Night of the Living Dead
How do you review the movie which single-handedly spun the zombie horror archetype?
Simple - I don’t, and never will - we are talking about Night of the Living Dead here not Zombies Gone Wild.
Written by George A. Romero and John A. Russo this film is where everything started - everything this blog is about, this film invented the zombie.
Ok, ok, before I get accused of being wrong on the internet - zombies have been around for ages before Night of the Living Dead - as Haitian Voodo Zombies and in various mythology - and the writers did borrow and build on the apocalypse theme laid out in Richard Matheson’s I am Legend (Now starring Will Smith!) but for all intents and purposes these guys brought it all together in 1968, and spawned the shambling, decaying, cannibalistic creature - which still scares us today.
And, its public domain.
This means that you can watch the catalyst for the entire zombie horror genre, its all its black and white majesty, from the comfort of your own computer.
Watch it at Google Video, The Internet Archive, or YouTube.
Or right here.
Hello to all the fans reading this comment. I’m on mission to set the record straight on this zombie/ghoul thing. While I am overwhelmed by fan knowledge of Night of the Living Dead the zombie terminology is wrong. Did he say we are all wrong? Is he nuts?
Well in fact I’m not, never is the word zombie ever referred to in the film and there several references to ghoul’s, but never zombies. It wasn’t until later Dead films the media chose to use zombie in its terminology. I’m not sure why they did that GHOUL is a much better word IMHO.
A new festival and website in honor of the 40th is being launching this weekend in Evans City PA. This whole zombie ghoul thing will get some attention on our site. It’s not a huge thing but I’d like to get it straight.
Gary Streiner
Brother of Johnny and one of the original Image Ten makers of the film
TheLivingDeadFest.com
Respect the dead.
Comment by gary — September 19, 2008 @ 7:40 pm
Hello Gary,
That is very interesting! I did not even realize the creatures were called ghoul’s (However Frog has since corrected me) and this zombie/ghoul misscommunication existed between the producers of the show and the media/fans.
I’ll be sure to read more about this contention when it is posted on your site.
I’m also really interested in hearing more about the Living Dead Festival - the web page you linked had very little information about it and I would definitely like to hear more from a reputable source. If you could post some more information here, or email it to me at sean@zombiesbite.com It would be great!
Comment by Sean — September 20, 2008 @ 12:09 am
Sean, hit the site again we just launched at about 2:30 PM today. I will be happy to come back here for more chat but it might not be for a little while. You can probably understand the time involved in setting this whole thing up. And we are doing it on our own no big sponsors. We don’t want no stinking bosses.
Gary Streiner
Respect the dead
thelivingdeadfest.com
g.streiner@thelivingdeadfest.com
Comment by gary — September 20, 2008 @ 10:07 am
[...] So, in order to jump up and down of this bandwagon of funny - we have put together a couple of LOLGhouls - taken from stills of the public domain Night of the Living Dead! [...]
Pingback by Zombies Bite » LOLGhouls — April 5, 2009 @ 1:09 pm
[...] So, in order to jump up and down of this bandwagon of funny — we have put together a couple of LOLGhouls — taken from stills of the public domain Night of the Living Dead! [...]
Pingback by Zombies Bite! » Blog Archive » LOLGhouls — December 9, 2009 @ 2:54 pm