The night of the living dead

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Movie
German title The night of the living dead
Original title Night of the Living Dead
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1968
length 96 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director George A. Romero
script George A. Romero
John A. Russo
production Karl Hardman ,
Russell Streiner
music William Loose
camera George A. Romero
cut George A. Romero,
John A. Russo
occupation
chronology

Successor  →
Zombie

FSK card of the film

The night of the living dead (Original title: Night of the Living Dead ) is an American horror film from 1968 by George A. Romero . It has been a cult film since the 1980s and was included in the film collection of the Museum of Modern Art . Since 1999 the film has been registered in the National Film Registry as a cultural asset worth preserving.

This film is the first in a six-part series of zombie films by the director. The black and white film, shot as a leisure project on a minimal budget, is considered a milestone in the horror genre, which steered the zombie subgenre in a new direction. Although zombies appeared long before in film history, the undead were not depicted here for the first time as magical , mindless voodoo slaves, but as the living dead rising from the graves on their own.

action

The siblings Barbra and Johnny visit their father's grave. In the cemetery they are attacked by a sinister, pale man for no reason. Johnny is thrown to the ground by this man and remains motionless. Now the man tries to attack Barbra. She flees in a panic and has to leave her brother behind.

After trying to escape with the car, but having an accident with it, she finally reaches a nearby, apparently abandoned farmhouse where she is hiding. There she discovers the corpse of a woman whose face has been cruelly battered. Shortly afterwards, the Afro-American Ben arrives there, who is also on the run, but whose getaway car now has an empty tank. He finds a completely distraught Barbra who is beginning to lose her mind. Ben tells of his escape, during which he saw many men who behaved similarly to the one in the cemetery. The farmhouse is also constantly attacked by them. Ben has to kill some of them.

After makeshift security of the house, Barbra and Ben notice five people who have barricaded themselves in the basement. They are Harry and Helen Cooper and their daughter, who was bitten by an undead and now sick and weakened, has to be cared for by her parents, and the young couple Tom and Judy.

It quickly comes to a conflict between Harry and Ben. Ben is furious that the group hid in the basement for so long instead of helping him secure the house. There is also a dispute about how to proceed: While Ben would prefer to stay on the ground floor of the farmhouse in order to be able to observe what is going on outside the house and to be able to escape at any time, Harry really wants to hide in the basement and just go there Help waiting. Ben appears as a man of action who tries to actively master the situation and also to save the others, while Harry only cares for his own well-being and that of his family.

From radio and television they learn that, for reasons as yet unknown, the recently deceased have started to rise and attack people in order to eat their meat. A little later, all suspicions directed at the Venus - spacecraft , which unexpectedly after one year, successful mission on the way back to Earth brought an unknown, high-intensity radiation, prompting scientists this blew up in the atmosphere before its landing. This mysterious, incessantly rising radiation is believed to be responsible for the resuscitating "mutations" and apparently affects the brains of the newly deceased. The resulting undead can only be stopped by destroying their brains. The resurrection of fresh corpses can only be stopped by cremation. In addition, it is shown on television that a vigilante group has formed.

Ben, Tom and - since she cannot part with her lover as a strongly emotional woman - also Judy try to refuel Ben's car at a nearby gas pump and then drive to the next place. Tom and Judy are killed in an explosion and Ben's car is destroyed. The zombies eat their bodies, and Ben just barely makes it back to the farmhouse - one of the reasons why Harry Cooper is afraid not to open it.

The disputes now escalate so much that Ben finally shoots Harry Cooper and he falls down the stairs to the basement in his extended agony. There his daughter has now turned into a zombie and partially eats Harry up. Helen Cooper discovers this gruesome scene. Although she could still save herself, given her daughter, she cannot think of an escape in time. She is stabbed to death with a trowel by the zombie who was once her daughter.

Meanwhile, the number of undead trying to break into the farmhouse has increased so much that they manage to break in the barricaded windows and doors on the first floor. Barbra is dragged into the bloodthirsty pack of the undead by the zombie who was once her brother. Ben, who previously vehemently rejected the cellar as a place of escape, can only barely escape there, has to shoot the Coopers, who have just turned into zombies, in the head and now hope to be saved alone.

The next morning the zombie-hunting vigilante group that was previously shown on TV fought its way to the farmhouse. When Ben hears them, he comes out of his basement hiding place and looks out a window. When the zombie hunters see him, they mistake him for an undead and shoot him in the head. During the end credits, you can see Ben's body being pulled onto a pyre with burning zombies using a meat hook.

production

With a modest budget of an estimated $ 114,000 from private investors, filming began in June 1967 in Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania . The music used in the film cost a total of $ 1,500 and is from the archives of Capitol Records Hi-Q stock . In order to keep the budget within limits, Romero shot the film with the help of acquaintances and friends. Since those involved were only available in their free time, the filming had to be interrupted several times.

It premiered on October 1, 1968 at the Fulton Theater in Pittsburgh. The film opened in German cinemas on March 18, 1971.

right

The title of the film was Night of the Flesh Eaters until shortly before it was released . However, there was already a film with the same title. Following threats from the producers of this film, the title was changed to Night of the Living Dead . The first distributor of the film, the Walter Reade Organization , had to change the title. When replacing, Reade forgot to show a copyright notice, which was still included in the original title sequence. Since this was still necessary at that time under US American copyright law in order to obtain the copyright on a work, The Night of the Living Dead is in the public domain in the USA .

Versions

  • The original version was published in 1968 without rating; today it is over 16 years released . There is also a colored version of it, in which a scene of around eight seconds is missing, which the manufacturer has probably simply forgotten.
  • A German dubbed version was released in German cinemas on March 18, 1971 by CS-Verleih. The Rated then demanded some cuts, according to which a period of 93 minutes yielded.
  • A version shortened to about 90 minutes was shown on US television.

30th Anniversary Edition

On January 24, 2003, the Buchholz Media Distribution (MIB) published the 30th Anniversary Edition in Germany. To do this, 15 minutes of the original were cut out and around 15 minutes of newly shot footage was added (around 92 minutes). This version was rated 18+.

At the end of December 2009, the Federal Testing Office for Media Harmful to Young People (BPjM) put the Anniversary Edition on list B of the list of media harmful to young people. If the BPjM initially stated that the indexing had been carried out because of a mix-up with Tom Savini's remake (see section Remakes ), and announced a deletion from the list for January 2010, it was announced shortly afterwards that the indexing would remain, as the US had the same content -american edition was confiscated by the Tiergarten District Court on May 9, 2000 (Az .: 349 Gs 1913/00).

The reason given by the court was that the film had already been indexed and confiscated in several editions. Apparently the AG Tiergarten confused the film with the aforementioned remake, which was first confiscated on March 28, 1996.

Reviews

“A milestone in American film. Not suitable for every taste, the film is nevertheless an important and masterfully staged horror piece. "

- The Motion Picture Guide

"[...] initially discriminated as a stomach-turning unsavory horror spectacle, today accepted shocker as a cult film that gave the genre new impulses."

- Adolf Heinzlmeier and Berndt Schulz in the dictionary "Films on TV"

“... In recent times the brutal and sadistic elements are increasingly displacing the ethnographic and mythical aspects of the voodoo cult, which is only used as a pretext to bring bloodthirsty details into the picture. Night of the Living Dead (1968 - director: George A. Romero) is just as good an example as a number of the new Spanish horror films. "

- Jung / Weil / Seeßlen

"Romero's gruesome horror film, classified by critics as a banal and brutal bit of disgust after its premiere, later became a cult film."

- Lexicon of international film

Remakes

In 1990 Tom Savini , who worked in Romero's sequel in 1978 , shot a remake called The Return of the Undead , which is very similar to the original in terms of the actual story, but in which the characters are cast differently and which differ significantly from the original due to a different ending differs.

Another remake was released in 2006 under the title Night of the Living Dead 3D . Directed by Jeff Broadstreet . In 2012 James Plumb shot Night of the Living Dead: Resurrection, a British remake of the film, and moved the story to Wales. Matt Cloude began shooting a remake of the classic in the form of an independent film in 2012 . Judith O'Dea, Barbra from Romero's Original, and actor Mike Christopher from Zombie play the leading roles. A release is planned for 2015 with the title Night of the Living Dead: Genesis .

Sequels

Both Romero and John A. Russo independently wrote sequels to The Night of the Living Dead . While Romero was working on his own script for a sequel as a zombie ( Dawn of the Dead ), Russo's script was bought by Tom Fox. He gave the script to Dan O'Bannon , who rewrote it heavily and built in more humor because he didn't want to compete with Romero. The result was the film Damn, the zombies are coming ( The Return of the Living Dead ), which only loosely refers to The Night of the Living Dead and in which, among other things, the zombies behave differently.

Musical adaptation

The two executive directors of Nictophobia Films, Chris Harrison and Phil Pattison, brought the film to the stage as a play . George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead Live premiered in April 2013 in Toronto .

literature

Web links

Commons : Night of the Living Dead  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ ButtHead88: Comparison of the color and black and white version . In: schnittberichte.com . June 13, 2008, archived from the original on January 15, 2011 ; accessed on January 15, 2011 : “The colorized version cannot be described as completely uncut, because 8 seconds are missing after a scene change. This error is again due to sloppy work on the part of the manufacturer. "
  2. Jump up ↑ Night of the Living Dead - 30th Anniversary Edition. In: Cinefacts .de. Archived from the original on February 3, 2010 ; Retrieved February 3, 2010 .
  3. ↑ Night of the Living Dead indexing remains for the time being. In: schnittberichte.com . January 8, 2010; archived from the original on February 3, 2010 ; Retrieved February 3, 2010 .
  4. ↑ p. 594 f. (Rating: 3 stars = very good)
  5. ↑ p. 461
  6. ↑ The Night of the Living Dead. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  7. ↑ Another Night of the Living Dead Remake in 2012. Archived from the original on June 14, 2015 ; Retrieved August 20, 2015 .
  8. ^ George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead Live. Retrieved July 17, 2019 .