Spooky season is upon us!
While I finish working on getting the site back up and running, I thought it would be fun to take some time to discuss my favorite spooky season movie… The horror flick that is, in my mind, the greatest ever made…Night of the Living Dead!
George A. Romero’s classic zombie film works on so many different levels, and after all these year, the movie was released in 1968, it still has the ability to truly scare you. The isolated and claustrophobic setting, well timed music, and socially relevant story combine to form one of the most incredible and influential movies of all time. The scares don’t just come from the zombies, but the overall feeling of hopelessness and impending doom that the main characters, and you as a viewer, feel.
The movie starts with Johnny and Barbra in a rural Pennsylvania cemetery where they are visiting their father’s grave.
In the distance a man slowly walks toward the siblings. The man is, of course, the first zombie that we see in the film. When he gets close enough the man attacks Barbra and Johnny comes to her rescue. While they are fighting Johnny stumbles and hits his head on a gravestone. Barbra escapes in Johnny’s car, but she crashes into a tree. She gets out of the car and runs to a nearby farmhouse to hide…she then discovers that there are other zombies roaming the countryside, just outside the house. While she is exploring the house she finds a corpse, and runs outside in fear.
As Barbra runs out she is stopped by Ben. Ben fends off some of the zombies and gets Barbra back into the house, where he stars boarding up the doors and windows. Soon Ben finds that Harry and Helen Cooper and their daughter Karen, along with teenage lovers Tom and Judy, have been hiding in the cellar of the house. The group argues about what to do next, and decides to reinforce the house. They find an old radio and listen to a report that explains that an epidemic of mass murder is sweeping across the eastern seaboard of the US. Later Ben sees a tv and an emergency broadcast reveals that the “murders” are eating their victims’ flesh.
The group devises a plan to escape the farmhouse, but will they be able to escape the horde of undead that have surrounded them?
