Day 3, Night of the Living Dead

In Night of the Living Dead,the unburied dead are walking and seeking human victims. They could be your neighbor, they could be anyone. The terror was right next door to you, and it was hungry for your flesh. Damned Communists, they were everywhere in 1968, but now they want to eat you. Director George Romero offered little explanation to the horror of his ghouls, but he did hint that that radiation caused his ghouls to walk. A common theme in 1968, what could be worse then radiation? Aunt Bertha returning from the dead to eat your face, that’s what could be worse!

Romero used some pretty basic and stereotypical archetypes, yet made one deviation. Romero cast the leader as a black man. In 1968 this was shocking, it stood out like a sore thumb and audiences loved it. Once the characters realize that they are trapped by a small army of ghouls, tension mounts. The story ceases to be a struggle of life vs. death, but a fight for possession of the only rifle in the house, and people begin to make mistakes. One by one they begin to die, not due to bullets but due to human flaws and the tearing mouths of the ghouls.