A pioneering work of horror cinema, The Night of the Living Dead was released in cinemas on February 22! And you must not miss it!
Fans of zombies and putrefied flesh, be there! Night of the Living Dead, directed in 1968 by George A. Romero, is being released in theaters in a restored 4K version.
The story follows Barbara and Johnny. Each year, they will put flowers on their father’s grave. The road is long, the surroundings of the cemetery deserted. Not inclined to pray, Johnny remembers the time when he was a child and when he amused himself by frightening his sister by repeating in a deep voice: “They’re coming to get you, Barbara.“
Night is falling. Suddenly, a strange man appears. He approaches Barbara then attacks Johnny, who falls and is left for dead. Terrorized, Barbara flees and takes refuge in a country house. She finds Ben there, along with other fugitives. The radio then tells them the terrible news: the dead are attacking the living.
Night of the Living Dead is the first cinematic work of George A. Romero, then 28 years old. The pope of zombie movies and his college friends have always wanted to direct a feature film. Unfortunately, the steps taken with the financiers turned out to be catastrophic.
Romero and his acolytes then decided to found their own production company: Image Ten, by financing it by their own means. Each shareholder agreed to return $600 to the company. The capital obtained will then be quintupled by being sold at a high price to third parties. Thanks to this, the director and his team manage to raise 114,000 dollars to launch the production of The Night of the Living Dead.
If George A. Romero is now a master of horror cinema, he was not particularly a fan of the genre when he started filming The Night of the Living Dead. Indeed, if the filmmaker and his accomplices have decided to turn to horror for their first film, it is above all to hope to make the capital invested profitable.
At the time, television had driven down movie theater attendance rates. Above all, we had to make sure that the film was going to bring in money while remaining a quality work.
“No doubt we would have preferred to make a great dramatic film. But once we decided on a horror film, we tried to make it as realistic as possible with the budget we had”analyzes producer Russel Streiner.
The film’s success launched the career of Romero, who managed to make Night of the Living Dead one of the highest-grossing works in independent cinema at the time. The film brought in 5 million dollars in revenue when it was released in the United States, enough to make the investment of 114,000 dollars profitable.
DR
Note that George A. Romero was inspired by I’m a legend, the famous novel by Richard Matheson, to write the screenplay for Night of the Living Dead. The book tells the story of the only survivor on Earth of a terrible pandemic turning humans into vampires.
Moreover, the film was shot at the end of the 1960s, a troubled period with the war in Vietnam gaining momentum on the ground but also in the media. The Night of the Living Dead is impregnated with this political context and is thus defined more readily as a social work than a full-fledged horror film.
“We were just a bunch of kids from the sixties, disgusted that the peace and love momentum couldn’t change the world. New wars and racial clashes replaced those our parents had known. Our anger naturally found in the movieexplained the filmmaker at the microphone of Telerama in 2008.
In addition, Romero’s work also evokes racism in the United States, a hot topic in the 1960s, particularly with the fight of African-Americans for civil rights. For French film critic Serge Daney, “the real subject of the film is obviously not the living dead, but racism”he says in Les Cahiers du cinema in 1970.
Indeed, one of the main characters of the film, Ben, is played by a black comedian, Duane Jones. Without revealing anything about the outcome of Night of the Living Dead, for those who have not yet seen it, we can say that it is extremely striking, even shocking, especially when we place it in the context of the USA in the 1960s.
“I simply chose Duane Jones because he was better than the others”, always hammered Romero. As for the actor, he never said to himself that he had been hired because he was black. “On the other hand, I realized that because I was black, it gave a different historical element to the film”he said.
DR
Duane Jones and Judith O’Dea
Asked by Indiewire in 2016, shortly before his death, Romero admitted that he had no intention of addressing racial discrimination through the character of Ben at all.
“When we made the film, I wanted to talk about the lack of communication, about those people who, even when faced with improbable situations, continue to quarrel over trivial things rather than facing the real problem. C It’s something you can still find today. That’s what really interests me.”he specified.
“I didn’t realize at the time what impact that choice would have. After the film was finished in Pittsburgh, we loaded the reels in the truck and drove to New York for the premiere. Tonight there, on the radio, we learned that Martin Luther King had just been assassinated”said the filmmaker.
Reading the various historico-political events, Romero understood that he could bring back his undead whenever he had something to say about the changes in American society.
“A perfect opportunity to have fun with the codes of the genre, while slipping political considerations. I have always remained faithful to this approach”he assured.
Thus, the director continued in his favorite genre throughout his life. After Night of the Living Dead, he notably directed Zombie, Day of the Living Dead, Land of the Dead and Diary of the Dead. His last feature, Survival of the Dead, was released in 2009. Romero died in 2017 at the age of 77.