YMMV / Night of the Living Dead (1968)

• Accidental Aesop: George A. Romero always insisted that he didn't mean to make any comments about race in the film. He hired Duane Jones, a black stage actor, to play the hero simply because "he gave the best audition." Much of the film's dialogue was improvised by the actors during shooting with only a loose adherence to the script, and the original ending even had Ben surviving until Jones convinced Romero that Ben dying would make for a better ending. Only after the film was released did Romero profess to have become aware of the implications of Jones's character being black.
  However, as various commentators continue to point out, it's highly implausible for someone in the 1960s to cast a black actor as the lead without being aware of the significance. And for better or worse, Romero subsequently started adding intentional but far less subtle aesops in all his subsequent zombie films (including the 1990 remake of Night of the Living Dead, which pointedly features hunters hanging still-"living" zombies from trees).
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Judith O'Dea had one about Barbra. Rather than viewing her as a Screaming Woman, Judith theorizes that Barbra had to retreat into her own mind to cope with what was going on – but would eventually get over the trauma and help everyone. She does ultimately try to help as the zombies are breaking into the house, but she's quickly killed.
  • Another fairly popular one is over whether or not the police man killing Ben at the end really was accidental, as per all the political theories that this film has spawned. One interpretation reads it as, essentially, an impromptu lynching.
• Applicability: Go read any scholarly articles on this film. Chances are, there are thousands of sociopolitical interpretations on the movie's zombies made by film analysts and critics.
• Awesome Music:
  • The 30th Anniversary Edition, despite its many flaws in other areas, has a pretty chilling and atmospheric soundtrack courtesy of composer Scott Vladimir Licina, especially "The Dead Walk".
  • The opening credits music. A bit cheesy, yes, but it sets up the eerie atmosphere of the film brilliantly.
• Broken Base:
  • Fans of the film are split over Cooper's plan vs Ben's. Debates have been waged for decades over it.
  • The late 90's "Special Edition" which changed the music and added a prologue and epilogue about a local priest. While the recut does have some fans, most viewers see the changes as superfluous.
• Cult Classic: Comes naturally by being the zombie film.
• Do Not Do This Cool Thing: This movie and director George A. Romero are frequently misattributed as promoting zombie survival fantasy, especially since the creation of The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks. Romero didn't intend to have a political message, but thanks to input from his lead actor Duane Jones, the film and the franchise it spawned became more about character studies in a zombie apocalypse setting. Romero never intended it to be a power fantasy about surviving hordes of the undead, it was designed to be a social commentary on tribalism, prejudice, and how people can show their true colors under a crisis, it was never meant to be a power fantasy where characters make a performance of killing zombies.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Johnny, Sheriff McClelland and Karen probably have less than ten minutes of screen time combined, but they're responsible for the film's two most-quoted lines ("They're coming to get you, Barbra!" "Yeah, they're dead. They're...all messed up.") and most unforgettable moment (Karen stabbing her mother with the trowel).
  • Zombie wise, the cemetery zombie at the beginning played by Bill Hinzman is very fondly remembered, mostly for being the first onscreen flesh eating zombie, as well as being incredibly terrifying in the process.
• Fan Nickname: The 30th Anniversery Edition cut in new footage featuring a character named Reverend Hicks, played by producer/actor Scott Vladimir Licina. Not only were his scenes overly enthusiastic, his prominent incisors gained him the sobriquet "Reverend Bigteeth".
• Fan-Disliked Explanation: In a rare example of the fan-disliked explanation happening early in a franchise, the film hand waves where the zombies are coming from early in the first film. However, a "Radioactive Space Probe" didn't quite catch on, and later Living Dead media generally refuses to concretely explain the origins of the living dead. The universally reviled Night of the Living Dead: 30th Anniversary Edition (a re-release of the movie—which is in the Public Domain—with added scenes by co-writer John A. Russo, without Romero's involvement) instead implies the zombie plague is demonic in origin.
• Fanon Discontinuity: The "30th Anniversary Edition" of the film, which cut about 15 minutes' worth of footage from the original (replacing it with newly-produced scenes) and added new sound effects and a modern music score, was made in 1999. It was not well received by fans or critics. Harry Knowles threatened to ban anyone from posting on the Ain't It Cool News comment board if they said anything positive about the 30th Anniversary Edition, which he stated was as bad as (if not worse than) the memories of the authorities handling his mother's burnt corpse.
• Fight Scene Failure:
  • Ben and Cooper's brawl when the latter returns to the house. It's too slow, the punches don't land and it looks very oddly choreographed.
  • When Karen is stabbing Helen to death, it's clear the actress isn't actually plunging the trowel into anything - while blood inexplicably appears on Helen's face. The sound effects however still keep it quite scary.
• First Installment Wins: Not so much in the overall context of the Romero-directed films — virtually everybody seems to agree that Dawn is an Even Better Sequel, and a few also consider Day to be superior — but in terms of the various incarnations of this film, the original is still considered the best. The 1990 remake is considered a solid film, but not quite as good as this one, while the only bone of contention over the 30th Anniversary Edition and 3D remake is which of the two is worse.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Was hugely popular in Europe when it was first released. It spent a year-and-a-half in one theater in Spain.
• Genre Turning Point: Roger Ebert highlighted this trope in a famous review, where he noted that most American "horror films" up until that point, thanks to filmmakers like William Castle were the movie equivalent of a carnival ride: good for a thrill and very popular with kids. Most directors just dropped their actors in a vaguely atmospheric haunted house setting, threw in some cobwebs, ghosts, and a skeleton or two, and called it a day, resulting in films that were spooky but usually more-or-less family friendly. The vast majority of them even had happy endings. Horror movie double features had become a convenient place to dump the kids while moms went shopping; Ebert's review describes them running wild in the aisles unsupervised as if that was perfectly normal, then slowly falling silent, save for the occasional terrified whimper. This movie changed the definition of horror movies practically overnight: "family-friendly" horror films suddenly went extinct, graphic violence was practically a guarantee, and the Downer Ending became the norm. Ebert liked the film, but wondered what the hell was wrong with the parents who left their kids at this thing, and consequently led many of them out in tears.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Even though Romero didn't intend any political message, the film's ending, in which a police posse mistake Ben for a zombie and shoot him dead, is a lot more uncomfortable to watch in light of well-publicized instances of police violence against black men.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • The bond between Tom and Judy, both of whom are clearly very much in love. The chemistry between their actors makes it feel genuine, with the result that Judy's decision to go with him in the truck is oddly sweet.
  • Despite Cooper's gruff attitude towards Barbra, after a while everyone else treats her with sympathy (knowing she lost her brother earlier). Ben affectionately calls her "kid" and Helen tells her not to be afraid of them. Judy is also very sweet to her.
• Mainstream Obscurity: Back in '68, nearly everyone watching the movie would have immediately tagged Johnny's "They're coming to get you, Barbra!" as a Boris Karloff impression. The film itself counts to an extent as well. While certainly popular, and easily accessible thanks to being in the public domain, it's fair to say that far fewer people nowadays have seen it than heard of it.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "They're coming to get you, Barbra!"
  • "Yeah, they're dead. They're all messed up."
  • "That's another one for the fire."
• Narm:
  • "Johnny, stop it! You're ignorant!"
  • The movie itself is rightly regarded as an all time horror classic, and genuinely disturbing. The trailer, however, has some incredibly cheesy narration. "Night...DUM...DUM...DUM...of the Living Dead!"
  • Ben's extremely stiff and awkward punches at Cooper after getting back in the house.
• Narm Charm: The film has a few major continuity issues, like the cemetery having lots of leaves on the ground even though it's supposed to be spring, or the two on-location TV interviews being conducted in broad daylight when it's still supposed to be night. But these actually work to its advantage, since it adds to the deliberate disjointedness of the rest of the film, and reflects the chaos and confusion the lead characters are going through.
• Nausea Fuel:
  • You see a female zombie grab a live caterpillar from a tree and start eating it.
  • Legendarily you get to see the zombies feasting on Tom and Judy's organs and body parts after their deaths.
• Never Live It Down: Barbra unfortunately has a reputation as The Load and for being a Neutral Female. Some people forget that she does try to help towards the end. Unfortunately she dies soon afterwards. Romero seemingly agreed with these criticisms, however, and took steps to make her a much more proactive character in the 1990 remake.
• Not Badass Enough for Fans: Barbra is attacked for being The Load and a Hysterical Woman, even though she witnesses her brother's death, has to run for her life and the first place she takes shelter has a dead body in it — all things that would probably make one in every four people behave the way she did. Judith O'Dea feels that Barbra simply had to retreat into herself to properly deal with the situation and would then help when she was ready. She does snap out of it towards the end and tries to help when it's sadly too late.
• Older Than They Think:
  • Romero freely admitted that he used I Am Legend as a model for the storyline. When Richard Matheson first stumbled on NOTLD on TV he initially thought it was a low-budget adaptation of I Am Legend that he hadn't been told about.
  • Romero also cited Carnival of Souls as an influence. You can see it in the atmosphere of the film, but also the way the undead are depicted, and arguably Barbra as an Expy for Mary Henry from that film.
• One-Scene Wonder:
  • Bill Hinzman as the graveyard zombie. He parlayed this role into a whole career of playing creepy monsters.
  Mike Nelson: There you go, that's what Bill Hinzman does better than anyone else: look extremely ugly.
  • George Kosana as Sheriff McClelland.
• Once Original, Now Common:
  • Night completely rewrote how horror movies are made—more graphic, more political, more nihilistic. Before this movie, even horror movies rarely had any Downer Ending. Nowadays they're expected. Even within its own field, both Dawn and Day made look Night tame in its themes and execution.
  • This film also popularized many Zombie Apocalypse conventions, so some of its plot elements can seem cliché even though it is the origin of said clichés.
• Padding:
  • Barbra slowly tells Ben the whole story about how she got to the house, which we've already seen. Worse is that it follows Ben's far more interesting and action-packed story.
  • Harry won't allow Helen to leave the cellar, so she has an argument that is resolved by her suggesting that Judy come back down in exchange for her coming up.
• Realism-Induced Horror: The use of grainy black-and-white footage made the film to some viewers look less like a movie and more like a newsreel or documentary.
• Spiritual Adaptation: Romero himself called his film a ripoff of Richard Matheson's I Am Legend, albeit with that book's vampire-like monsters replaced with reanimated corpses. Matheson noticed the inspiration and said that, while he harbored no ill will towards Romero, he thought the movie was "kind of cornball".
• Strawman Has a Point: In the 30th Anniversary Edition, Reverend Hicks miraculously survives being bitten by a zombie, and at the end goes on a deranged rant that the zombies are demons from hell. He is supposed to come across as The Fundamentalist, but his fanatical belief that the zombie plague is supernatural in origin isn't really any more preposterous than it being radiation from a space probe or some sort of virus. First, he is in fact spared, which does come across as miraculous, and second, it takes Willing Suspension of Disbelief for Hollywood Science to explain movie zombies with a virus; even undergraduate level biology would reveal it's a scientifically silly (if fun) idea. Science-based zombie explanations are invariably Techno Babble, but magic or divine intervention has no such constraint.
• Values Dissonance: As you'd expect of a movie from the 1960s, the female characters are all fairly passive, and none of them help protect the house from zombies. What's more is that at one point, Tom remarks about only three people to make decisions — completely excluding the women. Although to be fair, Barbra can't help because she's gone catatonic (she does try to help find some wood at the start when it's just her and Ben and she helps Ben and Harry prevent the zombies coming into the house after snapping out of her catatonia.) and Helen is busy looking after her sick daughter. Judy on the other hand...
• Values Resonance: Ben is by far the most competent and intelligent person in the movie, and the fact that he's the main character was huge for a film made during the Civil Rights movement. His active participation and leadership role remains impressive — not just impressive for the '60s, impressive period.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: This shock movie was the first of its kind; parents were used to their children going to a Saturday afternoon matinee to watch "scary" movies with monsters in rubber suits, little gore, and upbeat endings. The MPAA rating system still hadn't been established. Roger Ebert noted that when he went to see it the children in the theater weren't taking it very well in the second half.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?:
  • A lot of people have argued that the movie was making a statement about race via the conflict between Ben and Cooper, not to mention the ending where Ben gets shot. However, Romero always insisted Ben being black had far more to do with Duane Jones simply being the best actor to audition for the role. According to some production members, the only changes to the script to come of his casting was making Ben a smarter person (per the insistence of Jones, who was himself well-educated). Word of God is that the ending was actually inspired by a common hunting accident where the shooter doesn't check his target due to over-excitement.
  • Another common interpretation is that the film is an allegory about America's involvement in The Vietnam War, with the zombies representing the "primitive" guerrillas who are able to overwhelm their more "advanced" opponents due to their sheer numbers as well as the confusion and squabbling of the latter.
  • There's also been talk of the Coopers representing the breakdown of the American family and the rebellion of the younger generation in The '60s. With this line of thought, you can wring gallons of implication simply out of Karen's single line of dialogue: "I hurt."

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