13 Nights of Shocktober: Night of the Living Dead

by A.J.

This is my favorite time of year, second only to Christmas. Autumn has arrived, the weather is cooling down, and October becomes the month long celebration of scary movies called Shocktober. There are a lot of horror movies out there, but as a genre, horror is still looked down upon by some mainstream critics and moviegoers. It doesn’t help that, admittedly, there are so few quality horror movies made but, like comedy, it’s a very difficult and subjective genre. So, in the days leading up Halloween I’ll be posting some recommendations for scary movies to help you celebrate Shocktober.

Night 1: "They're coming to get you, Barbara." Night of the Living Dead

 

It’s very interesting that zombies have joined vampires, ghosts, demons, and werewolves in the pantheon of supernatural scares since the zombie as we know it—the cannibalistic living corpse that can only be killed by damage to the head and brain and whose bite will turn you into one—has only been in existence since 1968. George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead makes no mention of zombies, the creatures in the movie are referred to as “ghouls.” A review called them zombies and the new definition stuck. Before Romero’s film, any movie zombie was more of a Haitian zombie, someone tricked into believing that they are dead and forced to serve a master. It’s also interesting to note, for entirely different reasons, that according the History Channel documentary Zombies: A Living History, more than half of all zombie movies have been produced after September 11, 2001. But that’s a topic for another day. 

 

Night of the Living Dead, like another important horror movie from 1968, Rosemary’s Baby, takes place in a familiar setting (rural Pennsylvania) and in the present day. Most earlier horror movies were period pieces set in castles. George Romero did not intend for Night of the Living Dead to be a political film; however, with an African American actor as the lead, playing a dignified man of action, social commentary and political subtext were unavoidable. What the zombies are a metaphor for and what the social commentary has to say are the source of discussion that can be as interesting as it is endless.

 

This low budget horror movie made 45 years ago is still a creepy and chilling experience. Its simple story of a group of people, holed up in a house, just trying to survive makes the horror universal and the political subtext manages to change with the times, keeping the movie relevant.