Wolff rating: EXCELLENT
Plot summary: The ``unburied dead'' have gone revnant, and a few misfits end up thrown together defending themselves.
Biased, pithy comments: It's amazing they shot this movie in 1968. It's pre-MPAA, and according to Ebert at the original release kids were crying and hiding their eyes at the ``gore'' (it's pretty tame, at least to this desensitized viewer). It's very different from the typical 60s fare---bad haircuts, Russ Meyer, suits in unfortunate color combinations. Instead, it's a tight, scary, low-budget movie shot to enhance claustrophobia and fear, and despite some silly-looking makeup (those are some healthy-looking corpses) and some weak acting, it's really horrifying. To be trapped like that, surrounded, desperate, with such a rag-tag band; oy, vey. Even more creepy, even when it seems like there might be hope, it's still terrifying, not relieving. This is the inspiration for dozens of other films like it, both with flesh-eating zombies and without. It's also clearly the inspiration for the ``Resident Evil'' series of video games.
Other Notes: Several notes. First, watch out for the ``30th anniversary'' edition, where one of the original writers and a few friends go back and add 15 minutes of limp footage to the beginning and end (which would be bad) and hack out 15 other minutes of the original (which is, as one commentator called it, ``film rape''). Watch only the original (which is, sort of, available on the same DVD as the 30th Anniv. edition---you have to use the Title Change option on the main menu; it's not quite the original, but the original cut with an altered score). Secondly, this movie's scares are enhanced by watching it alone in a dark house on a night with lightning and rain outside. Girl heroines have come a long way in these movies; consider Ripley, or even whatsername in ``Nightmare on Elm Street.'' Thirdly, Romero drafted a script for the Resident Evil movie, but fell out of the production process.
How many times I have seen it: x1
Starring: Duane Jones, Judith O'Dea, Karl Hardman, Keith Wayne, Judith Ridley.
Directed by: George A. Romero