"Night of the Living Dead" 40 years later

Very early Monday morning I was surfing channels and came across the original black & white 1968 film"Night of the Living Dead" on Turner Classic Movies.Not only do I have a copy of it on DVD,it is one of my favorite horror films and it is a cult classic that transformed George Romero from an unknown Philadelphia area producer into the "Godfather" of zombie flicks who has inspired copycat horror and satirical films.Ironically,he was inspired to write the "NOTLD" screenplay by Richard Mathesons 1954 science fiction novel "I am Legend",which,as we all know,was adapted into a current feature film starring Will Smith.Romero and co-writer John Russo literally threw the just-finished film into the trunk of a car and drove to New York to see if anyone would play their movie,learning of MLK's assassination on the radio during their drive.Despite their efforts,the film did not debut until October of 1968,in Pittsburgh,PA and it shocked moviegoers with its explicit gore.Nowadays it would pale in comparison to modern horror gore like "Hostel" & "SAW" but forty years ago it was pretty mind blowing stuff.The crazy thing is that the movie was made on a ridiculously low budget yet it took the country by storm."Body parts" seen being consumed by the "undead" were actually meat scraps that the producers begged off of a buddy who worked in a butcher shop.The large hordes of "living dead" were comprised mostly of friends and acquaintances of Russo and Romeros-the professional actors in the film were practically unknown.Most of the footage was shot in Evans City,a small town outside of Pittsburgh PA and the home used for upstairs shots is still standing today!

"NOTLD' was also groundbreaking in that with a predominantly white cast in a 60's movie,a black man (played by stage actor Duane Jones)was the lead character.Romero insists he was not trying to make a political statement,simply that Jones "gave the best audition".There IS alot of unspoken racial tension in the movie,and when you consider the fact that VERY few feature films of that era had strong black lead characters,Romero was a pioneer of sorts.The plot also touched on the whole "cold war" hysteria,where unknown radiological contamination transforms ordinary people into monsters.Rather than aliens invaders,werewolves,vampires or ghosts,the monster was US-humans.

Over the past 40 years,Romero inspired many other filmmakers and without his classic low budget zombie flick,we would not have the endless zombie movies like "28 Days later" ,or the satirical zombie spoofs like "Shaun of the Dead".Although Romero went on to make many other great horror films,like "Creepshow" and "Land of the Dead" his first feature film remains unmatched in its simplicity.In 1986 and again in 2004,the original was colorized but it just wasnt the same to me.There was also remakes and reworkings of it,namely the 1990 Tom Savini-produced version in which Tony Todd(Candyman) was cast in the male lead and the female lead,Barbara,who was a basket case in the 1968 version,became a tough gun-toting heroine.While the black lead character Ben was mistaken for a zombie and killed in the original,Todd's Ben in 1990 actually was bitten and transformed into one of the living dead himself.Another remake,"Night of the Living Dead 3-D" was released in 2006 but garnered little attention.Despite modern special effects and computer graphics,1968's "Night of the Living Dead" remains as THE original flesh eating zombie horror film and is a cult classic.