In my first few posts I said about the Top 10 being the Hall of Fame of genre-defining Horror/Thrillers. Here we are at Night of the Living Dead, which invented the modern zombie movie. It’s not my favorite, that would be Dawn of the Dead which is coming up soon, but you have to start here and see what’s happened eight years after Psycho and the explosion of low-budget, exploitation and homegrown cinema.
For many, this is their first – maybe only – film of this type. The acting is sometimes poor, the lighting and sound aren’t clear, but there’s also a feeling of danger. You might see things Studio films would never allow, and because you don’t know the filmmaker, you never know how far they might go to be memorable. It’s a technique Horror filmmakers today still use, make at least one unforgettable moment and your film can live forever.
What we now know from hindsight is that George A. Romero wasn’t just a local boy with a camera. He did have a sense of storytelling and style. He did deploy violence sparingly but effectively, and he very much knew what he was doing. The film looks grindhouse, but it was made by a true artist and one of the first Masters of Horror. And he would only get better with experience.
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