she doesn't consider this a zombie film. Because at the time they were just called ghouls.
** The Coopers' daughter zombie also uses a garden shovel to kill her mother.
* PeekabooCorpse: One of the more frightening examples, considering how well it was done with 60s SFX.

* SeinfeldIsUnfunny: ''Night'' completely rewrote how horror movies are made: more graphic, more political, more [[KillEmAll nihilistic]]. Before this movie, even horror movies rarely had any DownerEnding. Nowadays they're expected. Today, this film would be relatively goreless.

* TearsOfFear: Roger Ebert described children in the first theatrical showing were sitting in their seats silently crying in horror.
** What's so special in this case is that thanks to movie gimmicks such as those created by William Castle, many horror movies of the '50s and '60s had become the equivalent to carnival fun-houses, good for a harmless thrill and very popular with kids. As a result children growing up at that time went to see ''Night of the Living Dead'' expecting spooky fun and instead were genuinely terrified by what they saw, a fact not lost upon [[http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19670105/REVIEWS/701050301/1023 Mr. Ebert.]]

* ThoseTwoGuys: Tom and Judy are pretty separated from the other characters and the story at large. They hardly interact with anyone else but each other, and the only thing very memorable about them is [[spoiler: their fiery explosive death, and the sloppy zombie clean-up crew]]
* ThrowItIn: The character Judy wasn't originally in the story. Apparently the actress was just so sweet and photogenic that the crew created a part for her and just made up scenes for her as they went along. Which explains why she's basically a LivingProp.
** The car crashing into a tree was done on a whim because they needed an excuse for why there was suddenly a dent in it after getting in an accident during production.
** Barbra goes barefoot quickly in the movie because the crew lost one of the shoes. To this day the actress believes it was stolen by a crew member with a foot fetish.

* TooDumbToLive: Jesus, [[spoiler:Tom]]; how hard is it to work a damned gas pump?
** That nothing compared to Ben ''leaving a torch right next to the car where gas can easily be spilled on it'' rather than, I don't know, placing it further ahead of them in front of the zombies!
* TookALevelInBadass: [[spoiler: Barbra]] in the remake, in pointed contrast with her original incarnation.
* UndeadChild

* WeCouldHaveAvoidedAllThis: The Tom Savini remake, where the gas pump key was [[spoiler:in the basement]], and could have been easily found if [[spoiler:Ben had listened to Cooper]].
** Or vice-versa, [[spoiler:if Cooper had bothered to look for it whilst he was down stairs.]]

*** Maybe, but remember that [[spoiler: Cooper's daughter had been bitten.]] They would have been trapped down there with her, and if they tried to put her down, Cooper would probably have gone [[AxeCrazy gun crazy on everyone.]]
*** Also, in the original, Ben's plan with the gas pump [[spoiler: would have worked had the cast not been TooDumbToLive]].
* WhoIsThisGuyAgain?: Pretty much everyone but Barbara. People watching usually can only remember the characters as Black Guy, Bald Jackass, Mrs. Jackass, Kid, and almost everyone forgets there even ''were'' two teenagers in the movie.
* WomenDrivers: Barbra makes it all of about 100 feet in the car before crashing it into a tree.
** Well, she was just coasting after taking the emergency brake off. After all, Johnny has the key...

* ZombieApocalypse: Of course.
** Averted, actually. Atypically for a zombie infection movie, the ending shows that the living win the day, and emerge unchanged. Unfortunately.
* ZombieInfectee: [[spoiler: Karen Cooper]]
* ZombieGait

The film was [[TheRemake remade]] for a second time in 2006 and shot in [[{{ptitle49fktc1oipjq}} 3D]]. Romero had no involvment with this remake and, unlike Savini's more faithful adaptation, it departs fairly radically from the source material.

* AdaptationDecay: The 2006 remake, where the rag tag group of scared but relatively innocent strangers are instead a house full of pot farmers. And it's implied that the zombies are created by the town mortician piling up bodies instead of cremating them and then exposing them to medical waste.

* BlackDudeDiesFirst: Inverted -- the black dude is the only one who survives.[[spoiler:.. at least, until he gets shot by the rednecks (who supposedly mistook him for a zombie, but many fans believe that they just shot him because it was an excuse to kill a black man).]]
** WordOfGod originally said that isn't so, but George Romero may have changed his mind in the interim to keep his AuteurLicense.
*** Russo to this day states that [[spoiler:it really was meant to be a mistake based on the statistics of how many hunters are accidentally shot in PA each year.]]
*** The role of Ben wasn't even written as a black man...Duane Jones won the part on the strength of his audition, nothing more.

* {{Discontinuity}}: A "30th Anniversary Edition" of the original film, which cut about 15 minutes' worth of footage from the original (replacing it with newly-produced scenes) and added new sound effects and a modern music score, was made in 1999. It was not well received by fans or critics.

* {{Fanon}}: Fan websites have apparently agreed amongst themselves that the TV news reporter was captured and lynched by survivors after urging everyone to leave their homes to refugee centers that apparently never existed.
** The fact that [[DawnOfTheDead the sequel]] mentions this in the opening probably helped that.

* HighOctaneNightmareFuel: When Barbra [[spoiler: gets carried away by a sea of zombies all at once. Ben tries to grab her but the huge swarm of hands envelope her screaming body into the crowd almost as if absorbing her.]]
** What makes it especially bad is [[spoiler: one of the zombies is her brother from the beginning of the movie.]]

* MissedMomentOfAwesome: Ving Rhames was nearly cast as Ben in the Savini remake. If so, he would have been the only actor to have appeared in all three remakes of "Night", "Dawn" and "Day".
* {{Narm}}: Ben's description of the diner incident, and the scene where he beats up on Cooper, kind of flirt with this.

* MeaningfulBackgroundEvent: The very first zombie in the movie can be seen shambling around the cemetery before it attacks Barbra and Johnny.

* MeaningfulBackgroundEvent: The very first zombie in the movie can be seen shambling around the cemetery before it attacks Barbara and Johnny.

* MeaningfulBackgroundEvent: The very first zombie in the movie can be seen shambling around the cemetery when Johnny taunts Barbara.

* OnlySaneMan: Ben is the only remotely competent character in the entire movie that actually tries to fight back against the zombies, in stark contrast to the raving idiocy and uselessness of the other characters.

There have been two [[TheRemake remake]]s. The first, made in 1990, was produced and scripted by Romero and directed by Tom Savini and follows the events of the original fairly closely (with the notable exception of turning Barbra into an ActionGirl); the second, made in 2006 and shot in [[{{ptitle49fktc1oipjq}} 3D]], departs from it fairly radically.

1968 horror film directed by George A. Romero and written by Romero and John Russo. One of the most influential horror films ever, it made zombies the staple monster of the ZombieApocalypse genre. Before ''Living Dead'', zombies were creatures of voodoo who obeyed their master, but Romero's zombies were [[OurZombiesAreDifferent something completely different]]: no explanation was given (besides a speculative HandWave about a satellite and radiation) for the zombies, but more than that, the film showed the increasing tension in society: the zombies weren't the only enemies, they were only the most visible ones.

* TheSiege
* TheUnreveal: In the sequels and remakes, it's never explained why the dead are coming back to life. Even in the original, the [[ILoveNuclearPower radioactive satellite]] explanation gets little attention. Justified in that we're not dealing with people investigating the cause, just dealing with the effects.

* TookALevelInBadass: [[spoiler: Barbara]] in the remake, in pointed contrast with her original incarnation.

* TitleOfTheDead
* UndeadChild

* TheUnreveal: In the sequels and remakes, it's never explained why the dead are coming back to life. Even in the original, the satellite explanation gets little attention. Justified in that we're not dealing with people investigating the cause, just dealing with the effects.

* WeAreExperiencingTechnicalDifficulties: But Johnny foolishly [[IgnoredVitalNewsReports turns off the radio]] before finding out why.