Classical Zombies: an analysis

DannyinJapan

DannyinJapan

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I just rented Night of the Living Dead, the 1968 classic. (I didnt realize it was so old)
I was thinking about this movie in terms of the society of America in 1968. This was more than just a horror movie.

The zombies were reanimated by unexplained radiation from a returning space probe we had sent to Venus. (this was one year before we went to the moon. AND the US - Russian nucelar arms race was hot. Thermonuclear war was a real possibility.)

The hero of the movie was a black man, most of the zombies, if not all, were white. Not only that, he slaps around a white girl in the movie and shoots a white man to death. ( a non-zombie white man) He then shot the same white man again after he had zombified.
This might not seem like much, but back in 1968 this was probably pretty controversial, but then 1968 was in the thick of the vietnam war and many other upsets...

The only reason I mention their ethnicity is because of the time the movie was made. He might have been the very first black "hero" in American cinema.

Anyhow, the two most popular anti-zombie weapons were tire irons and deer rifles. Of course, the deer rifle has to hit the brain or you're just wasting bullets. This was only 5 years after JFK was killed, and we all know how he died, dont we...

This movie might just be deeper and wider than anyone imagines.
 
A cult classic like Night of the Living Dead is worth going back to again and again. I've probably seen it five times. The little girl in the basement and the gardening implement still bothers me.



munk
 
i respect what you are saying and you definitely have a point . Again in dawn of the dead the only surviving hero was black . He got the girl and shot his white partner when he zombified . I didn,t think anything of it then or now until you mentioned it . They are so delightful and the "dawn" is such a spoof of the "night" that I can,t see beyond the humour . I don,t remember any controversy over it at the time , I seriously thought more about bikers being portrayed as the bad guys yet again than I thought of any racial overtones . I guess its different for us all .
 
I remember hearing about it having the first black hero in a movie at that time somewhere. I think on one of AMCs fright night movie marathons or something. I thought it was pretty cool, and its still to this day one of the best traininng aids.....er.....one of my favorite movies.:D
 
I had to take a Folk Studies class in college. Everyone wanted to take Urban Myths 430, myself included. However, that class was full. I was stuck with Death and Dying. What a depressing class, right? Actually, it was one of the most beautifully constructed classes with lots of information and the prof was in the top of her field of folk studies. Anyway, to the point. I actually wrote a paper comparing and contrasting NOTLD and DOTD (Dawn of the Dead...not Deal of the day;)). Between articles and DVD commentaries, I found that George A. Romero was not as satirical as most make him out to be.
In the 20th anniversery edition DVD of NOTLD Romaro actually says that he casted the black gentleman simply because he was the best actor to show up for the money he could pay. He wasn't trying to make a statement...just a scary movie. I'm sure some of the decisions made at the time were influenced by the times. Lets face it. Just about every movie director loses that young steely burn to his eye that he had when he was making "films" and not "movies", and they forget that.
In my short study of the films, I found that Romaro's satire was almost unconscious. DOTD was a satire, but not as intentional as most make it out to be. Romaro's work is very open ended, and at the end of the day he just wanted to scare you. He DID however realize that making the zombies more like people (mangled, blue, and vacant..but still seen as "us") that they became scarier. Giving them a confused muscle memory to flock to places they once went in mass is very creepy.
Romaro's latest movie Land of the Dead also is seen by critics to "hold a mirror up to society". It does, but that's mainly to do with zombies being "us". Once again, Romaro wanted to progress the story in his 4th movie. Night: Zombies rise and feed. Dawn: Zombies flock to the places the once knew...and feed. Day: Zombies have taken over the earth as the dominant "life"form, but research shows that they retain cognitive functions. Land: Humanity's line between the uber rich and poor is more rampant than ever. Zombies learn to organize and over run the last known walled city of humans.

To get to the point, Night of the Living Dead was a huge movie that did a lot of cutting edge things, although some seem to be accidental. That doesn't take away from the movie. It was gritty and still very scary even all these years later. I mean what other movie from the 60's can you think of where you see zombies ripping and pulling apart the guts from a truck explosion? That's pretty intense. IMHO, Romaro hit a nerve with NOTLD. He hit his stride with DOTD. That was by far the scariest/creepiest one of the four movies. Day of the Dead was weaker in story, more cliched. However, the blood and guts were top notch. Land of the Dead was stronger in story than Day, but still doesn't get back to the vibe of Dawn. The gore effects in this one, at least the unrated director's cut, are skin-crawling.
To sum up, NOTLD and DOTD are great movies that could be called "films" and studied for at least their perceived satire. The last two are GREAT zombie flicks full of gross out moments but are really just great saturday night popcorn movies;)

Geeze, who woulda thunk I would have so much to say about something so silly as zombie filmography? Story of my life, i guess;)

Jake
 
Thanks Jake.

Actually, I'm not surprised that there's so much to say about zombie movies. My wife teaches literature (as a sessional) in university - her PhD compared gothic literature (Frankenstein, Dracula, Turn of the Screw) with other "serious" contemporary books that purported to "mirror" reality (David Copperfield) instead of just giving entertainment.

Horror stories tell something "true" about the dreams and fears of the age in which they were written - the Dracula story is both about power relations (men preying on women, women on children), and reaching further back in time, to the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder in War. After all, the Vampire myths of eastern Europe sprung up after soldiers returned from fighting the Turks, hardened, coarsened, and filled with flashbacks.

Frankenstein is about the creation of life in the absence of love ... and a pretty good riff on anxiety about science and technology.

Personally, I love The Matrix. Not the sequels, but the original ... another riff on technology, and the creation of life.
 
I'm just glad to have had these training films for survival preparedness reasons.

;-)
 
Nasty said:
I'm just glad to have had these training films for survival preparedness reasons.

;-)
Click to expand...

When I was a teenager I worked the boyscout camp as a member of the camp staff.

Best part was the childbirth, and minor surgery films that "someone found". We assumed it was part of the civil defense stockpile.


Education is good.
 
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