“They are coming for you, Barbara.”
He stretches his hands out before him, rigid, making his eyes bulge and follows her. Barbara, annoyed and on edge because of her brother's annoying behaviour begins walking quickly back to their car.
Johnny Blair is a nerd. He wears humungous spectacles with lenses of inch-thick glass. In his pocket, he carries two pens. His hair is combed in a neat parting. Johnny is whiny, easily bullied by his mother, and likes eating candy despite his age. He has trouble waking up in the mornings. Being smart, he has a problem with religion, doesn’t believe in God, and has stopped attending church on Sunday mornings.
This Sunday, however, his mother has made him and his sister drive three hours, one way-- six hours travelling time in total-- to a cemetery.
It is a commemorative anniversary of a family member -- a man -- buried there and they are mandated to deliver a wreath. The grave is important to their mother, perhaps it is of their grandfather. The cemetery is in the middle of nowhere. It is just off a desolate highway, lined with mobs of trees and dotted with telegraph posts tilting with heavy cables. The trees watch sullenly as Johnny whizzes past in his Palmetto Green Pontiac Lemans. The final access to the cemetery is a bumpy side-road of dirt. The entrance is market by a rusty sign. Throughout the whole drive, Johnny whines to his sister.
Barbara is thin and statuesque with straight blond hair that ends in a single line of curls at her shoulders. She has the quivery demeanour of a permanently startled whippet. While Johnny groans and whines about the Sunday blown because of an obtuse family errand running to over six hours, Barbara shows more respect for the tradition to be honoured. She prays at the ancestor’s grave while her brother wonders aloud if wreaths are simply recovered, dusted off, and sold again by sellers to their gullible customers.
Thunder answers in the distance.
Johnny misses the warning and his irritation grows. Barbara is taking her time praying and Johnny gives over to irreverence. He reminiscences how playing the fool in the cemetery really riled up his grandfather. When they were kids, he had hidden behind a tree, right over there, and jumped out at Barbara. Johnny remembers that the old man had gotten really angry about his lack of respect on holy ground.
At this point, in the distance, appears a black speck. It slowly resolves itself into a gangly man in a black suit. He seems to be wandering, stumbling along, sometimes forwards, sometimes sideways, like a drunk bum, his arms swinging clumsily without use or purpose, moved by the same momentum, like a pair of windscreen wipers.
To his delight, Johnny discovers that Barbara is nervous and on edge. This when he mocks her and jokes that they are coming for his sister.
The man with the erratic gait is almost upon them. He has a large head with jug ears and is very tall. There is something about him that suggests that he would be more comfortable in a farmer’s overalls and hat rather than the black suit and waxed hair he has been dressed up in. As Barbara tries to move past, he snarls, revealing manic eyes and damaged black rotten teeth, and grabs her.
Johnny, though much smaller than the attacker, comes immediately to the rescue. He tries to free his sister and fight off the attacker. They struggle. Johnny’s spectacles are slapped away. The last Barbara sees, as she flees towards their car -- the Palmetto Green Pontiac Lemans-- is Johnny being struck down and dashing his head against a tombstone. Barbara does not stop to help.
There are no keys in the ignition. Barbara, however, has the presence of mind to use the time that Johnny has bought her, possibly with his life. She presses the lever in the door-window that locks the car. The tall man with jug ears in a black suit is shortly upon the vehicle and begins to bring his palms down with anger and vehemence on the glass of a rear window. His hands are massive and he brings them down, again and again. It does not seem that the car windows will hold out much longer.
This is the opening scene of Night of the Living Dead (1968).
The film is a prime example of the golden age of “exploitation” flicks: a term invited by the characteristic fondness of a certain type of 1960s film-maker, including George Romero (who directed the film), to earn a quick buck by using the classic formula of the Gothic novel to power their films: titillating an audience by trapping a beautiful young woman in a sticky situation and tormenting her with various horrors.
However, Night of the Living Dead is distinguished from it’s contemporaries in several ways. If exploitation films were an Olympic sport, then the film is the late 1960s gold-medal winner. It’s success is validated by the box-office as one of the most financially successful independently produced films ever made. It was a pioneer in several other ways: it was the first American horror film to star a black man in the lead, no mean feat for a movie filmed in the years leading up to the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jnr. Curiously, the film, though ripe with sexual promise, refuses to be gratuitous, an odd aesthetic for a film that initially promises it’s viewer some heavy exploitation. There is next to no nudity.
The idea of an animated flesh-eating monster is not novel. It has existed from antiquity. In fact, much of the things that make the film a classic, seem to be inadvertent. Duane Jones, the lead, was cast not because the makers wanted to score a political point about racism but because he was an outstanding actor— the best amongst those that were auctioned.
Even amongst these accomplishments, Night of the Living Dead is celebrated, most of all, for popularising the zombie apocalypse. Yet, what is curious is that the makers of the film never intended to make a zombie film.
The name 'zombie' was attached to Romero's monster by the viewers of the film.
He stretches his hands out before him, rigid, making his eyes bulge and follows her. Barbara, annoyed and on edge because of her brother's annoying behaviour begins walking quickly back to their car.
Johnny Blair is a nerd. He wears humungous spectacles with lenses of inch-thick glass. In his pocket, he carries two pens. His hair is combed in a neat parting. Johnny is whiny, easily bullied by his mother, and likes eating candy despite his age. He has trouble waking up in the mornings. Being smart, he has a problem with religion, doesn’t believe in God, and has stopped attending church on Sunday mornings.
 |
| Johnny Blair |
It is a commemorative anniversary of a family member -- a man -- buried there and they are mandated to deliver a wreath. The grave is important to their mother, perhaps it is of their grandfather. The cemetery is in the middle of nowhere. It is just off a desolate highway, lined with mobs of trees and dotted with telegraph posts tilting with heavy cables. The trees watch sullenly as Johnny whizzes past in his Palmetto Green Pontiac Lemans. The final access to the cemetery is a bumpy side-road of dirt. The entrance is market by a rusty sign. Throughout the whole drive, Johnny whines to his sister.
Barbara is thin and statuesque with straight blond hair that ends in a single line of curls at her shoulders. She has the quivery demeanour of a permanently startled whippet. While Johnny groans and whines about the Sunday blown because of an obtuse family errand running to over six hours, Barbara shows more respect for the tradition to be honoured. She prays at the ancestor’s grave while her brother wonders aloud if wreaths are simply recovered, dusted off, and sold again by sellers to their gullible customers.
Thunder answers in the distance.
Johnny misses the warning and his irritation grows. Barbara is taking her time praying and Johnny gives over to irreverence. He reminiscences how playing the fool in the cemetery really riled up his grandfather. When they were kids, he had hidden behind a tree, right over there, and jumped out at Barbara. Johnny remembers that the old man had gotten really angry about his lack of respect on holy ground.
At this point, in the distance, appears a black speck. It slowly resolves itself into a gangly man in a black suit. He seems to be wandering, stumbling along, sometimes forwards, sometimes sideways, like a drunk bum, his arms swinging clumsily without use or purpose, moved by the same momentum, like a pair of windscreen wipers.
To his delight, Johnny discovers that Barbara is nervous and on edge. This when he mocks her and jokes that they are coming for his sister.
The man with the erratic gait is almost upon them. He has a large head with jug ears and is very tall. There is something about him that suggests that he would be more comfortable in a farmer’s overalls and hat rather than the black suit and waxed hair he has been dressed up in. As Barbara tries to move past, he snarls, revealing manic eyes and damaged black rotten teeth, and grabs her.
Johnny, though much smaller than the attacker, comes immediately to the rescue. He tries to free his sister and fight off the attacker. They struggle. Johnny’s spectacles are slapped away. The last Barbara sees, as she flees towards their car -- the Palmetto Green Pontiac Lemans-- is Johnny being struck down and dashing his head against a tombstone. Barbara does not stop to help.
There are no keys in the ignition. Barbara, however, has the presence of mind to use the time that Johnny has bought her, possibly with his life. She presses the lever in the door-window that locks the car. The tall man with jug ears in a black suit is shortly upon the vehicle and begins to bring his palms down with anger and vehemence on the glass of a rear window. His hands are massive and he brings them down, again and again. It does not seem that the car windows will hold out much longer.
This is the opening scene of Night of the Living Dead (1968).
The film is a prime example of the golden age of “exploitation” flicks: a term invited by the characteristic fondness of a certain type of 1960s film-maker, including George Romero (who directed the film), to earn a quick buck by using the classic formula of the Gothic novel to power their films: titillating an audience by trapping a beautiful young woman in a sticky situation and tormenting her with various horrors.
However, Night of the Living Dead is distinguished from it’s contemporaries in several ways. If exploitation films were an Olympic sport, then the film is the late 1960s gold-medal winner. It’s success is validated by the box-office as one of the most financially successful independently produced films ever made. It was a pioneer in several other ways: it was the first American horror film to star a black man in the lead, no mean feat for a movie filmed in the years leading up to the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jnr. Curiously, the film, though ripe with sexual promise, refuses to be gratuitous, an odd aesthetic for a film that initially promises it’s viewer some heavy exploitation. There is next to no nudity.
The idea of an animated flesh-eating monster is not novel. It has existed from antiquity. In fact, much of the things that make the film a classic, seem to be inadvertent. Duane Jones, the lead, was cast not because the makers wanted to score a political point about racism but because he was an outstanding actor— the best amongst those that were auctioned.
Even amongst these accomplishments, Night of the Living Dead is celebrated, most of all, for popularising the zombie apocalypse. Yet, what is curious is that the makers of the film never intended to make a zombie film.
The name 'zombie' was attached to Romero's monster by the viewers of the film.
***
Comments
Post a Comment