Buried Treasures: 'Night of the Living Dead' & 'Dawn of the Dead'

As today is Halloween, it is appropriate we discuss horror films in this forum. To me, many low-budget horror films rank just a notch or two above Japanese Godzilla flicks. Let's face it. It’s hard to be scared by something preposterous. A crazed man with a glove of blades attacking teenagers? Not gonna happen. A crazed man in a hockey mask attacking teenagers? Could happen, but probably won’t. A crazed man with a chainsaw attacking teenagers? Not a chance.

Truly frightening cinema is embedded in real (or realistic) stories. Remember when the Iranian people attacked the U.S. Embassy in Tehran at the beginning of Ben Affleck’s “Argo”? Now that was scary. Not only could it happen, but it actually did. Likewise when Hutu soldiers attacked innocent neighborhoods in Terry George’s “Hotel Rwanda.” There’s a scene in Carroll Ballard’s 1983 feature “Never Cry Wolf” in which the protagonist falls through an ice-covered lake in the Canadian Arctic that is as scary as anything I’ve ever seen on the big screen. These are real events happening to real people.

For a director to take a ridiculous premise and scare us (or at least give us the chills) is something so rarely accomplished that I am in awe when it does occur. Examples include Roman Polanski’s deft adaptation of “Rosemary’s Baby,” a story about a young woman whose unborn baby is the progeny of the devil. Or William Friedkin’s classic “The Exorcist,” which chronicles the demonic possession of a 12-year-old girl. These plots sound silly when I mention them, but these two films are, at the very least, chilling.

The most bizarre premise for a horror film franchise is that of the zombies – reanimated corpses who awaken to eat the flesh of the living. This insane postulation has led to an entire franchise of films so bad I don’t even bother seeing them anymore. Considering the popularity of these zombie pictures among young people today, I’d like to suggest two zombie films so good they blow the others away. Ironically, they are the first two zombie films directed by George Romero – considered to be the father of the modern zombie movement.

As a struggling young director operating with a shoestring budget ($114,000 – yeah, that’s shoestring!), Romero changed the horror genre forever when he released the original “Night of the Living Dead” in 1968. The grainy, black-and-white photography was chilling, but it was all Romero could afford. The in-your-face violence was something for which audiences were unprepared. Remember, this was released before the MPAA rating system was instituted. Anyone (even young children) could watch “Night of the Living Dead.” Its shocking gore was one of the primary reasons for the rating system in the first place.

The story (such as it is) involves seven people trapped inside a rural farmhouse in western Pennsylvania as an unexplained assemblage of zombies assaults any living humans available. The no-name cast members included black actor Duane Jones as Ben, the closest thing to a hero in the script. Back then, black actors were utilized only when screenplays called for them. Some moviegoers wondered if Romero was attempting to make some deeper point about the treatment of blacks in society. He always maintained that Jones simply gave the best audition.

There was, however, a train of thought that “Night of the Living Dead” was an allegory for America’s involvement in Vietnam. The zombies represented the Viet Cong, and the inescapable finality of the final act accurately foreshadowed the first time America was to lose a military conflict. Search-and-destroy missions, helicopters and the vivid slaughter of the innocent were as much a part of “Night of the Living Dead” as they were of the Vietnam conflict. Even the gritty, unpolished photography mirrored that of the news reports emanating from East Asia. Wisely, Romero has never addressed this concordance.

But the mere fact scholars and critics put so much thought into a very-low-budget independent horror film shows the impact Romero’s work had on society. At a time when many Americans viewed their country as “falling apart,” others rejoiced in the 90-minute escape provided by “Night of the Living Dead.” Young adult audiences enjoyed watching people whose situations were worse than their own, older audiences were offended and children were terrorized. Romero had certainly hit a nerve.

Ten years later, he released “Dawn of the Dead” – not a sequel, but merely a different story (with completely different characters) about zombies attacking innocent humans. This time the protagonists were holed up inside an abandoned shopping mall as the assailants encompassed them ever closer, eventually leading to a gory conclusion (this time in color). While the cast was again a group of unknowns, the film quality was markedly improved, and the story was taken from a small, personal account to a large-scale invasion a la “War of the Worlds.”

Two SWAT team members join forces with new television news employees, and escape a devastated Philadelphia (again in a helicopter) to (again) western Pennsylvania where they seek solace in an abandoned mall. They blockade every entrance with semi-trailers (whose keys must have all been left in the ignitions when the zombies ate the drivers) and live off the food available at the mall restaurants. Again, no reason is given for the resurgence of the dead, and that’s just as well. Any explanation would sound ridiculous anyway. The tension builds more realistically in “Dawn of the Dead” than in the earlier installment, and the conclusion is not as terminal – offering some glimmer of hope that some may survive.

“Dawn of the Dead” remains the best zombie film ever made. Its characters are pragmatic (as much as can be expected in a zombie flick), its violence is realistic and its screenplay (again by Romero) is tightly written. Subsequent zombie films (by Romero and others) operated with much larger budgets than these two originals. And therein lay the problem I have with them. Slick special effects and top-tier movie stars do not necessarily make a film enjoyable. More modern zombie pictures seem too glossy and smooth. There’s a certain bare-bones reality to Romero’s first two zombie films that is reminiscent of “The Blair Witch Project,” although with actual actors and screenplays. If you’re a fan of the newer zombie movies, you owe it to yourself to check out “Night of the Living Dead” and “Dawn of the Dead.” You’ll never “need” to see another zombie flick the rest of your life!

Andy Ray's reviews of current films appear on http://www.artschannelindy.com/