A look Back: Night of the Living Dead

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*photo from mentalfloss.com*
     "Night of the Living Dead" is the film that started the Zombie genre. Before 1968 the word didn't really pertain to film. It really was not until the posters came out for the sequel "Dawn of the Dead", that the term came to furunition.  How good is it?
    Several people lock themselves inside a farm house to try  to survive the night. Outside;  hordes of  zombies who are only killed by destroying the brain.
  I very much loved the fact that a black man was cast in the lead of the film. Duane Jones who plays Ben, is also the actor of the film.  At this time in history, this was completely unheard of unless your name was Sidney Poiter. It was a way great to show up the society they were living in at the time. There is a lot of talk about the social commentary that people seem to find for the film. This be surrounding the ending of the film. It does give a very Black vs white vibe off for it. This was how it was in the day.  Director George Romero  did say that he did not go out looking for a black actor for the role of Ben. It does make me wonder if it was more of a coincidence that it came across that way. Perhaps it was written that way later. That is something I would have to do more research to find out. 
  There is one thing that really did bother me about this film is the first two deaths of the film. I won't give away any spoilers for those that have not seen it. Even for 1968 what happens should have been obvious enough to not happen.
   With the exception of this certain scene I discussed, this is a good film. I love the simplicity of the zombies. It does not rely on the zombies to make a good story. Paranoia is used to try to rip the group apart. Getting off track, this does rank among the greats.
GRADE: B+   

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