Today, when we think of zombies in movies, the image that is conjured in our minds is almost invariably of mindless, gibbering, decaying reanimated corpses doomed to feast on the living to survive. Although they tend to carry slight variations from movie to movie, there are a few qualities that have become standard.
For instance, they either run like they are mildly sedated (The Walking Dead) or with a superhuman speed (28 Days Later and Train to Busan), but their end goal is same: they want a piece of you. A bite from them usually turns a human into one of them. And also, a headshot from a firearm or piercing their head appears to kill them for good.
Stories about zombies or with zombies in them are all the rage today. South Korean entertainment industry has successfully cashed in on to this trend with films like Train to Busan and late 16th century-set TV series Kingdom.
But none of them would exist if not for late George A. Romero. The filmmaker, who would have been 82 today, is often called the father of the zombie film genre, and for good reason.
It is not as though there had been no zombie movies before (1941’s King of the Zombies comes to mind) Romero arrived on the scene, but it was his debut 1968 feature Night of the Living Dead that crafted the modern template of the genre.
The film is remembered as one of the first independent movies in the United States, those made from outside the studio system.
Ghouls in Night of the Living Dead. (Photo: Continental Distributing)
For a modern movie buff, the film is recognisably a zombie outbreak film. It is full of characteristics that would later become tropes of the genre. But imagine the moviegoers in the late 1960s, for whom these shambling cannibalistic monsters trying to take over the humanity were a fresh experience.
Despite familiar aspects, dated effects and cinematography, the film still works largely because Romero, with this film and many of his future projects, always tried to instill an undertone of social commentary. Basically he was Jordan Peele before Peele was even born.
Romero started it. pic.twitter.com/i4dnxi8EFV
— Jordan Peele (@JordanPeele) July 16, 2017
(As seen in the above tweet, Peele acknowledged the original social horror filmmaker as a tribute to Romero when he died)
For instance, Night of the Living Dead had an African-American primary character Ben, played by Duane Jones, which was not just rare but almost non-existent in a project otherwise populated with white actors. Although, Romero later insisted that the casting was the result of Jones simply acing his audition, it was nonetheless a revolutionary move.
It helps that zombie myths originate from black cultures. As explained above the word itself is derived from Haiti folklore’s “zombi”. In those stories zombies are corpses reanimated using black magic that are made to do the bidding of the one who has power over them (as opposed to most modern zombie media, wherein they are often a result of a failed scientific experiment or an outbreak of a virus, and these sort can’t be controlled.
So while the casting of a black actor may have been accidental, the way his character was written was clearly Romero’s deliberate choice. His genius has always been to make viewers peel off the narrative layers to find the subtext. Nothing is upfront. Unlike most black characters of that era, Ben was smart and resourceful, able to quickly grasp situations and find a way out. He was not a token supporting black characters that are still common.
But it was his tragic death at the end of the movie that makes Night of the Living Dead one of the most iconic horror films. After surviving the whole film, Ben comes out of the cellar he is hiding in when he hears gunfire and sirens. But he is shot and killed as the law enforcement mistake him for a ghoul (as the zombies are called in the movie). His corpse is burned with the rest.
Night of the Living Dead was released during a fraught time in American history, when the struggles of African-American for civil rights and basic dignities were turning violent, this image, this final scene, struck a chord. Had a white actor been the movie’s lead, it would not have that extra layer to the narrative that Duane’s very presence brought.
Romero went on to direct several great zombie movies in his career after Night of the Living Dead, but it is his debut, genre-defining feature that rightfully remains his best-known work.