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DVD (37)
Although pic's basic premise is repellent -- recently dead bodies are resurrected and begin killing human beings in order to eat their flesh -- it is in execution that the film distastefully excels.
George Romero's remarkably assured debut, made on a shoestring, about a group of people barricaded inside a farmhouse while an army of flesh-eating zombies roams the countryside, deflates all genre clichés.
Over its short, furious course, the picture violates so many strong taboos -- cannibalism, incest, necrophilia -- that it leaves audiences giddy and hysterical.
I felt real terror in that neighborhood theater last Saturday afternoon. I saw kids who had no resources they could draw upon to protect themselves from the dread and fear they felt.
The dialogue and background music sound hollow, as if they had been recorded in an empty swimming pool, and the wobbly camera seems to have a fetishist's interest in hands.
The original and the best.
"Night of the Living Dead" became a seminal film without being a particularly good one. It nudged horror movies away from creepy-but-family-friendly into adult films featuring gruesome violence and nihilistic overtones.
Oft-copied zombie classic is still intense and gory.
The racial subtext spoke volumes in 1968. Once the zombies start knocking, only a fool would cling to segregation.
Romero saw the enemy, and they are the zombie masses among us. There is nowhere safe to hide.
The Rifftrax DVD (adding humorous audio commentary to George Romero's classic) is not the disaster one might have feared.... Even if you are vaguely offended by their choice of target, you will have to laugh...
One of the most nightmarish films ever made, and one that's still hard to laugh off today.
George Romero set a new standard for horror with this low-budget opus.
This little seat-of-the-pants regional production chewed up and spit out taboos like raw meat in a feral feeding frenzy.
Arguably the greatest horror film ever made - and one of the greatest in any genre - 'Night' is also the ultimate B-movie.
This shocker from 1968 is a time capsule of our fears from yesteryear.
There's a brute force in Night of the Living Dead that catches one in the throat.
It is an amazing achievement considering the dozens of like minded efforts that crammed their way into drive-ins and dives during the same period.
Seldom have so many pundit parses and public praises owed so much to so little as in the case of the career-launching 'Night of the Living Dead.'
A quarter of a century old and it is still absolutely terrifying.
This is horror at its most probing, subversive and socially aware, with a truly harrowing ending that reveals the dangers of misdirected fear and prejudice.
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