Now this was my first time watching this movie and Mike Commentary was funny and all. But thing got me about this movie is the ending. After everybody gets eaten or whatever. Ben is the only one who survive. The next morning theres a bunch of rednecks shooting zombies and at the very last second Ben is shot by one of the rednecks. But They should have known he wasnt a zombie. None of the zombie in this movie have enough energy to pick up a rifle. Let alone use one. Now i dont know about you. But i like my Disaster/Zombie Movies to have someone who survives to the end. This movie makes you think Ben is going to live and kills him at the last possible second. Anyways just some of my two cents. Ill be quiet now.
I rather liked the ending, because I didn't see it coming.
I'm actually a big fan of movies without a happy ending. I like being surprised.
12 Monkeys? Se7en? Awesome.
Night of the Living Dead has one of the best endings of all time.
Well maybe im just a sucker for happy ending. Forget i said anything. Maybe im just use to movies like Jurassic Park were Samuel L. Jackson and the fat guy from Seinfeld get eaten and the rest get off the island alive. I dont think the ending was bad or anything. But i guess when you watch movie after movie with the same Clich?. Its kinda of a shock when a movie dose something totally different.
I see your point actually.
I was kinda disappointed in the ending of NOLD... Of course, I'm an American-cinema-brainwashed Californianite.
I thought for sure that if Ben was going to die, then the blondie he was boarding up with him would live... But nah - the rednecks triumph unjustly....
Its just shows the hopeless of it all... Romero redid the ending for his re-release.. well at least tacked some crap on the end.
I enjoyed the 1990 remake.
Has anyone else here seen the "directors cut" disc that came out for the original? It had some preacher gettting bitten and surviving becuase of his faith.
Strange.
I've always thought of NotLD's bleak ending as the frosting on the film's rich, delicious social commentary cake.
Casting a black man as the hero and having all of the white characters look to him for guidance was pretty gutsy stuff back in 1968. Ditto the film's underlying message that, when shambling corpses have surrounded your house in hopes of chowing down on your viscera, the relative darkness of your pigmentation doesn't matter a whole hell of a lot.
The ending snaps the audience jarringly back to reality and reminds us that, in some ways, real life is more screwed up than the fictional zombie apocalypse. It comes as a huge shock when the guy who we've all been rooting for -- and at the time of the film's release, no doubt a few were rooting for Ben in spite of themselves -- is suddenly brought down by none other than a gang of white rednecks. Oh, the injustice!
And that gut-wrenching sequence of black and white stills over the end credits -- the ones that show us our hero's corpse being tossed roughly and anonymously onto the pile of zombies for disposal -- never fails to remind me of those old lynching photos.
Romero doesn't get enough credit for his capacity to weave these sorts of themes into his movies. He is truly a master.
-- Steve-O
Quote from: Tarantulas on August 24, 2006, 11:07:56 PM
Has anyone else here seen the "directors cut" disc that came out for the original? It had some preacher gettting bitten and surviving becuase of his faith.
Strange.
I think you are talking about the Anniversary Edition abomination that had newly shot footage edited into it. Romero had
nothing to do with it. It was all John Russo (who wrote NOTLD w/ Romero). For some fun reading you should see read Harry Knowles review at aint-it-cool-snooze. I can't stand that site but his review at the time seemed genuine.
http://nitti.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=4397
What's worse is that version is what most video shops have.
I like the ending but then I also love Miracle Mile and other apocalypse-style movies.
The preacher screaming about how God cured the zombie affliction is just laughable.
I do like the 1990 remake though. Its pretty well done.
agreed.
Quote from: Tarantulas on August 27, 2006, 07:18:56 PM
I do like the 1990 remake though. Its pretty well done.
The first Return of the Living is pretty good too.
Quote from: Road_Element on August 23, 2006, 07:31:47 AMBut They should have known he wasnt a zombie. None of the zombie in this movie have enough energy to pick up a rifle. Let alone use one.
I don't think the shooter exactly got a clear view of Ben, so I doubt his rifle even came into play. He was just gung-ho and assumed some silent human figure must need shooting.
Quote from: JoshuaJSlone on September 29, 2006, 04:02:54 AM
I don't think the shooter exactly got a clear view of Ben, so I doubt his rifle even came into play. He was just gung-ho and assumed some silent human figure must need shooting.
Exactly, he just saw a moving figure and assumed it was a zombie.
yeah, I think all that "social commentary" stuff is completely accidental or purhaps "Rorschach"ed on to the film. I've heard in interviews that Romero didn't really have a black lead in mind when writing the script, Duane Jones just happened to be the best of the actors that auditioned for the part.
The depressing ending is pretty standard in the zombie movie genre. There's just something kind of "right" about it
Quoteyeah, I think all that "social commentary" stuff is completely accidental or purhaps "Rorschach"ed on to the film. I've heard in interviews that Romero didn't really have a black lead in mind when writing the script, Duane Jones just happened to be the best of the actors that auditioned for the part.
I've heard the same. I suspect that at least some of the social commentary was accidental -- although the key statement on the breakdown of human relationships in times of extreme stress was clearly intentional. Even so, it was a pretty ballsy move to cast Jones in the lead role.
QuoteThe depressing ending is pretty standard in the zombie movie genre. There's just something kind of "right" about it
Before Night of the Living Dead, I don't think there actually were standards for the zombie movie genre. NotLD set most of them.
Quote from: mrbasehart on August 31, 2006, 01:42:26 PM
Quote from: Tarantulas on August 27, 2006, 07:18:56 PM
I do like the 1990 remake though. Its pretty well done.
The first Return of the Living is pretty good too.
Send...more...paramedics!
You know, this is actually a pretty good movie. Although Mike is right, most of it consists of extremely boring conversations. And carpentery. Might be the weakest Rifftrax I've listened to so far on account of that. But I did laugh. Just not as hard as I laughed at Roadhouse, xXx, and Plan Nine.
My problem with the ending of NOTLD is that it doesn't fit the movie. Ben was a strong character, a survivor. Then all of sa sudden he isn't anymore. That's also why 90 percent of big movies need a happy ending, movies follow a character improving so then a happy ending is only logical.
I read a comic once that took up the story from Barbara's perspective. She snapped back into reality when her brother grabbed her and then went on a zombie-bashing spree. Did anyone else catch that one?
i liked the ending.
Quote from: Road_Element on August 23, 2006, 04:16:36 PM
Well maybe im just a sucker for happy ending. Forget i said anything. Maybe im just use to movies like Jurassic Park were Samuel L. Jackson and the fat guy from Seinfeld get eaten and the rest get off the island alive. I dont think the ending was bad or anything. But i guess when you watch movie after movie with the same Clich?. Its kinda of a shock when a movie dose something totally different.
i really liked jurassic park,but it was unforgivable that the zookeeper gets eaten and the head of the park gets away. the zookeeper was literally the only guy who fully understood what they were dealing with... (read the book :-)
Quote from: ScottH on August 27, 2006, 06:00:19 AM
What's worse is that version is what most video shops have.
I like the ending but then I also love Miracle Mile and other apocalypse-style movies.
nice! i liked that movie!
Yeah, i can only think of a couple zombie movies (Shaun of the Dead-comedy so it had to have one , 28 Days and Land of the Dead) that had "happy endings". Wonder why that is???? And Zombie movies has had so little innovation. The non-thinking, slow moving zombie just is not scary. That is why I like the remake of Dawn of the Dead and 28 Days Later so much...... fast moving scary zombies. When escaping the monster involves no more than walking slightly faster than the zombie...... not scary.
The only sad part of the ending of Land of the Dead was that Asia Argento was never topless.
There is a First Person Shooter based on Land of the Dead. VERY fun game, but I can't really recommend buying it as it's a game affiliated with Universal Studios, and I'm sort of in the middle of a boycott of them right now. At least until december.
ending was perfect to me......
But is Peter Jackson's "Bad Taste" considered a zombie movie? I fell asleep during about 15-20 minutes while watching it so I may have missed something, but it seems like the people are infact zombies... yet somehow related to the aliens... But I guess it could be considered a happy ending when the guy goes off to destroy that planet.
Quote from: pyro on November 26, 2006, 11:19:31 AM
ending was perfect to me......
But is Peter Jackson's "Bad Taste" considered a zombie movie? I fell asleep during about 15-20 minutes while watching it so I may have missed something, but it seems like the people are infact zombies... yet somehow related to the aliens... But I guess it could be considered a happy ending when the guy goes off to destroy that planet.
Aliens actually. They come to Earth to kill humans and use them as fast food! Fun movie!!
Heh, I forgot about the fast food part but what was going on with the humans that were still technically alive? The opening chase scene where the guy's walking away from a person who seems sorta like a zombie, plus all the other people like that throughout it...
Happy or sad, what makes an ending good is that it ties up loose ends and brings the story to a meaningful conclusion. Anticlimactic deaths are just a way of looking deep and "realistic".
What's original (or at least unusual) in a horror movie is having one character survive. None is overdone, and there are plenty with two.
Quote from: Fuzzy Necromancer on March 25, 2007, 04:30:09 PM
What's original (or at least unusual) in a horror movie is having one character survive.
Unusual?
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Friday the 13th. A Nightmare on Elm Street. Halloween. Alien. Scream. Evil Dead. Invasion of the Body Snatchers.Though, I'll admit, these films are pretty obscure...
Quote from: Fuzzy Necromancer on March 25, 2007, 04:30:09 PM
None is overdone, and there are plenty with two.
You could make a case that having nobody survive is overdone in 2007, but I think you'd have a hard time finding many -- if any -- horror movies in which everybody dies prior to 1968.
Quote from: Steve-O on March 25, 2007, 07:24:05 PM
Quote from: Fuzzy Necromancer on March 25, 2007, 04:30:09 PM
What's original (or at least unusual) in a horror movie is having one character survive.
Unusual?
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Friday the 13th. A Nightmare on Elm Street. Halloween. Alien. Scream. Evil Dead. Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
That all depends on how you count. In Halloween, Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasance, and the two kids survive, although you never really fear for the kids. I guess the rule would be to count the survivors from those who had the possibly of dying, thus Halloween has two "survivors." By that rule, Alien might also have two survivors, since you pretty much spend the whole movie hoping the alien doesn't get the cat. With Scream, I might also count Courtney Cox and David Arquette for three survivors, although my memory of the first movie's a little sketchy. Were they in any danger in the first one?
And Invasion of The Body Snatchers is in a whole different league, but for our purposes the entire world, or at least North America, is in danger. Plus, the ending is open to speculation.
Quote from: Sharktopus on March 25, 2007, 08:01:28 PM
I guess the rule would be to count the survivors from those who had the possibly of dying, thus Halloween has two "survivors."
Weeelll, I'd say that Dr. Loomis is never in any real danger, save for the bit where Michael steals the car near the beginning. In the first film, there's never any doubt that he's the hunter rather than the hunted, so I didn't put him in the potential victims pool.
Quote from: Sharktopus on March 25, 2007, 08:01:28 PM
With Scream, I might also count Courtney Cox and David Arquette for three survivors, although my memory of the first movie's a little sketchy. Were they in any danger in the first one?
You know, I have a vague memory of seeing
Scream and being pleasantly surprised that it wasn't pure shit, but beyond that, I have little recollection of the movie. I do seem to recall that the Cox-Arquette acting powerhouse were too supporting cast to be potential victims in the first movie.
Quote
And Invasion of The Body Snatchers is in a whole different league, but for our purposes the entire world, or at least North America, is in danger. Plus, the ending is open to speculation.
I've always thought it was pretty cut and dried, what with the howling and the look of dismay and all.
Anyway, a lot of horror movie endings are somewhat open to speculation -- hell, a case could be made that Barbara somehow survives in
NOTLD -- but to call the "one survives" scenario unusual is to ignore the existence of two decades worth of slasher films.
Quote from: Tarantulas on August 27, 2006, 07:18:56 PM
I do like the 1990 remake though. Its pretty well done.
Was that the one with the hot redhead cast in the black guy's role? I saw that on Monstervision with Joe Bob Briggs (John Bloom) years ago... that was a nice weekend movie series, naturally TNT dropped it.
Quote from: BEERxTaco on March 26, 2007, 06:14:42 AM
Was that the one with the hot redhead cast in the black guy's role?
Not quite. Tony Todd was cast as the black guy, while off the top of my head, I think it's Patricia Tallman as the new Barbara. She was also in Babylon 5 for a few years and is a stuntwoman.
I <3 Patricia Tallman.
Not to mention, HER Barbara puts on a pair of pants and SURVIVES. :)
Quote from: mrbasehart on March 26, 2007, 03:19:31 PM
Quote from: BEERxTaco on March 26, 2007, 06:14:42 AM
Was that the one with the hot redhead cast in the black guy's role?
Not quite. Tony Todd was cast as the black guy, while off the top of my head, I think it's Patricia Tallman as the new Barbara. She was also in Babylon 5 for a few years and is a stuntwoman.
Yay for Tony Todd.
Quote from: Steve-O on October 05, 2006, 06:39:11 PM
Quoteyeah, I think all that "social commentary" stuff is completely accidental or purhaps "Rorschach"ed on to the film. I've heard in interviews that Romero didn't really have a black lead in mind when writing the script, Duane Jones just happened to be the best of the actors that auditioned for the part.
I've heard the same. I suspect that at least some of the social commentary was accidental -- although the key statement on the breakdown of human relationships in times of extreme stress was clearly intentional. Even so, it was a pretty ballsy move to cast Jones in the lead role-
I have a documentary from the Starz movie channel about Cult Films where Romero says that Duane Jones was the best actor to audtion, period. That they didn't really write the part of Ben as any particular color or ethnic group so they didn't have to change anything. And you'll notice there's nothing in the film that even approaches race being an issue. Scuff-Head has problems with Ben but it never appears to be race based.
BTW, I just thought.....there weren't any African American zombies either, were there?
One of the things that made NOTLD so innovative at the time was that it broke a lot of rules of who survives horror movies. The kid and the young couple would have been safe in most films prior, and the idea of everyone dying was almost unheard of.
The racial element was unintended, but they did have a general idea of a new society rising up and overthrowing the old.