Night Of The Living Dead

Night Of The Living Dead is the Dracula of the modern zombie - there were walking corpses before, and the name comes from mythology, but it became a genre here and everything that follows reacts to it. The Walking Dead is basically “what if a Romero movie didn’t end?”

Most zombie apocalypse media since follows its example of this being a new phenomenon, so the world of The Walking Dead was like ours before the outbreak except for the lack of zombie movies. Characters referring to it are usually genre savvy stars of comedies like Shaun of The Dead, or sometimes using it to label something a bit different, as in World War Z.

Ordinary people trapped together. Matter-of-fact filming. Not exactly happy endings. A black lead is still uncommon, but Ben is especially remarkable in 1968 - George Romero mentioned hearing about the assassination of Martin Luther King on the way to sell the film in New York. And Barbra is one of the most realistic portrayals of someone in shock I’ve ever seen.

(It’s also interesting to see the aspects that didn’t become standard for the genre, like the term “ghouls” and zombies’ aversion to light, a hope for the night that would not continue into Dawn Of The Dead and beyond.)

There are plenty of zombies in gaming, but of course the real monsters in Night Of The Living Dead are people. Games often encourage this with limited resources, so only one person can get to the chopper in Zombies!!!! It’s also often overdone, to the point that the survivors in The Walking Dead should really shoot first and ask questions later. But done sparingly, it can still pack a punch. And Night Of The Living Dead packs a hell of a punch.