company: Image Ten
and The Latent Image
year: 1968
runtime: 96′
director: George A. Romero
cast: Duane Jones, Judith O’Dea,
Karl Hardman, Marilyn Eastman,
Keith Wayne, Judith Ridley,
Kyra Schon, S. William Hinzman
writers: John A. Russo
and George A. Romero
cinematography: George A. Romero
Order this film from Amazon.com
If you have yet to see Night of the Living Dead, I heartily recommend doing so – this review can wait. The film is readily available for viewing at the Internet Archive, Youtube and similar sites thanks to its unfortunate copyright status and I’ve linked to my favorite of the many, many home video releases, Dimension’s recent 40th anniversary DVD edition, in the information to the left. The screen grabs used in this review are sourced from that release.
Over four decades after its original release George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead still packs a nasty punch. Initially marketed as a weekend matinee (a slot geared towards youngsters and frequently populated by more generic horror fare) by distributor Walter Reade, its difficult to imagine the impact Night‘s gruesome spectacle must have had when new or to quantify the scope of its importance to cinema as a whole. This is the film the dragged its terrors out of the exotic far-flung locales and up from the secret basement laboratories of old and plopped them right into the lap of middle America. This is the one that brought horror home.
