Night of the Living Dead

Last night I was watching the movie Night of the Living Dead, directed by George A Romero, which was first released in 1968. In the movie, the bodies of the recently dead have started to walk around with a single-minded hunger for living human flesh. Anyone who is killed becomes one of the walking dead. The only way to kill them is to either destroy or sever the brain from the body. The story focuses on a small group of survivors who hole up in a deserted farmhouse and basically have to stay alive long enough to either summon help or figure out a way to escape. The film was made on a very low-budget in black and white by Romero and a group of his friends with the help of the Romero's employers at the time, a Pittsburgh TV advertising company. The story was basically written as something that could be shot very cheaply with the limited resources they had available. The film has become one of the all-time cult classics and has been copied, parodied, mocked and referenced countless times. It has also been remade at least twice with another one the way. However the movie remains extremely effective, in a way because it is so stripped down basically to it's essentials, and because it takes place almost entirely in the farmhouse with the cameras almost pressed up to the actor's faces, it is genuinely claustrophobic. By modern standards, the film is relatively tame in regards to violence, with much of it taking place off-screen, although there are still plenty of shocking moments. The movie was the first of Romero's Dead series, which continued with Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, Land of the Dead, Diary of the Dead and the upcoming Survival of the Dead.

It was another freezing cold day with the streets covered in ice. Work was really dull as usual, and I was glad to get home. I bought a fish supper on my way back. It has felt like a really long week.