Welcome to a night
of total terror.
In 1967, a 27 year old college drop out from the Bronx
named George A. Romero directed a low budget horror film.
Night of the Living Dead!
The film introduced the world to a new kind of monster...
Persons who have recently died
have been returning to life and committing acts of murder.
...the flesh eating zombie.
This spawned an entire genre of TV shows and movies, novels,
comic books, video games and zombie conventions,
thriving industries to this day.
But at the time "Night of the Living Dead" was made,
I don't think audiences were ready
for "Night of the Living Dead."
It spoke to its audience in ways few horror films
had ever done before.
And I think that's why they were drawn to it.
The first time you saw it you realized
it was making a place for itself in a time capsule of some sort.
No movie had that kind of impact at that time.
It was this tiny little movie in Pittsburgh
that seemed to have no chance.
And it, you know, changed the world.
It was no big thing, man.
Who knew that we were ever even going to finish this movie.
It was just like a bunch of people getting together
and we were going to try to make a movie.
And none of us knew that it was ever going to get finished.
Let alone become something as well-known as it is.
George Romero started his first film production company
in the city of Pittsburgh in 1963.
He called it, the Latent Image.
♪ It's a beautiful day in this neighborhood ♪
♪ A beautiful day for a neighbor ♪
♪ Would you be mine
♪ Could you be mine
We all weaned into the business
on Fred Rogers, "Mr. Rogers Neighborhood."
Almost everybody in Pittsburgh who works in the biz now
worked for Fred for a while.
♪ I have always wanted to have a neighbor just like you ♪
Romero and his partners make several short films
for the children's television series,
including "Things that Feel Soft"
and "Mr. Rogers Gets a Tonsillectomy."
Up in the ceiling were some lights I could see.
And the kind eyes
of the people in the operating room.
Even though they wore masks, I could see their kind eyes.
Which remains one of the scariest movies I've ever done.
The Latent Image also finds opportunity in a new industry.
At the time, you know, commercials were live.
The beer commercials used to be the sportscaster.
Even when you were able to drink.
You were actually able to drink beer on camera in a commercial.
These guys, by the time,
if you went into extra innings,
it was like...
And all of a sudden, we come along and say,
"You know, you can do this shit on film, man."
When you hit a dry spell,
what's the natural way to wet it down?
Hey honey! How about a beer?
With a tall, cold Duke.
Duquesne beer at the time, which is no longer.
Great times, great beer, they go together.
And there's no better beer for great times than Iron City.
Iron's still there.
Iron! Gimme an Iron!
And how about that Iron City flavor?
Rich. Robust.
Delicious.
I could shoot, I could record, I was an editor.
You know, I wound up doing it all.
So it was all learn by doing.
I shot more film at the Latent Image
than I've shot over the course
of all the feature films that I've made.
I mean, because we were shooting all the time.
In those days, it was all film.
So, you had to wait for it to come back from the lab.
There were local labs.
They were not that reliable.
You'd put your heart into shooting this stuff
and the guy would call up and say,
"You know what, we fucked it up."
But once the film came back, as long as it looked okay man,
as soon as the film walked in the door
I'd sit there until it was edited.
I'd sit there sometimes 36, 48 hours, get it done.
You know I basically lived there.
And I just lived, breathed and drank the stuff.
No thought for family or whatever;
I just was, making movies, man.
Preview films presents, "The Calgon Story."
We did this thing called, "The Calgon Story."
It was a knock off of, "Fantastic Voyage."
Add the Calgon!
And it was the biggest commercial that we've ever done.
It's working!
The grey is gone!
The fibers are clean!
Let's get out of here.
I think I'm in love with you.
And they wanted 35 so we sacrificed our profit
and went out and bought a 35mm camera.
We started to think that we could actually
make movies, you know.
When we finally had the equipment
and we thought we could make a movie, I wanted,
I had this really high minded idea to this Bergmanesque
sort of "Virgin Spring" kind of a movie.
And so I wrote this thing about two teenagers
in the middle ages.
I mean, boy, talk about reaching for the moon, right?
Romero's search for investors for his first
feature-length screenplay, "Whine of the Fawn,"
ultimately failed.
Eventually we abandoned it and decided to do,
maybe we should do something a little more commercial.
And, so we decided to do a horror flick.
And I had read a novel called, "I am Legend."
A Richard Matheson novel.
And it seemed to me that it was about revolution underneath.
But we were also very aware of the time,
you know, and the sort of anger of the 60s.
The year was 1967.
The U.S. was fighting an increasingly unpopular war
in Vietnam.
At home in the U.S., despite historic strides made
during the civil rights era, rampant racism still ruled.
After suffering continued unchecked discrimination,
African Americans took to the streets.
Some called it rioting.
Others called it revolution.
We stand on the eve of a black revolution, brothers.
Masses of our people are in the streets.
They're fighting tit for tat,
two for two,
an eye for an eye and a life for a life.
The summer of '67 was the summer of riots in Newark and Detroit.
And the idea of the "American Ghetto"
really started to take hold in the public consciousness
as a kind of symptom of the Civil Rights movement
whereas in the 50s and early 60s
it would have been lunch counters
and marches in southern cities and busses.
Now, it was about anger.
There was a good deal of sort of anger.
You know, I think mostly that the 60s didn't work.
You know, we thought we had changed the world
or were part of some sort of a reform
that was going to make things better.
And all of a sudden it wasn't any better.
It wasn't any different.
Let's get off the street!
Get the lead out of your ass!
So I think there was a bit of rage, a bit of disappointment.
So I invented these characters.
In my mind they were just ghouls.
The dead are coming back to life.
That's the revolution.
That's the big thing that everybody's missing.
And we just wanted to make as ballsy a horror film
as we could make.
Romero and nine other investors --
including several partners from the Latent Image --
form a new company called, "Image 10."
They rent an abandoned farmhouse for the film's primary location.
Initially, ten of us kicked in 600 bucks,
it was enough to rent the farmhouse,
buy some film stock, and we started to shoot.
We started to shoot not knowing
if we were ever going to finish.
Romero is 27 years old.
We lived on that farmhouse.
And we had to go out to the little stream
in order to wash off.
So it was real guerilla stuff, you know.
Talk about dedication.
And everybody went along with this!
You know, somehow I'd say, "Okay, guys."
It's going to be rough, but, you know, we'll make a movie."
And everybody'd say, "All right."
Did that surprise you?
It did! It did! Completely.
I'd expect people to say, "What are you, crazy?"
George Romero's jobs include cinematographer,
editor, and director.
I didn't know very much then.
What's a director s'posed to do?
I dunno!
Walk over here!
I think the first time you try to do anything,
especially when you're trying to do something new, um,
you're learning on the job.
And essentially everything that can go wrong will go wrong.
Whether it's issues with cameras or cast members
who really don't have a lot of experience.
Crew members who don't quite know what they're doing.
I tried to build a clay hand
and I tried to leave it hollow and fill it with blood.
It looks like shit!
I mean, it's, it's not great.
There were very few independents being done at that point.
And here's a guy from Pittsburgh, PA,
who gets an idea for a film,
manages to raise a small amount of money
and just had the courage, the passion,
the persistence to get it done.
It's really remarkable a film
that has become such a classic came out of an environment
where everyone was learning on the job.
Many in the cast and crew take on multiple jobs
to make up for the lack in budget.
Russ Streiner's duties include producer and actor.
John Russo's include co-screenwriter and zombie.
Initially I had written it as a short story.
And then I started to adapt it into a screenplay.
And then we actually started to have to start to shoot,
so Jack Russo took over finishing the screenplay
and we collaborated on it after that point.
Karl Hardman is producer, make-up artist and actor.
Marilyn Eastman is make-up artist and actor.
Karl and Marilyn started this audio production company.
And so they provided all the audio recording equipment
when we made "Night of the Living Dead."
They did the zombie make ups and were incredibly energetic
and just would do any job that needed to be done.
It was a new impetus for people to uh,
honestly, to fuck the system, you know?
It's like we can do this ourselves.
We don't have to go to Hollywood
with our little script about zombies
that everybody would never have supported.
It's too freaky, uh,
they're too busy making Charlton Heston epics,
you know, and uh "Mary Poppins."
Friends, friends of friends and colleagues
comprise the rest of the crew.
"Night of the Living Dead" was very much a collaborative work.
There was a sense of improvisation on the set,
which I think helps the movie.
Crews, you know, it's where it's at, man.
I mean, you're reliant on all these people.
And it's the only way it happens, ever.
You don't make the movie, you don't make the movie,
you can't go out and make a movie!
You know, you can't make this movie without this guy!
And look, he's doing it all!
Look, isn't it, that's what it is, man!
Alright, Vince, hit him in the head,
right between the eyes.
For many, like investor,
production director and actor Vince Survinski,
this is their first experience with filmmaking.
Vince Survinski owned a roller rink in Pittsburgh
and said, "Ah, I always wanted to get into movies."
Vince was always a go-to guy.
He would get things done.
We'd all be sitting around puzzling,
"Oh, this is a great farm house, but you have to wade
across a stream to get over there."
So Vince'd say, "Ah, I'll build a little bridge."
And Goddammit, with his own hands
he built this little wooden bridge
that you could actually drive a car over.
Oh, the demolition crew!
Vince's brother, Reg, and he had a partner named Tony Pantonello.
They used to do fireworks.
They were not the Zambelli's but, you know,
if you needed some fireworks down at your church
you called these guys.
They did all the pyrotechnical stuff
and they were hilarious guys, I mean, you know.
Tony would have this cigar constantly burning in his mouth
and he's working putting a fuse together
and he couldn't see very well, so he's like this
and this cigar and I'm like,
"Tony, you're gonna blow your fingers off!"
They did all the squibs.
Squibwork and the explosives, and all that.
Actor, lighting person, and investor Bill Hinzman
and John Russo both volunteer to be set on fire.
Given no protective clothing they simply agree
to roll on the grass if they get hot.
I think maybe that was Reg's suggestion.
"It starts to feel hot, just lie down."
"Want anything from the supply wagon, Kuss?"
No, we're alright.
Hey, Kass, put that thing all the way into the fire,
we don't want it getting up again!
Chief, Chief McClelland, how's everything going?
Aw, things aren't going too bad, men are taking it pretty good.
You want to get on the other side of the road over there!
Bill Cardille who was a TV personality,
he came out to be the news guy.
And he had to interview Kuss as the Sheriff.
So, all those lines, the greatest lines in the movie
were all ad libbed by Kuss.
Are they slow moving, Chief?
Yeah, they're dead, they're all messed up.
All that shit was completely off the cuff.
This is Bill Cardille, WIIC, TV 11 news.
Bill Cardille, almost every Saturday night he would plug us
and say there are these guys in Pittsburgh
that are actually making a horror movie.
And I'm going to go out and I'm going to appear in it.
So we got a little bit of a profile.
And, because of that profile I think people believed
that we were going to, probably more than us,
that we were actually going to finish this movie.
Yeah, Chief, we're going to stay with it
until we meet up with the National Guard.
- Where'd you get the coffee? - One of the volunteers.
You're doing all the work, why don't you take it.
Bill Cardille came out and brought the camera guy
from Channel 11 and he brought his gear.
The helicopter pilot for local radio station KQV
lets Russ Streiner ride with him to get aerial shots.
We called the Police, we got real police
to come out and cooperate.
I mean, all we had to do was call up and say, "Guys!"
And, you know and they brought the vans out
and the dogs and everything else!
You know, it was amazing all the cooperation
that we used to get.
I mean, it was incredible.
Everybody was sort of with us
because we were trying to actually make a movie.
The dozens of zombies are played by friends,
family, local townfolk and clients of Romero's
commercial production company, the Latent Image.
Most of the zombies were people we used to work with.
People that, that were giving us jobs.
Advertising people, a couple of news guys.
A lot of the zombies were clients of ours
from ad agencies.
Humoring us, saying, "Sure, okay.
I'll come out."
A woman came out and was willing to appear nude from behind.
I don't know if there's any such thing as a bad zombie.
I mean, I love them all.
But, you know, you get people who come out.
I mean, if I do anything, if I make a gesture,
if I'm talking to twenty zombies
and they're all looking at me saying, "Well, what do I do?"
"Well, you walk over here."
And if I go like that, everybody does that.
So, pretty much just say, "Do whatever you want.
Do your best zombie, man."
And you get some incredibly creative things.
One of the investors
Ross Harris was a meat packer.
So he brought all these entrails,
so it was pretty rough.
That was all real stuff, real intestines,
real livers, cow livers.
We wanted to push the envelope,
let's see what we can do with this.
Just bring out buckets of stuff and... I'm telling you, boy,
people that come to be zombies they're really dedicated.
They'll dig into that stuff and chew on it
and I'm going, "Oy!"
You'll never get me to do that!
That's guts!
It's guts!
When I was gonna show it, I'm thinking to myself
they're probably just gonna say, "That sucked Mr. Chris."
Or whatever it may be.
And sure enough, it was the-- it was the complete opposite.
It's amazing the impact that this movie made,
that this guy made-- you know, with no budget.
How it still was important
and how it still resonates with everyone who watches it.
When they were dead, they, um,
they were acting like with no muscles,
they had like, to stay.
What's the name of that?
Starts with "R."
- Riga... - Who said it?
The whole curriculum I have with the kids is where they learn
literacy through the process of making movies.
Rigor mortis.
Say it again.
Rigor mortis.
Say it again.
Rigor mortis.
And what happens with that?
Christopher Cruz teaches his literacy through film program
in the Bronx, New York.
George Romero grew up in the Bronx
before moving to Pittsburgh.
And it was the old days of the Sharks and the Jets.
And people, most people thought I was Italian
so I got away, I think I got away with my hide,
the Golden Guineas left me alone,
until they found out I was Spanish.
Then I was a Shark, you know.
I was never really into any of that stuff.
I just wanted to make movies.
This movie to me what's so gorgeous,
even the way it starts, just that road,
and there are different ways to make horror films,
what I enjoy about this is that right away,
the music is very disturbing
and telegraphs that you're going to get into something
that's going to be scary.
But then, you know, they go to a graveyard,
and they have their little dialogue about the length
of the trip and they got started late and so on.
They ought to make the day the time changes
the first day of summer.
What?
Well, it's 8 o'clock and it's still light.
A lot of good the extra day light does us.
We've still got a 3 hour drive back.
We're not going to be home until after midnight.
So it's mundane you know, there's a mundanity to it
and that is um, I think a very modern approach.
It even came following a bunch of low budget films
that basically, like white girls in bikinis
being chased by guys wearing shag carpeting
being kind of monster.
Before "Night," audiences of horror were accustomed
to space aliens, radioactive mutations
and traditional gothic monsters.
And by not doing that kind of stuff,
by making it just as real as possible,
it became this whole other thing.
It's not even a haunted cemetery,
it looks like a big open place where they can park their car
and they can go to the grave and it'll be fine.
It's still spooky, the music is indicating something to come
but it's essentially a day in the life episode
of these characters.
Boy, you used to really be scared here.
Johnny!
You're still afraid!
It's to me one of the first sort of post-modern horror movies
in that it is commenting on itself.
They're coming to get you, Barbara!
That's what's so brilliant about that famous line,
"They're coming to get you, Barbara!"
is that he's commenting on a horror movie.
They're coming for you!
Look, there comes one of them now!
Now, of course, years later we have "Scream"
and other films like that, and they're self-reflexive,
but in this obnoxious nudge-nudge, wink-wink way,
where it's like the audience,
well we've seen all this before
let's make fun of the characters.
That's not how it functions in this movie.
It functions as two people, you know
the brother is kind of teasing and scare the sister,
and then when it comes true,
to me this is absolutely stunningly awesome.
Johnny!
Help me!
The horror just came out of nowhere.
It just kind of shocked you.
It scared me to death.
It disorients you just right from the beginning of the movie;
you're being told that places that shouldn't be very scary
are actually going to be really scary.
Situations where you should feel safe,
you're not going to feel safe.
The new horror comes stumbling towards them
which is the zombie.
He really reinvents the zombie
and the zombie becomes one of the great new monsters.
The image of the zombie in the cemetery
is a key image that we all felt was so iconic
and we patterned our zombies for the series
"The Walking Dead" after that zombie.
We patterned both in terms of its kind of gait,
his speed.
Not only is it creepy, but it just seems
like it's unrelenting and it's not going to stop.
Before "Night of the Living Dead,"
there were movies like "I Walk with a Zombie,"
they were this sort of tribal character.
Very different.
Now, arguably, the zombie is as important as the werewolf.
But right below the vampire
is probably the most important horror monster
in the history of scary movies.
All these zombies all go back to Romero.
There's no movie director that's responsible for the vampire.
There's no movie director that's responsible for Frankenstein.
There's no movie director that's responsible for the werewolf.
There's people who've made key movies of that.
But, those are much older characters,
which have this kind of literary pedigree.
And while there have been undead and zombies, et cetera,
what we know of as a zombie,
the kind of the it's alive moment of it, was 1968,
George Romero in "Night of the Living Dead" in Pittsburgh.
Dead face!
Hold it.
Don't smile.
Smiling is your enemy.
Follow the sound guys!
What are George Romero's rules of zombies?
Aria.
That zombies, they, they walk slow.
They drag their feet when they're walking.
Jared, what else?
And they don't smile or laugh.
They don't smile or laugh.
When they're human, the way they die
is the way they're going to stay when they're zombies
until they turn into dust.
What is the purpose of a zombie?
Aria.
They like to eat people.
They don't live to do anything else.
They just like to eat and eat and eat.
You guys remember what I said, the need to feed?
Remember?
Say it again.
The need to feed!
Say it again.
The need to feed!
Again.
The need to feed!
That is it!
To me there's something, um,
definitive and classical about the terror
and the simplicity.
It's not overblown.
She gets in the car, what do you do?
You undo the clutch.
She goes and she blows it and runs into the tree!
I mean, oh my God!
Every shot does feel iconic at this point.
And I'm speaking of these first 10 minutes.
Every shot is iconic.
It doesn't feel storyboarded.
Everything feels organically, like it's organically unfolding.
She sees the lonely house in the distance
and that's sort of another iconic shot.
This to me is one of the great sequences in any movie.
Duane Jones, a classically trained actor,
played the role of Ben, the hero.
One of the things amazing to me when I saw it this time,
and it really blew my mind,
was the fact that no one
reacts to Duane Jones, or the character
as a black man.
It's alright.
There really wasn't an audition.
Uh, you know, we never auditioned Duane.
He was just a beautifully impressive guy.
He was a really beautiful person, too.
The script wasn't written, the character wasn't described
as white, black, yellow, red, or anything.
And we thought we were doing the right thing
by not changing the script when we decided to use Duane.
Here is a white woman, very pale, blonde woman,
who runs into a house
and is rescued by a black man.
And there's no reaction!
There's a pump out here that's locked, is there a key?
She's out of it, she's scared,
she's frightened, but not of him.
Which in 1968, as strange as it seems, was still something
that the average audience really would have noticed.
It would have registered to them as something different.
It felt like such a modern movie in that obviously
it was never remarked upon that he was black.
Nobody said anything about it
the way they did in other movies.
And keep in mind, this was a time
when there was a hugely popular TV show,
"The Andy Griffith Show," taking place in the south,
and there were no black people in it.
So that to have this mainstream culture
refuse to acknowledge any kind of black catalyst
and to have it there and not be remarked upon,
it really felt like a brand new day.
I don't think anyone had ever seen anything like that,
in the 60s.
Chiz Schultz produced television specials
starring Harry Belafonte in the late 1960s.
We had Petula Clark
who was the top British singer at the time.
And they had a number together.
And at one point toward the end
Harry links arms with Petula and they sing the final verse.
And we finished dress rehearsal.
And the man in charge of advertising for Chrysler said,
"Belafonte cannot touch Petula Clark."
And we were sort of in shock.
And Belafonte said, "I'm not sure I understood you."
He said, "There will be no touching of Miss Clark."
Remember, we have to sell cars in the South."
And Harry said, "Give me just a minute."
And he called the president of Chrysler.
And he said, "You should know I'm calling a press conference
in 10 minutes to say that Chrysler
will not allow me to touch Petula Clark."
We went into air time.
The taping.
Harry and Petula linked arms.
But that was not unusual.
That was the atmosphere at the time.
We were only a year past "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner"
which had made its entire subject
the shockingness of inter-racial marriage.
Mom, this is John.
Doc, Doc, Doctor Prentiss.
I'm so pleased to meet you.
I'm pleased to meet you, Mrs. Drayton.
"Guess Who's Coming to Dinner," was criticized for taking pains
not to offend white moviegoers
and for being out of touch with the racial storms of 1967.
And it never occurred to me that I might fall
in love with a Negro!
Of Sidney Poitier's character, H. Rap Brown said:
This kind of criticism wasn't new to Poitier.
I remember watching Sidney Poitier
in the Stanley Kramer film, "The Defiant Ones."
And, uh, it was him and Tony Curtis
playing these two convicts who escape from the chain gang,
and near the very end of the film,
they're trying to get to this rail road, right?
But Tony can't hold on, he can't,
the train's moving too fast.
So instead of Sidney lets Tony drop,
Sidney falls off, too.
And then you see the last scene,
and Sidney's cradling Tony Curtis in his arms,
and he starts singing this song.
♪ If I ever do see his face once more, he never get home again ♪
Cradling Tony, you know, as the law enforcement people
come down on them.
And I remember thinking back then
when I was 15, 16 years old,
Sidney, you crazy, man?
Let that white man go.
Save yourself, you know.
Because it was like, he was always becoming, at,
by that time, he was becoming sort of like this, this savior.
African American heroes in the mid-60s in movies
were allowed to be really smart,
they weren't necessary allowed to be aggressive
or strong or tough.
I mean, Poitier started to break that barrier
in "In the Heat of the Night," but the most he could do
was slap a white man in the face
after he is slapped in the face by that white man.
Poitier played a detective who in this scene
dared to interrogate a rich white man.
You saw it.
I saw it.
The slap was an electric moment in 1967.
Then all of a sudden Duane Jones is like the lead,
basically in an all-white film.
But he comes across as a very strong, focused character.
Duane was very upset whenever he had to do anything violent.
He's a, you know, very sensitive kind of a guy.
And what's a really telling scene
is when he slaps the women.
It's even more intense than when Sidney
hits what's-his-name in "In the Heat of the Night."
He really slapped her.
Particularly, "I'm going to slap a white woman"
and shoot a white guy.
"And uh, I'm going to be in trouble!"
And then when he shoots the guy!
You know, he shoots the guy!
I said, "This is a bold black man for 1967!"
Very bold.
You would never put "Night of the Living Dead"
on the spectrum of blaxploitation
and black power movies that started to happen
in the late 60s and early 70s,
but in a way, you know, it really,
it precedes "Shaft," it precedes "Superfly,"
it precedes all those movies
where the African American main character
was suddenly no longer accommodationist
and exceptional and polite.
He's black.
He's brutal.
He's boss.
But, you know, tough and empowered.
And of course we discussed it, and Duane, as I said,
was the most sensitive among us to the racial issue
and how some of that stuff might resonate.
We said, "Well, wait, it was in the script
before the guy was black."
And, but he was saying, "Well yeah, but he is black now!"
And so you have to think about that.
And as I said, I've in recent years
come to the thought that maybe we should have explored
the racial issue a little bit.
We thought we were being really hip by not changing the script.
I think it's also what made the movie
feel like it belonged to another generation.
That sense of not wringing its hands
and having to talk, stop for a moment,
they're all being pilloried by zombies and saying,
"You know, Ben, when I was a boy,
we had a colored maid and she never worked
as hard as you did for us."
I mean, by not having a scene like that,
it felt exciting and new.
It truly did.
Hold it! Don't shoot!
We're from town.
A radio!
One great thing about "Night of the Living Dead"
is that it doesn't resort to the cliché of like,
well, everybody would put aside their differences
in the face of such a big threat.
How long you guys been down there?
I could've used some help up here.
That's the cellar. It's the safest place.
Which is this hokey thing that horror movies
and sci fi movies still do.
That no matter, you know, how much you may differ
in real life, all that's going to get cast aside
because you have to fight the monster
or fight the alien or whatever.
The cellar.
The cellar, there's only one door, right?
Just one door, that's all we have to protect.
Tom and I fixed it so it locks and boards from the inside.
But up here, all these windows?
Why, we'd never know where they were going to hit us next!
You got a point, Mr. Cooper.
But down in the cellar, there's no place to run to.
Romero actually suggests that,
nope, it's going to be embedded
even in the way you choose to fight,
even in where you choose to hide.
But the cellar is the strongest place.
The cellar is a death trap.
Who you are in real life is going to absolutely affect
how you treat this threat and how you see this threat.
You put people in this incredibly extreme circumstance
and, you know, what kind of society do they create?
And that's the heart of "Night of the Living Dead."
You two do whatever you like.
I'm going back down into the cellar
and you better decide!
Because I'm going to board up that door
and I'm not going to unlock it again no matter what happens!
Some parts of the movie almost play like Beckett.
You know, that sense of what happens
when you trap people together
and they just have to deal with themselves.
And that sense of anticipation
and knowing that there's no place to go.
Then slowly there's cracks in the crevices
and the hands start coming through,
and they're trying to get the hands out.
And he shoots the guy a couple of times.
The guy won't die until he shoots them in the head.
To kill them you need to chop off their heads.
Or what?
Or just shoot them in the brain.
Because the way they work is by the brain.
Usually you have to throw fire so that,
so that you can save yourself or someone else.
Then, they see the news report.
It's on! It's on!
We've never had the budgets to really explore
that this is a worldwide phenomenon.
We did it mostly with media.
What they were hearing on the radio and on the TV.
Otherwise it was all the farmhouse.
The wave of murder which is sweeping
the Eastern third of the nation
is being committed by creatures
who feast upon the flesh of their victims.
Chuck Craig was an actual newsman.
The guy that has most of the airtime in the movie.
First eyewitness accounts of this grisly development
came from people who were understandably frightened,
and almost incoherent.
Wrote his own copy.
Read the script and we sat around and we bullshat
about the concept of what was going on.
It's hard for us here to believe what we're reporting to you,
but it does seem to be a fact.
That stuff has a ring of authenticity about it
because Chuck did it himself.
The kind of low key realism of those broadcasts
of those newsrooms absolutely is intended
to situate the movie in reality.
That sort of unfiltered sense of nobody's
spinning the news, just reporting it.
It's saying that if this were happening in your town,
this is what your newscasts would look like.
Major contact came in a pre-dawn attack...
I think the newscasts that were created
for "Night of the Living Dead" are in sync with the kind
of newscasts that I was seeing, my generation was seeing
on television, when we used to watch Morley Safer
out in Vietnam in the bush and stuff.
Vietnam was America's first televised war.
And while the networks systematically
downplayed the bloodshed,
viewers, for the first time in TV history,
got glimpses of what war was really like.
I think the news coverage of the Vietnam war was unlike
news coverage from ever before.
I remember just the amount of dead.
All law enforcement agencies and the military
have been organized to search out
and destroy the marauding ghouls.
Particularly, when you saw the vigilantes
get prepared and stuff.
It made me think of the stuff I would see
on the television and stuff of the Newark riots, of Watts.
This was all happening, man.
You saw National Guard on the street,
you saw looting and stuff.
So it all was very reminiscent of that stuff.
I mean, it was obviously of those times.
I grew up in Detroit in 1967 and I remember that summer
being terrified.
There's a famous story about a house in my neighborhood that,
somebody was hanging out in their house.
There were a bunch of, you know, National Guardsmen,
which was teenagers with guns who'd probably
been jacked up on coffee and up for two days in a row.
There was a guy lighting a cigarette hiding out
in an attic, they thought somebody fired a gun,
and hundreds of rounds
of ammunition were expended on this house.
That this guy wasn't killed was a complete miracle.
I mean, they shot the house up so much,
it almost took the top of it off.
And so to see that stuff in a movie.
And also to see that stuff in a movie with a black guy in it.
It was like a welt of social consciousness in filmmaking.
There were so many things I don't think
anybody could ever do again.
In other words, you feel that the radiation on the Venus Probe
was enough to cause these mutations?
There was a very high degree of radiation.
Just a minute.
I'm not sure that that's certain at all.
Big traditional institutions,
whether it's the government or the army or network television
are utterly unable to be counted upon,
not only counted upon to stop it
but counted upon even to explain it.
Um, so, there's this great sense of just,
and this is very 1968,
great sense of the complete ineffectuality
of any institution that purveys itself to you
as being trustworthy.
I must disagree with these gentlemen presently
until this is irrefutably proved.
Everything is being done that can be done.
I think there's one other big departure from convention,
specifically from horror convention, which is that
if that movie had been made 10 years earlier
or even 5 years earlier,
there would've been, like, a voodoo potion...
Combining voodoo witchery with the most advanced
of medical sciences.
Or a curse, or an evil professor, or an incantation.
Genius or madman?
Romero sort of tosses that all aside.
You don't ever get an official confirmed explanation
of what's happening.
God changed the rules.
That's the only explanation that I, that I need.
No more room in hell.
You can see what it is, you can't see why it is.
It's so indeterminate that you can't protect yourself.
And you're not given anything of why it is
that would make you more comfortable watching it.
And it doesn't matter to me.
It's happening.
And probably, at least in my mythology,
it's some sort of permanent condition.
I don't know. Unless we redeem ourselves somehow.
Stay tuned to the broadcasting station in your local area
for this list of rescue stations.
Maybe we can get to the safe shelter, get gas in the car.
Look for the name of the rescue station nearest you
and make your way to that location as soon as possible.
So we have that truck.
If we can get some gas we can get out of here.
This is great story logic, you know,
great plot unfolding and great story logic.
There's a key on here that's labeled
for the gas pump out back.
So they said, "We have the key," right?
After we get the gas and get back into the house,
then we'll worry about getting everybody into the truck.
So then they create this diversion
with the Molotov cocktails.
And you see, I remember this, right?
Duane and the guy run out, get in the car.
The girl now, she panics, she doesn't want
to be without the boyfriend.
She runs and jumps in the car, right?
They get to the gas tank.
Come on!
This key won't work.
Duane, pow!
Shoots the look off.
Watch the torch!
So they've had the problem with the gasoline's soaking the car.
I hate it when that happens.
Um, but they're aware,
they need to get out of that frickin' truck.
So they're getting out and then she says,
"Oh, my sweater's stuck!"
Come on, come on!
My jacket's caught.
And you're like, "Your sweater's stuck?
What, that's it!"
Boom.
It's understanding how to portray the little,
the little things that can go wrong that really can screw you
in this sort of scary environment,
giving it an incredibly timeless and special quality.
And they start devouring the meat.
But then you see that they're growing in force!
So, earlier Duane says only 8 or 10 zombies
becomes 16 zombies, then 20 zombies.
It grows and grows.
Once you saw the violence, once you saw the extent
they were gonna go to show the gore,
the audience at the time said, "Well, if they're gonna show"
a kid chomping on her father, and they're gonna show it
in this detail, you know,
"what else are they gonna show me?"
And that's terrifying.
This film and the structure, the morality,
who lives and who dies is not based on whether you're
a good person, whether you work hard or fight hard.
I mean a child killing her mother, that is the violence
that we're experiencing in that scene,
moreso than someone being attacked by a trowel.
That scene is just devastating
because the mother is very adoring.
That remains one of the most shocking things I've ever seen.
And I'll tell you what, it's not because you see the gore.
What's beautiful is the sound.
The knife never touches the flesh.
And when they break through in that last scene,
the girl's trying to stop 'em.
And they break in.
And the brother with the glove?
No, get out!
No!
No, no!
When Barbara gets it from her own brother,
this irony is so profoundly, it's disturbing,
and once again, it's not deserved.
When you play with the expectations
of the classic structure, and then you defy them
and the wrong person gets killed.
This is what's upsetting, that's what haunts,
that's what creates a feeling of dread.
I mean, we've lost various of our heroes
along the way, but Ben is still at it,
and there's that scene when he has to go into the basement.
I mean, he's fought this whole time about
not going down there, or that it's a last resort.
And when you realize that's what he's going to do.
It's just an incredibly horrific shot of all the zombies
just busting in, they've broken through the membrane.
In the time that "Night of the Living Dead" came out,
you don't feel safe in your home anymore.
You know, it's--
There are things that are overtaking us
over which we have no control and there's that fear
and I think that the zombie apocalypse takes inspiration
from that fear and it's why audiences connect with it
in a way that is not quite obvious on the surface
but is really in the subtext.
It's an unsettling element of the movie
that the people who seem most likely to be able
to thwart this incursion of the living dead
look like a lynch mob.
The resonance for people who would have spent
the last 10 years
watching white southerners vow to prevent
the desegregation of schools, for instance, um,
it would've been really pretty clear.
And dogs in "Night of the Living Dead,"
there's a very specific cultural resonance.
You know, black men being chased by dogs
is one of the ugliest images of the civil rights movement,
and was very much part of the national visual vocabulary
of any moviegoer, other than a very little kid,
who would have gone to see this movie.
And again, it connects to this, this idea that
it's not as simple as the good guys vs. the undead.
There are the good guys, the not good guys,
and the living dead.
They seem to be getting a certain amount of pleasure
out of putting down these monsters and being able
to go out and hunt people and lynch people.
They seem really real to me.
They felt real, those guys.
I wasn't sure they were actors.
It's a really interesting, squirmy political aspect
of the movie that's intentionally unsettling.
I think Romero wants you to feel uncomfortable with the fact
that the so called victors at the end of the movie
are exactly the kind of people you're inclined not to root for.
You! Drag that on out of here and throw it on the fire.
Nothing down here.
Alright, go ahead and give him a hand.
Let's go check out the house.
There's something there. I heard a noise.
Alright Vince, hit him in the head.
Right between the eyes.
Good shot.
That was the ironic ending.
He refuses to go downstairs, finally he survives
by going downstairs,
then when he comes back up he gets gunned down.
'Cause he's mistaken for one of the living dead.
Okay, he's dead.
Let's go get him.
That's another one for the fire.
So, yeah, that ending was there before we ever cast Duane.
And that was the only time for me,
I, I put a racial thing to it.
You know, like, they saw him, he didn't yell out,
he was a black man, and they shot him.
My favorite scene was when,
probably when the African man got shot,
when he wasn't even a zombie.
I thought they should know if he's a zombie or not,
because if they knew he was a zombie, they would have,
the zombie would have attacked them already
and walked toward them.
But all he did was stand up and they just shot him.
A lot of people talked about that as a lynching
and saw a political thread in it.
I think it's more of a shock in terms of the way it violates
your sense of narrative expectation than,
uh, politically.
When our protagonist does get shot, utterly arbitrarily,
I think that's way beyond a racist issue,
that's Romero just speaking from the times
about a bleakness that the culture was suffering.
If he had survived, it would have been dishonest.
I mean, even as a kid and I was, you know,
propping my eyes open with toothpicks
trying to sleep a couple of nights after.
It felt like that was the most honest thing to do.
You know, it's a tradition in films that you can escape.
There's always the idea you can escape.
You might leave your past if you were involved with the mob,
you would leave and you'd have a new beginning.
It's a tradition all the way back to Homer!
The new beginning.
You go home and you start again.
You refresh and you start again.
But, of course, the apocalyptic filmmakers
take that away from you.
No.
Tomorrow may not come
the way you're planning on it.
You may not have another chance.
The only reason to do the fantasy film
or the horror film is to sort of upset the order,
upset the balance of things.
And it seems to me, seemed to me that the formula was always
to restore order, you know?
Put it back the way it was, which seems, you know,
counterproductive to what you're doing initially.
And, which is why it made sense to me to have,
you know, "Night of the Living Dead"
have this sort of tragic and ironic ending.
The credits roll seconds after Ben's death.
It's shockingly blasé and detached.
It's as businesslike as anything else in the film.
It may be the most emotionless horror film of all time.
If it had been Sidney Poitier in the movie,
he would have done that thing and wave to everybody,
thrown his trench coat over his shoulder,
and walked off into the distance
as the haunting love theme by Loulou piped into theaters
reminding us of the feat he accomplished.
Um, and you know, that's, it just felt so right.
It was the thing that was probably more exciting
to everybody, when I finally called the people
who did see it, "Wasn't it great
that he does everything and then gets shot?
Not only gets shot, but right in the head!
So it's not like you miss it."
It's completely terrifying and the perfect ending.
Randy, light these torches over here.
You really offered no comforts to the audience at all.
No. But there's always the refreshment stand!
Principal photography for "Night of the Living Dead"
wrapped in November of 1967.
As Romero edited, the search for investors continued.
And at first people had no faith that we could
actually make a movie.
And it was only when we were able
to actually show some dailies and people saw that lips
were in sync with the sound, um,
and they were able to say, "It looks like a movie!"
And we'd say, "That's what we're trying to tell ya!
One of these days it's gonna grow up to be a movie!"
And, uh, you know, so money dribbled in,
over the course of several months.
And we were never certain that we were ever
going to get enough to finish it.
We didn't have money for the sound mix.
So Russ Streiner challenged the guy
who owns the lab to a chess match,
and at stake was the sound mix.
And Russ beat the guy!
And won the sound mix!
So this was the kind of shit that we were going through, man.
In January, 1968, Vietnamese Revolutionary Forces
mounted a coordinated attack on over 100 South Vietnamese
cities and towns, including the U.S. Embassy in Saigon.
It was called the Tet Offensive and it brought
some of the most disturbing images to date
to prime time television.
For many, the war seemed more dangerous
and pointless than ever.
Still, it would continue until 1975.
President Lyndon B. Johnson seemed better at facing facts
when it came to domestic policy.
He commissioned a study to investigate the causes
of the nation's race riots.
An unflinching wake-up call, the Kerner Commission Report
warned that,
Regarding the ghetto, it stated:
And while "black militancy" may have added fuel
to the riots, the primary cause was:
We are moving toward two societies, separate and unequal
and if something isn't done to stop this
in a very determined manner things can really get worse.
A few days later "Night of the Living Dead"
was finally completed.
Image 10 still needed a distributor for the film.
With the hope of finding one in New York City,
Romero and Streiner
pick up the first finished print from the lab.
Threw it in the trunk of the car.
Finished answer print, drove it to New York
to see if anybody wanted to show it.
And Russ and I are driving to New York
and we hear on the radio
that Martin Luther King had been assassinated.
And you know, of course we have this sort of angry film
that, you know, has this 60s stuff in it,
we had a black lead, Duane, and, you know...
Several distributors considered the film.
It did not ignite a bidding war.
I think Romero was working against all kinds of prejudices
against what he was trying to do.
A, if you've never made a film, you can't make a film.
You've got to have a whole succession of films
in order to make a film.
Uh, I think he was working against the fact of you have
to have millions of dollars to make a feature film.
Well, you don't.
The movie only cost $114,000.
Um, that's a very, very low budget now.
It was also a very, very low budget then.
I think in '67, the average studio movie
probably cost about three or 3.5 million dollars.
So $114,000 is nothing.
The movie's in black and white at a moment
when just about everything in movies
had switched over to color.
A black and white movie in 1968 was less playable.
Theaters were less interested in booking it.
Um, of course he was working with a cast of unknowns.
That adds up to a very tough set of circumstances,
especially when you're effectively rebooting a genre
that hasn't done much for the last several years.
Columbia, I think, was the first place we went to
and they actually held it for a little while
and it looked as if they were really seriously thinking
about releasing it.
Columbia turned it down.
American International Pictures, known for low budget biker,
psychedelic, and Roger Corman's Edgar Allan Poe movies,
said they'd release it, but under one condition.
They wanted to change the ending and they said,
"It's just too dark," and, you know, so,
we boldly said, "Fuggetaboutit!
This is our movie!"
And we walked, and we never got the time of day
from anybody else for a while.
And we finally hired, someone recommended a sales agent,
um, you know, somebody who's business it is
to go and, you know, try to find distribution.
And so we hired this guy and he took it,
and eventually got a deal with Walter Reade.
"Night of the Living Dead" was first released in theaters
and drive-ins on October 2nd, 1968.
When we first saw "Night of the Living Dead"
we went to a drive in to watch it.
It was the first time we said,
"It really is a movie, isn't it?"
'Cause we were able to go to the drive in
and buy some dogs and some popcorn, check out
"Night of the Living Dead."
"Night of the Living Dead" in New York was treated
as a grindhouse movie,
and it was booked as a grindhouse movie.
It played on the New Amsterdam theater on 42nd Street,
which was like a 7th run, a bad theater.
New York's 42nd Street was the epicenter
of the grindhouse circuit.
These are all exploitation films that have no artistic ambition.
You can't escape the shock.
I'm going to give you the time of your life, baby.
That have no political meaning.
That are--are probably morally bankrupt.
I'm going to kill you!
Night...
"Night of the Living Dead" honestly was the kind of movie
that critics mostly dismissed.
...of the Living Dead.
It was in a very disreputable genre.
Horror was a dirty business right next to porn,
uh, in terms of how the movies were made, how they were financed,
where they were shown in drive ins.
Variety called "Night of the Living Dead" an:
which:
Anyone who did review it reviewed it in that way.
You know, sort of really angrily.
It was dismissed in the New York Times, um,
in a tiny, tiny review by Vincent Canby.
Canby's 3 sentence review began with:
He writes in this tone that he can't really believe
that he's been dispatched to have to write about this thing,
and probably had to go spend a miserable day
at the New Amsterdam theater on 42nd Street sitting through it.
Along with the grindhouse circuit,
"Night" was booked for afternoon matinees.
Throughout the 60s, horror movies,
fan magazines and toys were marketed primarily to children.
You'll cringe in terror
when you see our Screaming Mee Mee Show.
In 1968, parents felt safe dropping their kids off
for an afternoon of "horror."
Their most recent experience would have been something
like the Roger Corman, Vincent Price,
Edgar Allen Poe adaptations,
which were fun and they were even a little scary,
but they were basically horror movies
which you could almost take kids to.
So, here comes "Night of the Living Dead."
I can't imagine what children, by the time you get to
the, the sort of flesh feast where they're eating,
whatever they're eating.
And this naked, uh, zombie staggering toward the house.
You were like, way out of the realm of anything
that had happened in horror.
Critic Roger Ebert attended one of these matinees.
He wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times:
It was so many people running out of the theater
in the hallway of the movies,
that was the first movie I ever seen people
running out the movie.
I remember the girl that was in front of us,
she put the coat over her head and was running out, falling.
The name of the theater was called, "Adams."
It was in Newark, NJ, downtown Newark.
I had to be 10, my oldest brother had to be 11,
and he cried worse than all of us, and my younger brother,
it didn't bother him.
As of today, he likes scary movies.
I might have been 13... 12, 13?
The drive in movie was
the Whitestone Drive In in the Bronx.
The part where the little girl, she's, like, eating the father.
That was, like, really horrible!
It took me a long time to get to sleep at night.
And when the lights was off it was hard for us.
You know, I remember a few times I wet the bed
because I was scared to get up to go to the bathroom
because I always thought that the "Night of the Living Dead"
was in the other room.
You feel so, like, "Oh, my God, they're coming..."
They're going to come to get me and eat me up!"
An abridged version of Roger Ebert's review
was published nationwide in Reader's Digest magazine.
In spite of this warning to parents, the film did so well
that the National Association of Theater Owners
selected it as their
"Exploitation picture of the month."
It was playing at, like, in the Drive-In circuit
and it wasn't the first run film in the bill,
it was the last film, so consequently it was on late
when everyone was asleep in the car.
Elvis Mitchell first saw "Night" when he was 10 years old
at a drive-in in Detroit.
The sheer excitement of seeing a movie like that,
as terrifying as it was, it felt like it belonged to you.
You know, it felt like this generational shift
in filmmaking.
If there had been more resources devoted to the movie,
and more consideration, and if it wasn't like
run and gun filmmaking,
if it wasn't like hearing Public Enemy for the first time,
or for my parent's generation
seeing Elvis Presley for the first time.
It's just that kind of, oh, my God, that electricity.
In 1969, Walter Reade re-released "Night"
on a new double bill.
They played it with "Slaves?"
I mean, I couldn't believe that.
You know? What?
"Slaves" and "Night of the Living Dead?"
How does that connect?
But it was at this double-feature
where George Abagnolo, critic for Andy Warhol's
ultra-hip "Interview" magazine, saw "Night."
He wrote:
And when the film got to Europe in 1970,
the prestigious French film journal, "Positif," called it:
Of course, the moment that stuff starts happening
then everybody over here says,
"Well, maybe I should take a look at this."
A bunch of people jumped on the bandwagon, Rex Reed,
and all that.
And Roger did a Mea Culpa
and said he didn't understand it.
Roger Ebert would later write:
The Museum of Modern Art in New York played "Night"
to a standing-room-only crowd.
The film would eventually become part
of its permanent collection.
But, uh, then that whole copyright issue came up
and that was the end of that.
When Romero and Streiner were shopping their film around,
its original title was, "The Night of the Flesh Eaters."
And we put the little copyright bug,
the c with circle around it, on the title.
It was over a live action picture,
of one of the early shots of the car in the cemetery.
And when they put the new title on,
which was their title, "Night of the Living Dead,"
the copyright thing came off.
And they never noticed that there wasn't one,
and that's the way it is.
And people all around the world said,
"Wait, there's no copyright on this movie anymore!"
So, basically, it became public domain.
Stupid mistake!
Image 10 received no royalties
for the huge ticket sales in Europe.
Their attempt to sue the distributor ended
when Walter Reade filed for bankruptcy.
Pirated copies of "Night" played worldwide.
It's impossible to know how much money it's made.
End the war!
As the war grinded on into the 1970s,
so did "Night of the Living Dead,"
its midnight shows making it a cult institution.
You want to own it, you want it to belong to you.
Uh, you want to believe there's a part of pop culture
that still kind of comes through the back door,
that isn't heralded and isn't having all of its fun
taken out of it before it gets to you.
Um, and that's one of the things that
that movie really had.
And for a long time.
And as history unfolded, events seemed to vindicate,
time and again, "Night's" suspicion of authority
and unmitigated bleakness.
All these things made you think, "Oh, my God."
I'm not alone!"
Finally, you almost feel like Ben, there are other,
there are like-minded people, there's this cult
of other people out there like me,
or people who know how to fold this into a movie.
You wanted, you wanted to see that.
For the British Film Institute's "Sight and Sound,"
Elliot Stein wrote:
You know, 1968 was a moment when everybody was reading
political messages into every film
and I think it is a political movie.
And one reason that "Night of the Living Dead" works so well
is because everyone in America thought some version
of this country is going to hell.
The lunatics are taking over.
Conservative, older people thought that, and progressive,
young people thought that that had been true for a long time.
And on that political front, the movie plays perfectly
to both audiences.
"Night of the Living Dead" metaphorically, in a funny way,
were all these fears rising up and coming at them.
And they weren't coming at heroes or wealthy people,
they were coming at the common American.
I mean, the young woman who plays the lead.
The couple who's in the house.
They're just that average working class American.
And here were these fearful things coming
to not only kill them but to eat them!
So, it fulfilled I think a kind of pervasive fear that existed
in the country at the time among normal working people.
There was a sense of chaos and sense of tension, you know,
in the American fabric, you know,
which means things were going to change.
So I think that what Romero was doing
with "Night of the Living Dead" sort of points to you know,
this unraveling.
It's the unraveling of everything we like to believe
is our comfort zone and our safety.
"Night of the Living Dead's" cynicism and ferocious intensity
was reflected in many of the films that followed
in the 1970s.
Like "Night," these films shattered all the things
that kept us safe in traditional Hollywood movies.
Heroism.
Teamwork.
Science.
Young love.
The patriarchal family.
The media.
The government.
And the police and military.
There's really a fragility to our society,
and then you realize well in fact I must guard it,
I must be vigilant.
And then you get in to why horror stories can actually have
a positive, uh, message if you will,
a positive effect which is to say:
Here is a cautionary tale.
Do not take anything for granted.
Because one day a zombie might wander up, and you may make fun
of the person who's afraid but they could be right,
and then things might go from bad to worse.
They're coming to get you, Barbara!
And you've got "Zombie Number One" Bill Hinzman.
Started it all 40 years ago.
My role in "Night of the Living Dead"
was the "graveyard zombie."
And the graveyard zombie scene was the last scene that was shot
and throughout the film, I was a crewmember, of course,
and an investor in the film, and throughout the film
I was jumping in to fill a part as a zombie.
I was tall, skinny, and had an old suit, uh,
so, it was pretty appropriate.
But anyway, when the time came to film the final scene
George says, "You really look good as a zombie",
do you want to do the graveyard zombie?"
I said, "Yeah, sure."
You know, sometimes, I really do blush, I think,
under the make-up, you know,
because it's really kind of embarrassing.
I, I'm sure you've heard the stories of actors
are always afraid they're gonna get discovered
that they don't have any talent or anything.
And, it's like, sometimes I feel that way.
I'm a little embarrassed sometimes because, you know,
every Sunday night I got to take the damn garbage out,
and on the way out I'll go, "I'm a legend!"
What the hell am I taking the damn garbage out for?
"Why aren't I rich?"
But that's, that's life!
But it's so much fun to do these things.
You know, just, especially if I'm depressed about something.
My wife kicks me out every once in a while
and says, "Go to one of those events.
Get your ego built back up again."
"Okay."
Captioned by Video Caption Corporation www.vicaps.com
Originally published 10/27/2013 @ www.podnapisi.net