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Created Dec 21, 2007 06:33PM PST • Edited Dec 21, 2007 06:33PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Perfect 5.0

   Barbra (O’Dea) and her brother, Johnny, have just made a long trip to visit their mother in the country. Once they arrive there, we find out that their mother is dead and buried. They are visiting her grave when Barbra starts to get a bit freaked out. Johnny jokes about her fears until he soon shares them too. A man tries to strangle Barbra, Johnny saves her, but he doesn’t make it. She runs as fast as she can away from this man and ends up in a house nearby. She finds a dead women’s body lying at the top of the stairs when another man, Ben (Jones), finds her. He informs Barbra that there are more and if they need to board up the house if there’s any hope in saving their lives.
   Barbra is completely shook up and is little help to Ben. He still does whatever he can to protect both of them. However, he soon discovers that they aren’t the only ones in the house. There are two men, two women, and an injured child in the cellar. They don’t all see eye to eye on what the smartest and safest thing is to do. They just try to keep the house boarded up as well as possible until they get further directions on what to do. They find out that these mass murderers are everywhere. They are cannibalistic killers who take no mercy. Once they kill someone it is only a matter of minutes until that person is one of them. They are the living dead, which are quickly becoming predominant and becoming the majority. Ben discovers that they are afraid of fire so they try to use that to get away from them. Unfortunately, this only goes so far and their plan blows up in their face. It even gets them to turn on each other.

4. Acting

   Perfect 5.0

   The acting was top notch here. Duane Jones and Judith O’Dea give the best performances. The cast shows the crisis at hand, how it affected different people, and how they dealt with it in their own ways. This did cause somewhat of a clash between characters at times, but there was a bigger battle they would have to face; the battle for their lives.

5. Male Stars Perfect 5.0

6. Female Stars Perfect 5.0

7. Female Costars Perfect 5.0

8. Male Costars Perfect 5.0

10. Film

    Perfect 5.0

    How the beginning of the movie was set up was pretty interesting. Barbra and Johnny are talking about the mother as if she is alive in many ways that is very unlikely to be a coincidence. Then when they get her grave you find that they were referring to the dead as living. Soon after, it is far more than just referring in that context. In that same graveyard one of the actual living dead is headed right towards them. This sets up the movie and makes Barbra how she will be the rest of the time. This scars her so deeply. She goes from being calm, sensitive, and sensible to being so scared that she is just blank. Barbra is scared, confused, and overwhelmed. She hardly talks at all and you wonder if she is even really taking everything in.

11. Direction Perfect 5.0

    George A. Romero is the zombie king. No one can make better zombie movies than he can. Even if they could it wouldn’t matter, because he did it the best first. Exactly one decade after Night of the Living Dead he made Dawn of the Dead, which was remade by Zack Snyder in 2004 (which happened to be one of the best sequels in a long time). In 1985 Romero followed with Day of the Dead. Most recently, he made Land of the Dead. A 3-D version of the original Night of the Living Dead has been completed. There are so many other writers and directors that have made many movies off of these. I am not saying they copied by any means. There are only so many possibilities in film and many things have been done over, but in creative ways that make them both great. Still, every one who has been involved or even watched a zombie movie should thank George Romero. His series was truly great and is still growing, but what started it all was Night of the Living Dead.

12. Play Perfect 5.0

13. Music Perfect 5.0

14. Visuals Perfect 5.0
15. Content

16. Edge

    Horrid 4.3

    It is a zombie movie so yes it has gore in it. It does have less than most horror films today have though mostly because of the time when it was released and the fact that there were much stricter restrictions on films. Night of the Living dead uses the blood to illistrate these flesh eating zombies and how deadly their existance is to the remaining normal humans.

17. Sex Lewd 4.3

18. Violence Savage 4.3

19. Rudeness Nasty 4.3

21. Reality

    Supernatural 3.4

    As of now, zombies aren’t reality. The sutation is supernatural since the dead are giving abilities of the living humans with monstrous and vicious tendencies. Aside from that though, the characters that are human seem to be very natural. Night of the Living Dead seems to be of a higher quality than the other movies in the series. They are all very good, but this seemed the most real. In the others things are moved along more quickly. They know what is going on, how bad it as, and what they need to do to get out. This movie moved slower though, which gave it time to develop. We got to know the characters and watched their unfortunate fates. It wasn’t even until fairly close to the end when they really knew what was going on. This made it more momentous and made it have more of an effect.

22. Circumstantial Supernatural 3.4

23. Biological Supernatural 3.4

24. Physical Supernatural 3.4