‘That’s one more for the bonfire.’ There is something inherently disturbing to a film those scariest creatures are not an army of flesh-eating resuscitated cadavers, but the living human beings that are in fact their victims. More than its extravagant gruesomeness and unrelenting pace, the slow reveal of how things one would give as granted deeply overturn is what makes Night of the Living Dead so brutal, creepy, and clever. A complexity, not least sociopolitical, that Romero never apparently sought—but then again, intuitions, not intentions make an artist great.
As I was recently browsing through some articles on the case, I found an interesting one by Roger Ebert1 that I don’t think I had come across before. Writing a few months after the theatrical release of the film, his didn’t literary review it, but rather recounted the experience—one that today seems unrealistically far in time, with people showing up early to get the best seats, queueing eagerly to see what word of mouth had already made into a sensation and, as the film rolled, screaming in horror, turning quiet in shock, or crying. Having noticed the young age of most in the audience, and one little girl in particular weeping motionless a few seats away from him, Ebert made a point on the loose rating of the film. Making clear that censorship is never an answer, he argued that the lack of regulation was possibly due to a cynical box office strategy. ‘Maybe that’s it,’ he concluded, ‘but I don't know how I could explain it to the kids who left the theater with tears in their eyes.’ No need to explain, I dare belatedly replying. Because those are the kids who fell in love with cinema. And among them, perhaps some of today’s filmmakers.
1.The Night of the Living Dead, Roger Ebert (Reader’s Digest, 5 January 1969).
