Night Of The Living Dead: Millennium Edition DVD Review

Written by SuperNova

DVD released by Elite Entertainment

Directed by George A. Romero

Written by George A. Romero and John A. Russo

1968, Region 1 (NTSC), 108 minutes, Not rated

DVD released on March 12th, 2002

Starring:
Duane Jones as Ben
Judith O'Dea as Barbra
Karl Hardman as Harry Cooper
Marilyn Eastman as Helen Cooper
Keith Wayne as Tom
Judith Ridley as Judy
Kyra Schon as Karen Cooper
Charles Craig as Newscaster
Bill Heinzman as Cemetery Ghoul

Movie:

What can be said that hasn’t all ready been said about this movie? Who hasn’t heard of the story or watched the depravity unfold before their very eyes while lounging in front of a TV during the earlier morning hours with nothing to comfort you except the shadows on the wall? What is it about George Romero’s Night Of The Living Dead that attracts so many and still manages to shock and terrify viewers to this day? Is it the violence, the zombies, or perhaps its ability to defy immortality and hope, with an illusive story forever engraved into the heart of every man, woman, and child who steps onto a cemetery? If there were ever a movie that deserved such accreditation for ushering in a new foundation of horror it is undoubtedly Night Of The Living Dead. Immeasurable by time it exists on an echelon all its own, hovering above other isolated period films with a status and following unlike anything seen before.

Night Of The Living Dead begins with Barbara (Judith O'Dea) and her brother Johnny (Russell Streiner) in the midst of visiting their father’s grave where the two recollect on past memoirs they shared as children, when Johnny use to scare Barbara about various creatures, monsters and other hideous things that go bump in the night. A somber tone begins to build tension as a mysterious man is seen wandering about in the background of the graveyard. Oblivious to all the warning signs and indications, Johnny and Barbara prepare to leave, but the peculiar man unexpectedly attacks Barbara throwing her to the ground and subduing Johnny effortlessly. Scared and all alone Barbara flees from the graveyard where she manages to hold up in an abandoned farmhouse, safe from her unearthly pursuer. What transpires in the opening minutes of the Night Of The Living Dead creates an atmosphere overwhelmed by the stench of death while affecting the rest of the movie in a downward spiral of emotional distress. Faced with uncertainty Barbara makes an attempt to call for help, but soon discovers she may be trapped inside without any means to communicate with the outside world.

Luckily for Barbara a friendly and strong willed black male named Ben (Duane Jones) comes to her aide. Realizing she is all alone and in a state of shock, Ben takes it upon himself to fortify the home while trying to understand and comfort Barbara. Before long, night falls and gives way to five strangers sheltering together in the basement of the farmhouse. Harry and Helen Cooper (Karl Hardman and Marilyn Eastman) are a married couple whose daughter Karen (Kyra Schon) has been infected by one of the undead. Tom and Judy (Keith Wayne and Judith Ridley) are two young kids who find themselves caught up in the wrong moment. A struggle ensues between the despairingly irresponsible and uncooperative Harry Cooper and the boldly determined Ben. The two constantly bicker about what is the right thing to do, integrating antagonism into an all ready concentrated atmosphere.

As the group becomes desperate to escape, solitary decisions are made irrationally and prove costly when young Tom and Judy are accidentally killed in a gas explosion. With the living dead growing in numbers and the dignity of all human kind slowly becoming incapacitated, the group begins to realize that this very well could be the end. With dawn approaching and the collective power of the undead prying their way inside we are left questioning, will the group survive the attack or will they become victims of their very own vilification? In many ways this was the movie that unlocked the doors to a closed society whose ethics and morals were parallel to some rather strict and nonsensical wholesome family values. Recognized on a level of grand proportion in terms of status and popularity, Night Of The Living Dead remains to this day as one of the highest grossing independent films ever made. See it for yourself and find out why.

Review

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I used to think horror movies consisted of arterial spray that focused on exceeding the straight lines of someone’s perception and surpassing the intricate structure most stories seemed confined to. For me it was about visuals and the delicate transgression between a metallic knife piercing someone’s warm flesh in a demeanor that was often poetic, but exemplified nail biting tension to the fragile sadness of a faint pulsating heart beat. I’ve never seen movies in black in white, even when the color palette deprived me of such rich and luscious effects I was always immersed by a striking canvas of symmetric beauty. My eyes fill the voids and shade-in inspired colors based upon assumptions and the vivid fantasy of my imagination. There’s a movie, of course there’s always a movie; one in particular that forever adapted my sophisticated taste to a standard of examining films not by how they look or how they appear underneath the context of the themes they use, but what they evoke from the viewer. Night Of the Living Dead came about when George Romero and John Russo collaborated on a small production company called The Latent Image. It was a film that crossed the boundaries of inconceived terror relying on the mentality of the human mind and how long stability could actually be upheld in a crumbling society still deliberating skin tone indifference's while trying to deal with a calamity of massive proportions. As if playing a game of cards where each hand dealt contributed to the forever growing hostility and demanding anticipation reprehensibly focusing on who would fold next rather then weighing the odds and conserving such judgmental preconceptions. The questioning of someone’s morality because of their nationality in times of injustice and endangerment seems more provocative and provoked than some of us could even conceive today.

Unlike the films that came before it, Night Of The Living Dead set an example of what horror can be when the element of fantasy is removed and you incorporate society’s own fears and commitments and are able to handle the issue in a rational and sensible manner. There are so many pivotal scenes and crucial moments in this movie, forever embedded into the heart of America’s sub conscious, that to examine them all you‘d really have to break the movie down in a sequence similar to a time line. From the opening credits to the audacious ending Night Of The Living Dead manages to captivate the viewer by visually corrupting our conscious and feeding into our fear. This is a movie not only about death, but the betrayal of man and how curiosity can explore dark secrets and create mistrust. Each character in the movie is compelled to find assurance about the other individuals around them because the mind can’t separate whose intentions are moral enough and who’s willing to make sacrifices. Like a finished puzzle, delicately glued together and balanced by each significant piece before time conveys age and the structure begins to decay, with each departing and diminishing portion another becomes unfastened until the grip is no longer solid and the bond no longer substantial enough to hold such weight. This is Night Of The Living Dead and possibly George Romero at his most paramount, the convection of the human imbalance and the disparities of each individual’s reaction to a threatening situation. I look at Night Of The Living Dead as a film on a grand scale of symbolism because to me, shooting the film in black and white interpreted how people saw each other back in the fifties and sixties. It wasn’t about being flashy or being experimental, it was about being real and showcasing the world’s true perception and form through a story of conniving people based upon upbringings, and specific body traits. Sympathy is completely deprived for the simple fact each character has all ready made up their minds on who they can trust and who they think will betray them. They see the world through a muted color palette while making irrational decisions based upon how thick the darkness runs.

In a world where freedom and equality are stapled across billboards and posters providing American consumers with false hopes and trendy propaganda, George Romero’s Night Of The Living Dead exposes societies debts maliciously. By focusing on the reaction to the situation, a large amount of emphasis is placed upon humanity and what transpires between ourselves and our society. When the characters in the film are simultaneously placed in a predicament where questioning and contemplating is their only means of survival and longevity, reasoning with rationality seems almost fallacious in its attempt to depict the world’s downfall. But nonetheless it’s handled most delicately and had uncertainty befallen upon the unsuspected like it has here you could justifiably assume we would find ourselves acting out in the same aggressive manner. So you are probably asking yourself, where is all the horror in this? Well if by horror you mean the context and the fear of the unknown, not the rudimentary sense then yes it is here, but what I’m trying to do is to tell you that there’s more to these movies (meaning the Dead trilogy) than zombies and graphic depiction's of jugular veins and internal intestines being grotesquely torn out from the inside of someone’s ill faded body. These films contain messages and commentaries about our civilization and they go beyond the perspective of horror. Night Of The Living Dead is relentless and grueling for one reason and it’s not because of the macabre or the walking corpses, which admittedly are as intriguing as they are scary it’s because of the authenticity it holds in its story. The message is clear; how do you deal with a crisis you are uncertain of and unaware of its resolve? How do you expect civilization to deal with this dilemma if for one we can’t accept each other for being different let alone the misfortune we find ourselves surrounded by each day? You can’t and that’s what George Romero was trying to emphasize all along.

The purpose of the zombies or the people returning from their graves is almost a means to accentuate human nature. Moreover the ‘living dead’ really could be anything from an act of mother nature to even a terrorist attack that culminates in bringing a community together and to heal as one. Of course these corpses aren’t background figures aimed to endlessly wonder around while the world tries to figure out what went wrong and how to resolve this problem. The intention of the film is to provide the viewer with an understanding of how certain obstacles sometimes manipulates and bring together a diverse group of people all fighting for the same cause. Don’t get me wrong this is indeed a horror film on the utmost highest plateau that deals with anarchism and sadism in a rather blunt and guerilla documentary style. Maybe if George Romero’s direction regarding shooting and the technical aspect of his job as a director wasn’t so straightforward the scope of his work wouldn’t have been perceived as thought provoking, as it is today. But it’s his simple outlook on a complex civilization, in which we all can relate to. How he manages to interpret and convey genuine emotions from characters trapped inside of a world where the nightmare is inescapable is brilliantly done. As a director who never intended to belong to a specific genre George Romero will forever remain as one of the founding fathers who built new pillars in the house of horror. I think what’s particular interesting about Night Of The Living Dead compared to Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead is its ability to seem almost calm and collected during the whole movie. It’s so easy to get caught up in all of the chaos that is ensuing that sometimes the fixation of the viewer tends to focus more so on what’s happening outside or behind the closed door rather than wanting to appreciate the characters in the story. In some films all the viewer cares about is who will die next and in what horrific and ghastly manner, but with George Romero’s films these are characters you develop an understanding with and although you can’t control their onscreen fate, you want to believe they will survive this madness somehow.

I believe for a low budget movie the cast and the crew all did a phenomenal job making this picture work and no I’m not holding Night Of The Living Dead to a lower standard because of its minuscule production values. Judith O’Dea’s character Barbara is often scrutinized because of her lack of ability to take a hold of the situation. Her character seems content to not advocate anything. While it seems irresponsible and unnecessary to have a character who cowers throughout the entire film, one can understand and take into consideration the period of time the movie was conceived in and that women weren’t portrayed as strong determined beauties back then. That isn’t to say the character of Barbara is hopeless, as many have criticized. Underneath her solemn complexion hides a woman who’s struggling to comprehend the scenario she finds herself in. Psychologically Barbara’s actions perfectly blend with the consternation and environment, blindly playing into the morbid devastation that’s been crafted so well around her. She may not take up arms and pursue the undead with a valiant effort, but what she offers to the viewer is a sincere examination of how emotional trauma can affect anyone when the mind frame isn’t easily adaptable. Endangerment is like an impulse that provides motivation and no greater fear comes from death itself. Had the character of Ben not been so determined to survive and to save the lives of all those around him I don’t believe Night Of The Living Dead would have been as great of a character development movie as it stands today. Duane Jones portrayed the character of Ben in such a phenomenal way that to disregard his ability as an actor just because this is a horror movie would be unfair and unjust.

He plays the character that holds the movie together and gives the viewer someone to rely on and to look up to. Harry Cooper on the other hand played by Karl Hardman crafts such wonderful scenes with Duane Jones especially when the two feed off each others energy deriving tension from just a certain glance or gesture. Both characters complete each other, each needing to rely on a certain individuals specific trait or emotion to drive them to a state of tranquility, which in return makes them think smarter and react quicker. I know it probably makes no sense, but to put it in short, Ben relies on the antics of Harry to give him motivation and determination. Ben seems to work harder when under pressure or faced with uncertainty. Harry the conniving, neurotic, fiend that he is, leeches off everyone. He uses Ben like a tool because he knows he can irritate him, but at the same time he realizes Ben is probably the only guy who could save his life. The more agitated Ben becomes the less perceptible risk of him not giving a care about anyone. Night Of The Living Dead is a fantastic horror movie that succeeds by taking certain elements of the genre like debauchery and anarchism and combining them all together to create a story that isn’t restricted to a severe level of emotional detachment found in a lot of movies today. It’s epically powerful, engrossingly and grotesquely sagacious, and above all else solicitously written for better and for worse.

Video and Audio:

Elite has done a wonderful job by restoring Night Of The Living Dead to a definitive form. The transfer really is quite mesmerizing and breathtaking to say the very least especially considering the original reel was lost in an infamous flood. Long gone is the grain and specs we’ve had to suffer through from previous public domain releases. What’s present is a beautifully enhanced 1:33.1 Full Frame transfer. I’m left in awe at how beautiful a black and white film can appear. Where colors seem to exist on a grid of conformity evoking stale emotions Night Of The Living Dead manages to use black and white to its fullest dexterity. Grays are often captivating and glorious to examine. Night time interior and exterior shots are skillfully lit, entrancing the atmosphere with horrendously disturbing shadows of the living dead and the glamorous flickering of the smoldering fires. Daytime shots are infectiously desolate and carry a sense of anxiety and trepidation. This is by far the best transfer available on DVD and although some scenes suffer from quick blotches, which is to be considered you really have to respect and appreciate the time and effort Elite Entertainment has took to restore George Romero and John Russo’s classic.

THX certified with a brand new Dolby Digital 5.1 remixed soundtrack, Elite’s DVD surpasses my expectations in sheer volume and sound. Dialogue is refined with the utmost quality advancing from the speakers with precision and sound clarity. Its beauty for me lies in hearing the film for the first time in years with pristine distinctness and superior depth. With the addition of the original mono soundtrack, fans can rejoice over Night Of The Living Dead and enjoy watching the movie knowing there won‘t be disappointing audio blips, because of the delicate care Elite Entertainment has handled here. The score for Night Of The Living Dead is fitting in that it reaches deep down inside the soul to collect music that blends with harmony and conventionalism before progressing into a sick and revolting world of gruesomeness where the melody provides gratification and fortitude to all those infested by worms and hungry for flesh. It’s not theme oriented music balanced with catchy riffs and stylish rhythms, the score here by Scott Vladimir Licina seems conjured up by the undead, building to some overpowering moments of stress and anxiety.

Special Features:

• Trailers/TV Spots
• Dual Commentary tracks - Featuring writer and director George Romero, John Russo and the entire cast
• Film Parody “Night Of The Living Bread”
• Still Photo Gallery
• The History Of The Latent Image
• Scenes from the “lost” George Romero film, “There’s Always Vanilla”
• Video interview with Judy Ridley
• Final interview by star Duane Jones
• Foreign and Domestic posters and collectibles
• Original props
• The entire original shooting script
• Cast members’ personal scrapbooks
• George Romero directed TV spots and short films

This Millennium Edition DVD by Elite Entertainment not only presents George Romero and John Russo’s Night Of The Living Dead in the best available audio and video quality, it also offers a sufficient amount of extras that are sure to please fans for a long time. The first two special features are dual commentary tracks. One featuring writer and director George Romero alongside John Russo and cast members Karl Hardman and Marilyn Eastman who played the Coopers. This is a terrific commentary track that’s filled with fascinating information about the production of the movie and how it all came about. Everyone gets along well and the participation from each individual really goes to show the love and fond memories they had for Night Of The Living Dead. The second commentary track features additional members of the cast: Judith O’Dea who plays Barbara, Bill Hinzman who plays the infamous cemetery zombie, Russell Streiner who plays Johnny, Keith Wayne who plays Tom, Kyra Schon who plays Karen Cooper also known as the child zombie, and production designer Vince Survinski. This is a very lighthearted track that’s filled with laughter and serenity. Like the previous commentary this one also has the cast members talking about what it was like to be involved with Night Of The Living Dead, with everyone having a splendid time and sharing jokes. The first commentary is sure to be a hit for those looking to understand the process of how the movie came about and all the technicalities of filming. The second one is like getting together with a bunch of your old friends and just remembering past times while having a lot of fun. It’s an optimistic track that‘ll bring a smile to any fans face.

Next up is Kevin S. O'Brien's eight minute student film parody entitled Night of the Living Bread (1990). The short is intentionally funny and delivers when needed. Although it’s running time is disproportional to create any kind of development it certainly does manage to blend premeditated comedy with clichéd scenarios. The History Of The Latent Image/Image Ten/Hardman Eastman Studios is a well written essay documenting the beginnings of George Romero and John Russo’s company. It’s a fascinating read and very thorough recounting the adversity the group had to overcome from having little to no money and not being able to eat for days just to live out a dream they desired to fill. Expanding upon this we have a variety of commercial works shot by George Romero and his company courtesy of Elite. Also included on this DVD is a lengthy four hundred page document containing the script and original treatment for the picture as taken from John Russo's “The Complete Night of the Living Dead” film book as well as over one hundred still photographs compiled from Vince Survinski and Marilyn Eastman’s personal scrapbooks. There’s also more photos ranging from original set props and posters including foreign and domestic. Also present on the disc are a few selected scenes from George Romero’s lost movie, “There’s Always Vanilla”, which I might add looks really interesting and left me with a desire to see more of the film.

Closing out the supplements are two separate interviews with Judy Ridley and Duane Jones. The video interview with Judy Ridley runs roughly eleven minutes in length and concentrates on her perspective of making the movie. She still looks great and shares some interesting stories about what the crew did to economize the situation and how much she adored the other actors. Duane Jones’s audio interview runs close to sixteen minutes and takes place during the twentieth anniversary of the film. It showcases his intelligence and touches upon his memories of the movie. Duane Jones is a well educated man who would probably have been perceived as reclusive and perhaps arrogant by making comments that often seemed disparaging. But I think what’s unique about Duane Jones is that he never really wanted to shine in the limelight. Night Of The Living Dead was just a film he made with his friends and for better or for worse didn’t really want to be involved in the cult rebound it generated. Either way Duane Jones will always be remembered not by the color of his skin, but by the boldness he exuberated through the character of Ben. Rounding out the DVD, Elite presents us with a theatrical trailer and TV spots alongside animated menus with sound. There are approximately twelve chapters and a wonderful liner introduction by none other than horror author Stephen King.

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Conclusion:

When I sit down to write a review I don’t deliberately and vindictively try to create sentences that weave intricate meanings forcing the reader to stop and decipher what it is I am saying or posing. I try to let the movies speak to me and Night Of The Living Dead is a prime example of my interpretation of John Russo’s and George Romero’s 1968 film. I can’t guarantee I’m one hundred percent accurate after all it’s only one mans opinion, but I like to think my opinion actually represents these movies in their sincerest form. A lot has been said about Night Of The Living Dead. It seems the culmination of such a given film either resides in a territory forever scrutinized for it’s indecency and exposition of pure adulterated horror or is categorized as a cult classic forever recognized as being the archetype of horror and an originator like it so rightfully deserves. I know a lot of people who dismiss old films because they aren’t trendy anymore or were conceived before there time and perhaps I’ve done it myself a time or two, but Night Of The Living Dead is a film that will really stand the test of time and regardless of the future of this genre and how substantially different it may vary from its past this movie will forever be recognized and appreciated for its originality and reliability to keep old viewers coming back and new ones wanting to experience what we have all over again.

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