At The New York Review of Books, critic J. Hoberman writes about Night of the Living Dead and its “apocalyptic vision of societal collapse.” The film, based on an in-process script and shot in black and white due to budgetary constraints, earned millions upon its release in 1968. From J. Hoberman:
As the marauding ghouls provide a grimly hilarious cross-section of ordinary Americans, so Night of the Living Dead offered the most literal possible image of the nation devouring itself, as it brought the Vietnam War home, importing the destructive violence of Watts, Newark, and Detroit to bucolic Middle America. Not for nothing is one dazed character, traumatized by the attack of a cannibal ghoul in an American flag-bedecked cemetery, forever mumbling, “What’s happening?” It was the question of the hour.
Read J. Hoberman’s piece, and see Night of the Living Dead on the big screen at Metrograph in NYC.
Image © 2017 Sean Phillips. Buy his poster at Criterion.
