Zombies in short pants

In light of the recent success of the "War of the Worlds Z", I wanted to return to the origins of zombie movies, look at the childhood of this genre, how and why films made by amateur enthusiasts who do not have Brad Pitt in the bins, millions of dollars and heaped special effects, became successful, cult and loved by many generations of spectators.

"The Night of the Living Dead" - the first Romero film that opened him the way to the big cinema, the first film of the subgenre of "zombie films", opened the road to the living dead in the movie, one of the most famous and lucrative brands, which, due to the slowness of its creators, turned out to be a public good, therefore, it sold so many direct quotes and borrowings. In addition, this cheap and lurid film was included in the National Film Registry, which includes masterpieces that have had the greatest impact on the culture of their time. But he was cursed and hated, the creators were reckoned among the devil worshipers, the moralists demanded that the film be withdrawn from the cinemas, no studio wanted to buy it, but eventually was named a national treasure and a classic. Yes, life sometimes surprises.

Before Romero, the most famous film, which can be considered a film about ghouls, was the "White Zombie" with White Lugosi. But there zombies did not eat anything and were stupefied slaves of a crazy sorcerer. The Second World War moved the arrows of spectator interest to "external invasion", and the main enemies of mankind were strangers from the Cosmos. Romero also originally wanted to shoot a film about aliens in the style of "Invasion of Body Snatchers," and make it almost a comedy, but the script was copied so many times that eventually dead men appeared in it. In the 60s, after Hitchcock's maniacs and repeated "retellings" of stories about Dracula, Frankenstein and werewolves, the audience was already ready for something new. And the dead Romero became for them a vital vaccination of fear. Alive and at the same time dead, a terrible parody of a man, undead, a shell - a former friend, relative, neighbor, senselessly bloodthirsty and frenziedly purposeful, arising wherever there is death, virtually immortal, and guided only by the instinct of saturation. It was really scary.

Although fundamentally new in the film, Romero was nothing. The methods of injecting the voltage were Hitchcock. The scheme echoed the "Invasion of Body Snatchers" and the "War of the Worlds", above all, attempts to give science fiction to science fiction. Romero tried to explain the phenomenon of zombies by some cosmic radiation, introduced an element of "reporting", tried to get as far away from mysticism. When you watch, you get the feeling that the movie is the least scared to scare. Of course, this is not so. Just a small budget brought in the wishes of the creators of their corrections, but, unlike the current treschedelov, Romero acted wisely, focusing on the intra-human conflict, leaving the zombies only a terrible circumstance that brought together the effeminate fool, the clerk, the Negro worker, the teenager with his girl and disappointed in her husband's woman. In extreme circumstances, people reveal themselves from a completely different angle, and it's even more interesting to watch a Negro and clerical conflict than to watch how rather bad actors portray that they are allegedly eating human flesh.

The fact that the film is absolutely not terrible now is a fact. And there is not much interesting in it - too often everything that has been shown has happened in other films. Actors either do not finish acting, or replay. Many of the notions are stiff and seem to be impossible silly (like a scene with a zombie-killing girl). When interacting with the dead, the characters do not even think of fighting back, as if their bodies are not familiar with the adrenaline rush in critical situations. It is not necessary to consider all the absurdities of this film - he is glued from them and now looks tongue-tied, ridiculous and naive, like a children's fairy tale. At the same time, you are well aware of its continuing significance and legitimate place in the pantheon of the classics of the genre. It is clear that in 1968 these shortcomings were simply not noticed, and now the eye fixes them more as a matter of habit, because in the end you still give in to the black and white charm of this film and the incorruptible honesty of its creators. Surprising and creative will to create a socially significant work - the current semi-krioksovye horror, focused on popkorozhuyuschego viewer, may be much more spectacular and look better, but, honestly, not often in this genre you start to think that no one will solve for you your problems - neither the government nor the army, that everything must be done by oneself, even in a global catastrophe, that your life is not dear to anyone except you. Sometimes the mirage of victory is only the veil of the road to destruction, and death does not distinguish between races, creeds and genders, and only from the dead do you know what can be expected in this crazy world.

Surprisingly, the picture sometimes rises to philosophical generalizations, and gets for it from me the title of "film of unrealized designs", because Romero clearly had much more in his head than he could express for the meager means. Later, he corrected his shortcomings and created spectacular sequels, which became his highest achievement in the movie, well, and this film, although much older and already considerably worn out (unlike, say, Hitchcock's tapes or "Rosemary's Baby" of the same year) with a necessary share of love for the classics looks pretty good, although boring. Dynamics and more vigorous editing of the film would not be prevented.

In the "Night" just fly direction - it really was at that time an original and unofficial film. Romero has found a recipe that allowed to bake a cake that has come to taste at the same time aesthetes, critics and fans of horror and violence. Yes, in the 60s the film seemed hopelessly pessimistic and full of violence - after all, most of the horror audience at that time was children and adolescents. Of course, both they and their parents were shocked by what they saw. Critic Roger Ebert in his article about the film recalled that the typical pleasure from this film the teenagers did not get then, and the halls left with tears in their eyes.

There is something else. It so happened that I, before seeing the film, read the book, which is a novelization of the script by Romero and Rousseau. After it, watching a movie is quite difficult - for the reason that our imagination is much stronger than the images created by any director. Brightly and powerfully painted in the book, horrors at reading acted at times more than when viewed.

The film opened the way for a huge number of filmmakers, for the most part hackers, who were attracted to the zombie theme, basically, its quick and cheap implementation. What Romero tried to get rid of and what was an insurmountable obstacle for him at the time was the main feature of filmmakers imitating him. What would they do without Romero and his ghouls? What would we do? At a minimum, many excellent films would be lost, for which it is worthy to thank the restless Romero and his powerful and helpless movie.

7 out of 10