George Romero’s remarkable debut changed the face of independent horror movies. It set precedent for the unpredictable and more maniacal non-Hollywood tales, created by the likes of John Carpenter, David Cronenberg, Tobe Hopper, etc. For modern zombie horror fans, the nightmarish vision may seem a bit dulled. Nevertheless, the embedded political and social commentary (from racial segregation to Vietnam War) still retains its sharpness.

While lacking the gore and special effects budgets of modern zombie films, this classic builds upon the real tension, which is the relationship between people thrust together by disaster.

great movie . thanks

oh my good, this is such a cool flm, thanks

Its not a bad movie. But for nowadays its not very recomended. The sound is bad and the image its really blured. I think his time has gone .

This is better to watch.
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Despite the low budget. Lots of nice touches.

What a good film. Fine acting, especially from the two leads, good plot and some exemplary photography, some little touches of genius (like the close up of the brothers face when he tries to scare his sister - perfect reflections like eyes in his glasses) Can hardly fault this film in any way - the inspiration for a genre.

IT'S ALL HERE IN ANOTHER 99 REVIEWS

Even creeping to watch now

First saw this movie during college in the late 60's while doing Calculus problems with the TV on PBS as background noise...I expected the general Pap from PBS and was ignoring the tube but when the Night of the Living Dead music came on I casually started to watch. Much to my suprise I became riveted to the screen and remained so until the closing credits. Even as a 20 something Black Belt, Living Dead gave me the creeps big-time. Still one of most frightening movies ever made.

This movie is still creepy after all these years.
Good enough to withstand repeated viewings without losing its effectiveness.
Similar in many ways to the movie 'The Last Man on Earth' which was based on the Richard Matheson novel 'I Am Legend.'
I seem to recall George Romero admitting that the story for his movie was mostly a rip-off of the Matheson novel.
I certainly won't hold that against him, though, as Night of the Living Dead is still one of the all time greats of horror movies.

I adjusted the video levels, added a greenish tint to the film and attempted to upload my video to my youtube channel, only to recieve the following copyright warnings:

"Timothy Regan-Beyond the Grave", sound recording administered by:
rumblefish

Visual content administered by:
eOne

Audiovisual content administered by:
Weinstein

"Microfilm-Death race '68", sound recording administered by:
Believe

Visual content administered by:
Music Video Distributors

"The Banner-Zombie Onslaught", sound recording administered by:
WMG
IODA

Whoever uploaded this "added" these elements, and this needs to be re-uploaded in entirety without these unlawful bits. That said, still a great movie. Just dissapointed I'll have to re-render the entire thing.

OMG still shaking lol. Although I saw this many years ago it still packs a punch that is totally lacking in modern CGI films. Less is more with the effects, it is truly a film to totally put you on the edge of your seat, by the master George Romero.
Everyone should see this film. The best.

As much as I adore the Killer Shrews I must say it has positively a ghost of a chance of winning a in general poll against Night of the Living Dead for best b-movie. Sowwy!

The second best B-movie ever made. I still like Attack of the Killer Shrews better. I'd really like to see a poll of people who have seen both.

A true horror movie of its time. Even for black and white. The story is increadible. However I must give it only 4 Stars. The actors are rediculously scared of ghouls that move, at a snails pace. Seriously, even in mass swarms you coudnt honestly be scared of Zombies that are slow moving. While Romeroes movies are Iconic they would have impressed me more, if the Zombies ran like hell after there victims. Then all these spin offs and remakes would not be made today.

George Romero's Night of the Living Dead helped to pave the way for subsequent horror classsics like Halloween and The Exorcist by taking away the gothicism of the horror flicks of the '30s and '40s and replacing it with hopelessness and paranoia. The plot is simple. A brother and sister go to a cemetery, and, when the brother is killed by a "ghoul" (amazingly, the film never uses the term "zombie") the sister escapes and finds her way to an abandoned farmhouse where a small groupof survivors has holled up. Romero's
B-movie scenario of walking dead becomes horrifically believable as he shows us a realistic struggle between the characters and the attempts of the athorities to stop the deadly phenominon. The final ten minutes are gripping and show this is one of the most ionfluential horror films of the late 20th century

The quintessential zombie film. It's remarkable how little movie zombies have changed!
http://classicmoviesbuff.blogspot.com/

Great movie (I have the coloured version) You can watch this on a Nokia E75. Just download the MPEG4 file, connect your phone to the computer, drag and drop the file to your memory card. No need to convert the file.

Just so you all will know, I've uploaded the blu-ray version and several derivatives to http://www.archive.org/details/Night.Of.The.Living.Dead_1080p

As have been reported before, the MPEG2 file seems to missing the last 15 mins. of the movie.

The file is only around 3.01GB so it is much less than the actual size of the complete movie.

So if you're thinking of downloading, try some other format unless you want to waste your time with the MPEG2 version.

Anyone know if there is a complete high quality version of this classic movie anywhere else?

Fuck! U R STU-PID!!!!!!

Good movie, almost..

how do i download it??

do i need quicktime pro?? if i do plz give me a link to download it thx.

I have heard from a friend in PA. that the idea for the movie came from seeing a small church and cemetery just down the road from the nuclear plant in Shippingport,PA. I have seen the church and cemetery which is on the south side of the river.

how come i can download DivX and Cinepak but anything else wont connect,i also use Limewire and have no problems with Mpeg ect. Please someone help!

This movie is excellent. It reminds me just how cool and entertaining old-school zombie-flicks can be. The newer zombie films like "Dawn of the Dead" and "Resident Evil" are pathetic compared to this creation.

I love this movie!!!!!!!!!! watch the color version!!!!!!

i have downloaded the movie but cant not play the movie .i tryed the VLC,quickplayer,both dont work.which player is the best

this movie is great . I have nice time with it

The best of the best. This is where it all started. Still chilling forty years later.

GREAT! LOW BUDGET DOES NOT HURT IT ONE BIT.

Check out the cat that keeps tossing down his smokes!

This should be the first movie you download from archive.org. It's fun. It's memorable. It's horror.

ΜΑΡΙΑ

I love this movie. Yes its old. Yes the effects are cheesy. Yes the acting is terrible. But if it weren't for this movie we wouldn't have any zombie movies at all. It is a genius movie.

As for it having "Gory and Graphic violence". I think it could be PG-13 easy. If not at least watch it before you let your kid see it.

***** 5 out of 5 stars.

Night of the Living Dead is very excellent

If you watchthis and enjoy it i recomend getting its sequal "Dawn Of The Dead" the 1970's version. It's way better.

The soundtrack runs around 40 seconds ahead of the picture in the MPEG1 version - rather frustrating

Night of the Living Dead

amazing

veruska

i bought this on a dvd for 1 dollar and i have watched it many times.

Excellent!!! although i don't really understand the ending

Romero is a freaking genius!

wonderful old horor flick in B/W great suspense filled film.

To flbucs1 - under the 'Play/Download' section on the left hand side of the screen, simply right-click on whichever quality version of the film you want to download (the bigger the file, the better the quality) and from the pop-up menu that comes up, choose 'Save Link As' or 'Save target As' or whatever 'save' message appears in your particular browser.

Great film by the way. I saw this when it was first out, and still enjoy seeing it again from time to time - still a very watchable film today, and amazing how such a well-made film was made on an absolute shoestring. Puts the millions spent on the lame movies that make up the majority of recent Hollywood output to shame.

can someone tell me how to download this? I can play it on the screen but I would like to download it. Thanks.

The plot summary here is incorrect that radiation caused this zombie ghoul plague.
Someone on the tv surmises this, but it is not definate.
George Romeros intention was for it be a mystery as to what caused it. But Because its not copywritten, the ideals of those that made it get lost in incorrect plot summary.
This is , always will be a major 'biter' in the film library.
George Romero has gone on to make Dawn of the Dead 1978, Day of the Dead 1985, Remade Night of the Living Dead with Tom Savini directing in 1990 .Land of the Dead 2005 ( I loved it) and due out late this year(2007), Diary of the Dead .
Say what you may, he will always be the father of contemporary zombie horror.
"They're us, thats why its scary."

Still haven't seen the primo print version; most copies seem to emanate from the dupes that have been available for decades. There is a low- audio glitch that turns up in most digital copies, which easily identifies the dupe source. NOTLD has been PD for ages--reportedly, someone just forgot to note any copyright info (let alone register such). I bought a legal 16mm dupe in the latter '70s. Rating for the film itself: haven't viewed this 'print'.

I am sure there are many but only one comes to mind whenever I think about it. I haven't seen the remastered version yet though.

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This has been said before, but Night of the Living Dead is one of my favorite films. This is horror at its unrelenting and powerful best, and it proves you don't need a big budget to make a classic (at least that's what this movie is in my opinion).

Its free here but I would suggest buying the restored DVD (20th Century Fox)

thanx

I appreciate Grimwig's review "The Brilliance of Romero's Social Criticism (SPOILERS)." However, I disagree with him insinuating that Romero "notes the possibility of recovery, though not in the present social institutions, but rather in a nostalgically represented tribal institution". It would be unfair to armed citizens commanded by Sheriff McClelland to call them a tribe, wouldn't it? Nevertheless, we should avoid to contribute to forming the maelstrom of such grave events as New Orleans Hurricane Katrina, post-nuclear nightmare, and attacks from dead locals in Pennsylvania where crisis management becomes necessary. And this is the first message of the film "Night of the Living Dead (1968)." The second message appears at the end of it. Watch the fragment 01:30:44-01:33:00 again and decide who was more incompetent in that crisis situation: Ben or Sheriff McClelland and his subordinates?

This movie is awsome!!! I'm 17 and did not expect it to scare me the way it did. I downloaded it on my sony PSP and it looked realy good to. Get the 256k verson, it looked the best.

I love this movie too. In fact, I saw it at the theater when it first came out! Chills and thrills! It took me a while to get a good nights sleep back then! Lord I'm OLD! If you want a smaller version, go to publicdomaintorrents.com. They have a divx copy. Haven't watched it yet to see how it looks, but most of their movies look pretty good. They have stuff that isn't here yet. I blieve that the Divx movies that have been showing up here came from there. I use UTorren to download from there, some download fairly fast with that program.

It just goes to show.. This older movie is a classic. I watch it until this day..It's still one of the best movies ever made. This is one of those films that you can not re-do. The movie speaks for itself. And i'm a black and white movie buff. I love the oldies..Some of its better than the movies they have out today..

realllllllllllllllllllly gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooood

god,I've looked for this movie in many places(in the websites of my nation) , finally found it here,wooooooooooooooooooooooooow.
I just luv this movie and zombie movies,any1 who 's zombie movie lovers like me here?
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Lovely low budget aesthetic.

abbastanza bello!

For home use

thanx a lot ....

nice movie

When something moves, there is fuzz on the edges. Does anyone know how I can get a better copy of this (still free and in public domain)? I want to show it in public at my school.

super

gooder

this is super

i love this movie...

Very nice movie, don't need to say it's a real classic. Unfortunately the servers are giving me only about 2 KBps download speed on the 4 GB file and after a while the connection breaks down and I have to resume over and over again....too bad.

This movie has a special place in my life. Being poor as a kid, we used to sneak around the back fence of the local outdoor theater (Drive in Movie) to watch the weekly fare. The movie owners knew what we did and allowed it (what the heck let 'em watch). Three of us about ten years old watched this movie one Saturday night at the back fence and at one am had to walk by a graveyard to get home. All I remember is we were scared spitless and somebody yelled something's moving in the grave yard!! Feet don't fail me now....zing...I don't think my feet touched the ground while tearing my little ten year old butt home. Never knew if anything really was lurking about that night and never went back to find out...Night of the Living Dead still scares the bejezzus out of me.

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night of the living dead

I personally would suggest VLC. It is free and plays a lot of types of films.

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

The film... well.. I love it... have seen a lot of times, set only in the 256 Version, but I will download the big movie soon.

Hello,

So far, I'm able to get pretty good audio of this film, and though enjoyable I would love to be able to see it.

I've tried viewing it in WinAmp, Real Player, Quicktime, & Itunes. So Far only audio.

Any suggstions?

Thanks

This film is a classic. Despite its age and low-quality special effects, it far surpasses any of the high-budget zombie movies released in recent years. The plot is interesting and complex, the characters are very real and well-acted, and frankly, the movie is just plain chilling. When I first watched it, I remember thinking a couple minutes in, "There's no way an old black and white zombie film can be that scary." It was very nice to find out I was wrong.

... until I downloaded the mp4 to play on my iPod while riding a ferry. There's something really creepy about sitting in the bowels of a ship while watching this film. Definitely worth the download and plays flawlessly on an iPod video, unlike some of the mp4's on this site.

Classical, "Body Sneachers"-like horror, with rather academic than professional plot of action. High note, because of very nice and thrilling sound, and horrorous camera shoots.

WOW!!! I just wanna say a BIG thank you to the INTERNET ARCHIVE for allowing the high-quality DVD-like download!!!

"Night of the Living Dead" is a great film, and this is basically the best way to get it (without a price) you can find! :-D

The video IS the full movie, and everything else is PERFECTLY fine with the video. Any problems with an error in sound or editing would be due to the original copy, not the file. The file should be 100% fine. There CAN be an error in some programs reading the length of the video, but I assure you, it's fine.

You CAN easily burn it to a DVD using a program (such as neroVision Express, etc.), and it looks incredible! I urge you to do it if you can! :-D

Thanks a lot,
Mike Sorge

Classic horror masterpiece from famed director George A. Romero. The dead return to life and seek human victims. A group of people hide in a farm house and try to stay alive and survive the NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD.

Originally titled "Night of the Flesh Eaters," the filmmakers decided that "Night of the Living Dead" would be a better title, and so it was changed. However, the copyright code was accidentally cut when the new title was put on the print, and thus, the film has fallen into the public domain.

This film stands the test of time purely for its scare factor. Despite it's low budget and very cheap special effects, the film is still very chilling, and is quite possibly one of the scariest films of all time.

As the second-most popular cult film of all time, there are about oh, let's say three million DVD releases for the film, many of which are pure crap.

If you just want the film, this download is the way to go. The recent Millenium Edition DVD from Elite Entertainment is essential for fans of the film for its many extras, including commentary tracks by the cast and crew.

There's also a colorized DVD being released by 20th Century Fox which you may want to pick up for the commentary by comedian Mike Nelson of TV's "Mystery Science Theater 3000."

I'm not trying to promote either one of these releases. Just offering advice for fans of the NIGHT.

Followed by three more movies: DAWN OF THE DEAD, DAY OF THE DEAD, and LAND OF THE DEAD, all of which are copyrighted (Romero learned his lesson after NOTLD came out).

Before beginning this review, I first want to state that I have not read any reviews nor listened to any commentaries on this film. So if what I say is already common knowledge, I hope you will forgive me.
The film 'Night of the Living Dead' is an exceptional tragedy and, I think, a jeremiad. After watching the film, you will have seen not just zombies, but a scathing criticism of social structures followed by a peculiar affirmation of humanity. It seems as if Romero himself was unsure whether to end on a positive or negative note.
The social criticism in this film arises from what may be one of the most powerful satires every presented on film. For the film chooses as the very source of the decay of social structures the keystone of human society. I mean, of course, ceremonial burial. Ceremonial burial is the center, and, next to fire, the beginning of society and culture. For respect for the dead is the recognition of one human being for another that he or she was more than just an animal, a hunk of flesh.
Now in the film, the dead, carefully prepared for burial as a sign of respect, rise and assault other humans. Their treatment of the living is appalling: humans are nothing but hunks of flesh, nay food. Here, then, is the very source of the human institutional society turning against the human. This same theme is mirrored in the tragic death of our protagonist by the human institution designed to save humans. It is perhaps telling, moreover, that fire, the other symbol of society''s beginnings, is the very thing the dead fear.
Furthermore, the dead not only assault other humans, but the sheer mass of them result in the breakdown of human institutions within these areas. For a time, not even the endeared radios and televisions are working. Everyone is surprisingly isolated, with the exception of the film's main characters, who have been forced together into an abandoned home. The irony is that, even within the very house, the characters are isolated. In the basement, unbeknownst to those above for a large portion of the film, are several other people, who make no effort to come to the aid of the others.
A further note on this segregation is that those beneath are those in relationships, including a family. Hence, those engaged in social institutions are put on a level beneath those on the first floor, who are entirely dissociated. Barbara, the female lead above, is mostly devoid of communicative powers, mirroring the televisions and radios. The male lead is, perhaps astonishingly for the time, a Negro. The resultant dichotomy presents an exalting of anarchy. This anarchy is pushed to its limits when the child in the basement slaughters and begins consuming her own parents. Such an image is an image of the complete upset of society. Children turning on parents is lamented as social breakdown as early as Plato.
However, despite all that has happened, human institutions nevertheless adapt and compensate. The resulting institution is one suspiciously resembling tribalism; in other words, man has been reduced to the most primitive mode of social organization. The only distinction between the group in the film and a primitive tribe is the use of modern weapons. Yet, it is still a group of men, with a leader, hunting the enemies of the people.
This, then, is where I detect a note of hope. Romero's aggressive satire becomes a jeremiad when he notes the possibility of recovery, though not in the present social institutions, but rather in a nostalgically represented tribal institution.
In conclusion, this brief and unrefined essay is just that: an essay on a particular theme of the film, necessarily far from comprehensive out of respect to archive.org. My hope, as with all my reviews, is that it enkindles your own reflections on what I conceive to be a film surprisingly rich in meaning. For the theme above is developed to greater complexity in the film, I believe, and other themes may also be present.

There''s a man up ahead..

Indisputable classic of the horror canon, I''ve seen this, maybe 3 times now (after initially dismissing it) and since I KNOW (or sort of know) what''s going to happen, there''s more feeling of dread watching this. I''m presuming you know the story. The living dead come back to life.. something about radiation.. and they come and raise living hell! Plenty of unforgettable moments in this one, most notably Judith O''Dea''s performance at the beginning, and Duane Jones in the end. There''s plenty of neat little flourishes in this that I like, particularily the shift of status many of the characters take, and of course, the obvious race question of not just the ending but the whole movie. This is all quite fascinating and VERY entertaining!

Good

super

A definative "DRIVE-IN CLASSIC", made on a shoestring budget, creating a new vision for the horror film genre.

Amid the shoddy and amateur acting, the film tells the story of "RADIATION FROM SPACE", which transforms corpses into "FLESH EATING ZOMBIES".
George A. Romero breaks the social taboos of the time, creating characters who, commit and suffer the worst of brutalities.

In "ROMERO'S DEAD SOCIETY", no one cares about anyone else. Family bonds don't matter, courage is punished, and logic doesn't solve anything.

THE ONLY RESPONSE IS TO "SCREAM" OR "LAUGH".

AND, THIS FILM PROVIDES PLENTY OF OPPORTUNITIES TO DO BOTH.

An enjoyable old film but a little slow moving.

Atomic rays brought back from a NASA craft returning from Venus cause the recently dead to come back to life and eat people's flesh. Some not-yet-dead people get holed up in a house trying to defend themselves while the living dead wait outside and prepare to attack. Their only hope is for the town's people to come to their rescue!

This film is badly in need of restoration. The film is so old that a dark fuzz appears around some of the characters. Sometimes the movie gets too dark or too light. None of these problems affects the enjoyment of the movie.

Happy and Sad ending. Happy that the living dead are expunged, but sad for all the main characters in the show when the town's people finally come to rescue (or so-called rescue). I never could figure out if the blonde had been contaminated or not (probably so) but then she gets eaten before we really truly find out. Oh well. The gore was just not really disturbing at all to me, but I gues someone might find it slightly disturbing. Everything was decent acting except the young guy with the wife. He was stiff as a board. I enjoyed the news reports part of the movie, they should have done more, it broke up the monotony and gives information about how the disease appears and spreads.

It's not a "great" film and it trudges along slowly like how the living dead do but for the most part is enjoyable and memorable if you don't mind very old b/w movies. After watching you can see why it has such a cult following. As far as zombie movies genre goes this movie probably started it all.

ja, mp4 is really unbearable quality, bad job. all blurred and going against the character of the movie, a real disgrace and should get redone. It's really sad to see how often archivers lack respect and responsibility for the works they are to provide to the public, instead of taking pride in their position and show some expertise.

great film ever!

... but the MPEG2 file needs to be looked at. I downloaded it twice and both times the movie just stopped in the last 15 minutes or so when converted to DVD. I played the original MPEG2 file in several pieces of playback software and had the same thing happen every time: the sound dropped in and out and sputtered (imagine a scratched disk in a set top DVD player, but the picture's continuing just fine) at the same point that the DVD files would just stop. This went on through the rest of the movie.

I just watched the streaming video today. I am a mere couple of hours away from attending the premier of "Land of the Dead". I could not have concieved of a better time to watch this film again. I watched it with a few coworkers and friends and have made a few new recruits.

Even after 37 years, this film still holds up. So many themes are touched upon. From life and death, to sexism and racism, even a bit of classism, Romero skillfully pulls back the curtain on the dark parts of the human race and shines a light on it. Not a big spot light, just a small pen light, so we have to look closely to what he's showing us and get real close up and see that the gut pile in the back corner is our own.

Throughout the triology (so far) human apathy and greed are the killers, not the undead flesheaters. Man refuses to see the killer at hand and deal with it himself. No matter what man does to ensure safety and well being, someone is going to screw it up and it will likely be the ones in authority. At least, the ones that seek to be in authority. This film requires a scale of far more tham five stars to properly rate it.

The file worked just fine for me. I still had to transcode it from the MPEG2 file in Nero to get it to work on a standard DVD, but everything else seems to works great.
As for the movie itself, this is a genre-starter. There was no need for advanced special effects, the entire draw of this movie is the story, the setting, but most importantly the mood. Even if you buy it in the store, watch it on your computer, whatever, this is a great movie that should give you an idea of what can be accomplished with so little.

The file worked just fine for me. I still had to transcode it from the MPEG2 file in Nero to get it to work on a standard DVD, but everything else seems to works great.
As for the movie itself, this is a genre-starter. There was no need for advanced special effects, the entire draw of this movie is the story, the setting, but most importantly the mood. Even if you buy it in the store, watch it on your computer, whatever, this is a great movie that should give you an idea of what can be accomplished with so little.

I just downloaded all 4.1 GB of the MPEG2 video.
The picture quallity is awesome, but there is no sound. I tried 3 different players, and I made sure that media player was up to date.

Any help would be great.
thanx!

I can't download the french sub titles : error 403
Are they available outside ?

Night of the Living Dead is a great horror movie, it's simple, no special SFX but it's really fraightening.

Is it possible to put the Mpeg2 file on a dvd-r and watch it on a dvd-player ?
Thanx

Like another user, wilfredsoutham, I too have downloaded the 4 Gigs worth of mpeg2 overnight, only to find that there is over 1/2 hour missing. The video seemed to run only for 55 minutes.

But on closer scrutiny I discovered that my player's clock was running at a rate of about 0.6 seconds per second. Other video files don't display this strange behaviour...

After de- and re-muxing, I've managed to burn this movie to DVD, and it plays fine on my stand alone DVD player + TV, despite my earlier concerns about NTSC (we're all PALs down ere).

The first time I saw this was on a 12 inch b&w TV and a rental VCP. I was all alone in an el-cheapo hotel. Watched it all the way through, with the lights out. when it was over I looked out the window and saw some bum walking down the road all alone, sort of swaggering. Now, I knew it was just a movie, but for a split second, I was petrified...

If you can suspend your disbelief and just absorb this film, in the end, you will have what I like to call "the willies".

If you look at the thumbnails from the film (which are automatically derived from the MPEG-2 file), you'll see that the film is complete all the way to the end credits.

I have just wasted 24hours and 4gigs of bandwidth downloading the MPEG2 version of this film only to find that the final 15 or so minutes of it is missing! Do not make the same mistake I did, download some other format!

They are back and in the government!

Anything less than 5 stars and you just don't get it. The "cornyness" is why it's good the whole thing ends up being really creepy. No one-liners or gimicky signature "masks". Think about when this movie was made and you will realize just how great this piece of genre is. Watch it and decide for yourself!

Just a note to tell you guys that the *.mp4 version has terrible image quality. I hope that the mpeg2 format is better...coz it'll take me HOURS to download. If it is better, I'll try to convert it to divx or soething if anyone is interested. ;-)

Romero's stark conception remains an expression of our fears about not having made peace with the dead. In Antigone and Hamlet, the actual death of a brother or father has not been matched with appropriate burial rites. The dead return to figuratively or literally haunt the living until this symbolic debt is paid. In Night of the Living Dead, the zombies are not evil, since they desire nothing; they are unwilling embodiments of the breakdown in the symbolic order which has failed to make their deaths meaningful. Like Hitchcock's The Birds, this film is a psychotic episode in which Oedipal guilt and resentment of maternal law are physically incarnated as a struggle to survive. The characters are caught in a melodramatic obsession with destroying living corpses in a gruesome game of capture the flag. This pretext masks Ben's melancholic identification with the unstoppable, Terminator-like drive of the dead, vs. the impotent desires of the living.

Romero and his disciples like Raimi somehow missed the point of their own beginnings and went on to make ludicrous self-parodic gorefests in the 70's and 80's (e.g. Evil Dead, the most trivializing title imaginable for a horror film). But the problem of the "living dead" remains--we must incorporate them into our cultural narrative, at our own psychic peril. The daily death toll from the invasion of Iraq comes to mind.

This film was so bad and corny it was fun to find thing's to notice.
It could be used as a training film for many of our goverment departments and local goverment departments to show how they appear to us, most seem to be oxygen thiefs.

This is an especially good time to be re-viewing this movie, with "28 Days Later" and the remake of "Dawn of the Dead" bringing the zombie theme back into the theaters.

It's a powerful little movie, not so much scary as disturbing. The undead ghouls have a strangely mournful quality: their arms reach out longingly, and they utter these strange, wistful sighs. The besieged living are, as frequently mentioned, unsympathetic: with the exception of Tom and Judy they seem generally dead inside, at least to feeling.

Unlike the remake of "Dawn of the Dead," this movie and its sequel suggest that there's not a lot to choose between being alive or dead. But whereas Romero's original "Dawn" offered its horrors in lurid colour to grotesque and satiric effect, this movie, with its black-and-white countryside gives us a sinister air of darkness and gloom.

A tremendously influential film that still has the power to unsettle.

If there is one talky horror film that should be seen as a classic, it is definatly this one. The undead are not huge works of special effects, nor are they anything other than lumbering beasts. But the threat they pose is well demonstrated - the film makes them feel unstoppable and relentless and makes their lingering presence more menacing and less comical than it could have been. The use of an unknown cast also makes it more realistic as none of them have any baggage. Duane Jones is the standout actor as Ben - who is not without flaws himself.

The downbeat, realistic atmosphere to the film gives it a greater sense of tension and continues right through to the very depressing conclusion. An excellent flagship for low budget horrors.