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Night of the Living Dead
Now get the hell down in the cellar. You can be the boss down there, but I’m boss up here!
Today’s submission is from Kim Curtis and her Most Loved Indie Film is Night of the Living Dead (1968)! Good choice Kim! This is one of my favorites, even though I am a fan of the quicker, angrier zombies of this modern interpretation, there is no denying that the slow tide of impending doom of these original screen zombies is absolutely terrifying.
Our friend Kim says:
Night of the Living Dead is independent in both how it was made and in its countercultural spirit. It reflects late-1960s American culture on different levels (Vietnam, civil rights, the Silent Majority, the youth movement).
NPR Interview w/George Romero 07/20/14:
We shot it in ’67, but it was right in that period where there was all that anger, you know race-riots coming up. There’s a story I always tell, when we were driving up to New York to show it to potential distributors, and that night, in the car, we heard that Martin Luther King had been assassinated. And here we had a black lead [actor Duane Jones as Ben] in this film, and so, I think that was largely what made the film noticeable. He was, quite simply, the best actor from among our friends. And we didn’t change the script from when Duane agreed to play the role. It’s never mentioned, it’s never a story point or anything.
Here’s a great article from 2012 about the revelations found in the commentary of Night of the Living Dead (1968) from Film School Rejects!
Is Night of the Living Dead (1968) going to get your vote and make the list of 50 Most Loved Indie Films?
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