When I was living in New York City, my best friend, Teddy, called to tell me there was some new horror movie playing in a single theater at midnight in Greenwich Village that we had to go see. So, without question (he was my best friend), with my girlfriend, Linda, we boarded the subway heading into Manhattan. To make things more interesting, Linda had harvested a crop of Brooklyn homegrown from her Marine Park garden and brought it along.

With a handful of curious others scattered about the dark little theater, a giant joint of stink weed passing between us, we sat back, beginning to feel mellow, unaware that we were about to see what was destined to become one of the classic horror films of all times: Night of the Living Dead.

At first, we thought we were going to be ripped off when a grainy, black and white film, looking more like a home movie, filled the screen. We looked at each other thinking, what the hell?

The film started with Johnny and Barbara visiting their dead father's grave at an isolated cemetery. Their car radio gives the first hint "things ain't right" when, just before they exit the automobile, the radio crackles on and we hear the announcer saying something about being off the air due to technical problems. (Also, take note of the low angle on a tree looming over the couple before the camera angle goes to eye-level to bring us along.) Thunder sounds and lightening flashes in the distance as the duo venture into the graveyard and a lone figure appears, wandering in the background (and the camera angle goes oblique). Note: For more on camera angles read my article, Frames of Reference.

After some brother-sister teasing, Johnny frightens Barbara with the now classic line, "They're coming to get you, Barbara." And upon seeing the figure in the background drawing closer, Johnny adds, "There's one now. He's coming to get you."

Feeling rather happy about now, Teddy, Linda and I started laughing at the teasing. It was funny. Besides, we didn't know what to make of this film. Maybe it was supposed to be a comedy. When suddenly, the man draws close and attacks Barbara. Johnny intervenes but is thrown to the ground, hitting his head on a grave marker. Our communal laughter hung in our throats as the stranger (who walked kinda funny) chased Barbara through the graveyard to her car. Without her keys, she unlocks the break, rolling away with the crazy stranger in pursuit.

What's really interesting about the unfolding plot is that neither we, the audience, nor the characters know what's really going on; assuming it's some nut on the loose as Barbara manages to escape to an isolated farmhouse of shadow-draped rooms, complete with oblique angles dominating a low angle of the house. 

She manages to find a knife in the kitchen and wanders about the floor in a daze as the stranger bumps around outside, accidentally (?) disconnecting the phone wires. Now the phone is dead and she is isolated as more of these strangers arrive.

Wandering upstairs, she comes upon a desiccated body at the top of the stairs as we also wonder what the hell is going on? But there's no stopping for explanations. Barbara runs from the house into the arms of . . . another stranger, who scoops her up and drags her back into the house. Shit, I'm thinking, one of the nuts has her.

By now, Barbara is dazed and mute. The man (who happens to be Black, which at the time didn't strike me as important) asks about and tries the phone, telling her they have to get away. So, he's not one of them! Sigh of relief. 

Barbara ends up standing in the hall where blood drips onto her hand and she finally screams out (along with me in the audience), "What's happening?" (Accented by oblique angles to emphasize how we're all feeling about now).

The Black guy (Ben), sharing our frustration, runs outside to attack the lumbering strangers with a crowbar. But his blows have no affect (more oblique angles) until he stabs one of them in the forehead, finally killing him. However, with this minor victory come more strangers from the shadows. Ben (and I) realize they're trapped (as the music accentuates the point).

Ben sets a chair on fire, which seems to hold off the growing mob. Ah, they're afraid of fire. Realizing they're trapped, he begins turning the lights on, looking for nails and boards to barricade them inside the isolated farmhouse as Barbara turns on a music box adding a sudden sense of surrealism to the film. Ben's frantic handiwork is accented with more oblique angles.

Feeling secure for the moment, (remember, we've barricaded ourselves) Ben tells Barbara how he ended up there after (what he now refers to as) those things attacked a diner. (Notice how the strangers have now become things. I certainly did.) Barbara manages to relate her experience in the cemetery but becomes hysterical. Ben smacks her (and me) to our senses, knocking Barbara out and generating some comic relief for my Greenwich Village audience. I think we even started passing the joint again, remembering we had it. 

Soon, a discovered radio reports "an emerging epidemic of mass murders by an army of unknown assassins affecting 1/3rd of the country." The announcer adds, "The safest course of action is to stay where you are!" 

Right now, I'm thinking, I ain't movin.

But Romero won't let me have any peace. As Ben continues securing the house, we're privy to a hidden door. Shit, Ben didn't see it! Ben scurries about the rooms while the radio in the background blurts phrases like, "reign of terror . . . national emergency . . . obscure kind of conspiracy." 

At least I know I'm not alone; no one knows what the hell is going on. 

Then we hear from the radio: " . . . evidence of victims partially devoured," as Ben whisks the dead body from the top of the stairs . . . partially devoured. I'm making the obvious connections as the radio also announces, " . . . killing and eating the flesh of people they kill." The joint goes out.

Before I can warn Ben or Barbara about the hidden door, it suddenly bursts open and two strangers emerge. I'm so relieved when they speak. They aren't going to eat anyone. I take a breath and am introduced to Harry Cooper and Tom. We also learn Harry's wife, Helen, is in the basement with their injured daughter, and Tom's girlfriend, Julie.

Now, in addition to the conflict from without (man-eating crazies trying to break into the house), Romero adds conflict within as Ben and Harry argue about how to handle their predicament (This "inner-circle conflict" plot devise always works well as is evident in James Cameron's Aliens, 1986, and John Carpenter's, The Thing, 1982.) Harry makes his now famous warning, "We have to go back into the cellar. It's safer down there," words that will come back to haunt us. 

Ben refuses, arguing there's no way out of the cellar, they'd be trapped. He wants to take his chances where he is. I agree with Ben, after all, I'm trapped with these people, right?

Again, no rest for the wicked as a thing reaches through the window amid oblique angles and gunshots (Ben had found a rifle, which Harry keeps eying.) But body shots have no effect; only a gunshot to the head stops the thing. The mob outside is growing. Ben lays claim to upstairs, while Harry lays claim to the basement, widening their rift. 

I'll admit, I began to dislike Harry, especially after even his wife yells at him.

About now Ben and Tom find a television set. The news comes on and reports, " . . . not mass hysteria . . . but creatures that feast on the flesh of their victims. Unburied dead are returning to life! Here are the rescue station locations. Go there!"

Now we all know, they're un-dead creatures and we need to get out of the house!

Ben and Tom (and even Harry) heard what they need to do, but there's no gas in Ben's truck. As they plan how to get to a gas pump out back and make fire bombs to throw at the creatures, a very realistic television news program mentions things about an explorer probe to Venus and high levels of radiation as very real looking military types and scientists argue the point. But we all know about the evils of radiation. 

By now, I believe I'm actually watching the news when the interview turns to a doctor advising anyone injured by one of the creatures to seek medical help. Here we learn Harry's daughter was bitten and is sick, as the television program argues about what to do with "the dead" who must be "burned immediately, taken out to the street and doused with gasoline. There is no time for the families to make funeral arrangements. (And the now classic line) It's just dead flesh . . . and it's dangerous!"

I imagine dousing my dead relatives with gasoline on 64th Street in Brooklyn.

The plan is set. Ben and Tom will fight their way to the truck while Harry tosses firebombs at the creatures. They'll fill the truck with gasoline and come back for the others.

Ben and Tom head for the truck with Harry tossing bombs. But wait, Judy suddenly joins them (after Harry locks her out). So with Ben in the back of the pickup truck, they head for the gas pump with the undead-creatures chasing them. When the keys they found don't work, Ben shoots the lock off; turning the pump on . . . and setting the gasoline on fire with a torch he left burning. (Now that was stupid, Ben! But I quickly forgive him.) 

Tom drives the truck from the fire. But the truck is burning and Judy is stuck inside. Tom tries to get her out as . . . BOOM! --the truck explodes, killing the couple and supplying a freshly cooked feast for the gathering creatures.

Ben runs for the farmhouse. Harry hesitates to let him in but Ben forces his way as Harry finally joins him in securing the door. When Ben punches Harry, I realize how much I hate Harry! (I must be thinking this is really happening. Damn, Romero is good!) 

But I don't get time to dwell on it because Romero treats us to the Tom and Julie Barbeque where the creatures feast on the couple's limbs and intestines in one of the most horrific scenes (at that time) I'd ever seen in a film. I even lost "the munchies."

After we hear Helen tell how "those things bit her daughter" the television reports that radiation is transforming dead bodies into the flesh-eating ghouls. (Now, they are flesh-eating ghouls.) Here, the scene changes to a reporter at the scene of a local sheriff's "search and destroy" mission. "Kill the brain and kill the ghoul," the sheriff tells the reporter (and me). "Beat'em or burn'em. They go up pretty easy." 

I'm convinced I'm watching an actual interview, totally forgetting this is a film in a theater in Greenwich Village. This sheriff can't possibly be an actor. This guy is too real. Romero has sucked me in good.

"Are they slow moving?" the reporter asks. "Yes," the sheriff admits, "they're dead . . . they're all messed up." I didn't know whether to laugh or cry, when . . .

The lights in the farmhouse go out! They cut the power! ("What do you mean, they cut the power, they're animals." - Sorry, I couldn't resist (Remember Hudson in Aliens?.) Harry wants Ben's gun, blaming Ben for Tom and Judy's horrible demise. When the ghouls begin their assault on the house, Ben drops the gun. Harry grabs it, ordering everyone into the cellar. (Stupid Harry!) Ben fights and shoots Harry who stumbles into the cellar. (Yippee! Go, Ben!) A ghoul grabs Helen through the doorway. Barbara goes to her rescue, grabbed by the crowd of zombies, which now includes her brother, Johnny, who takes a bite. 

I'm caught up in the frenzy. Realizing it's everyone for himself, I start checking for a way out of the theater. 

The scene switches to the cellar where . . . the daughter is eating her father (yummy), as Helen stumbles onto the scene, stabbed to death and munched on by her little girl. 

I'm out of mind about now, expecting anything when I remember my man, Ben.

Ben has just shot Harry and watched Barbara chewed on by the swelling horde of ghouls when the zombie daughter emerges from the cellar and the ghouls finally break in . . . 

What are we gonna do, Ben? 

Ben locks himself in the cellar! 

What? That's right! Harry's plan. Now I'm thinkin', Maybe Harry wasn't such a shithead after all.

Ben finds Helen and Harry dead and chewed as they reanimate and he kills the zombie couple again. However, this time, I don't know how to feel about Harry or Ben. I feel sorry for both of them. Again, Romero sucked me in!

The scene changes to the sheriff and his good-ol'-boy posse having a ball shooting zombies in the head. Suddenly, I recognize the terrain. These guys are at the farmhouse! Ben is saved!

The sheriff orders his men to check the farmhouse. Ben hears the dogs, hears the shots. He's coming out of the cellar. He peers out the window to see his saviors . . . When a deputy says, "I think I see one in the window." What? No, wait, you don't understand! "Go ahead," the sheriff says, "Shoot'em between the eyes." No!!!! Bam! Ben is dead! "That's another one for the fire," the sheriff confidently proclaims.

What? Wait! I scream, you shot the good guy! I'm devastated. 

But the sheriff and his band of merry men don't hear me. Wide-eyed, mouth hung open, I can only stare at the screen as a grainy montage of snapshots depicts the men clawing at Ben with meat hooks to toss his lifeless body onto a barn fire of burning ghouls.

I remember being in shock as we walked from the theater into the musky Greenwich Village night. I would never be the same and Night of the Living Dead would go on to become one of the great American films. Not only as a horror or a zombie film, but as film. 

So why did Romero's film touch me . . . us? Filmed in 1968, Night was finished the day Martin Luther King was assassinated. Watching the black and white news covering the civil rights movement and the racial tensions to follow reminded me of the characters from Romero's film. The same characters from the Night's sheriff's posse were setting dogs loose on protesters. Burning zombie bodies reminded me of pictures I'd seen of lynchings and people burnings in the South. 

Then the evening news reported that in Vietnam "parts of the corpses had been removed," that soldiers cut the ears off their kills and tortured and maimed captives and I heard the phrase "search and destroy," and saw dead bodies tossed onto piles of dead and I remembered I remembered Romero's film. 

Had George Romero tapped our collective vein?

One of the rumors surfacing as to why the film didn't receive widespread distribution claimed that no one wanted to handle a film starring a Black actor. I don't know if it's true, but remember, this was 1968. Besides, the hero gets killed at the end, who wants to see that? And the King and Kennedy assassinations made me remember Romero's film.

Of course, I must mention Romero's Dawn of the Dead (1978), where Romero consciously pokes fun at Middle America's disregard for the issues of the day by having his zombies invade a mall. Romero said, "My zombies had a taste of McDonald's and the good things in life. But now that they're dead, they can't understand why they can't get it anymore. So in the film, they go back to the mall, wandering around, looking for lost pleasures."

In American Nightmare, a documentary showing on the Independent Film Channel (If you can catch it, watch it!), there's a great scene where the human survivor's of Dawn of the Dead discuss the zombies we see walking around the mall, but the documentary-makers spliced in film clips of a real mall with real shoppers. Having seen Romero's second film, I couldn't tell the difference. Now that's really scary! But as Romero said, "You're meant to feel uncomfortable."

Then came Day of the Dead (1985), the third in the trilogy, where the military gets hold of some zombies and tries to train them to follow orders. Of course, things quickly get out of hand. I'll let you figure out that one.

Is there an explanation, or is it as Tobe (Texas Chainsaw Massacre, 1974) Hooper said, "You shoot them (films) and twenty years later you find out what it meant."

Needless to say, George Romero, consciously or unconsciously, left his mark on our society (and our psyches) with his films. Other films Romero directed (some classics, and some not so classic) include: The Crazies (1973), Martin (1977), Knightriders (1981), Creepshow (1982), Monkey Shines (1988), and The Dark Half (1993).

But Romero, Romero, where forth art thou now? 

George Romero's latest film, Bruiser (2001), about how a man, waking to find his face is now a smooth white, featureless mask, is freed by this newfound anonymity to seek revenge on all who have wronged him. Can you find any metaphors in this one? Rumor has this film going straight to video. And The Ill (2001) lists Romero as the writer, with no director named. If you know anything about this film, let me know and I'll pass it on to the membership!