Night Of The Living Dead is one of the most important films of all-time

Last night, I had the pleasure of re-visiting the 1968 zombie classic, Night Of The Living Dead, and I was struck by how relevant of a movie it still is.  Shot in Pittsburgh on a shoestring budget, Dead seemingly wrote the rules for Zombie flicks on the fly. The story is a simple one... a group of survivors stows away inside an abandoned farmhouse as the dead return to feast on human flesh.  This seems so commonplace today with the hit series, The Walking Dead, and countless other incarnations that have come forth since 1968.  However, what I found so refreshing about this classic is how little explanation we, as an audience, are given.  Armed with only a radio, the cast boards up in the house while listening to an emergency broadcast of reports of mass murders taking place.  Details sprinkle in throughout the course of the movie that give us a better understanding of what these ghouls (note: the word zombie is never used) are, and how they can be destroyed.  Future staples such as shooting them in the head or burning them with fire aren't immediately known to these survivors.  We experience this terror through these characters eyes, which I feel only heightens the tension in the film.  We take these zombie rules for granted today. I can't imagine viewing this in 1968.

With that being said, the film's true greatness lies in its social commentary.  Filmed and released during the height of the Vietnam War and 60's racial tensions, Night Of The Living Dead is the embodiment of a society tearing itself apart.  Romero wanted the film to take place inside a farmhouse because he wanted to give it a sense of claustrophobia... a sense of the boiling tensions in the world at the time.  It serves as a representation of the death of 1950's optimism, the stereotypical American Dream.  The dead could be looked at as a growing rot of conformity that Americans were living in.  The film also questions whether our nation might not survive the violence from both inside and out.  I think this is the film's legacy.  You can look at today's world and see that we're still fighting the same fight for equality, and that this country is still tearing itself apart in the effort to gain progress.  We still have a large group of people that want to go back to that 1950's idealism, and have a leader who is doing everything in his power to destroy the work of the progressive movement.

Duane Jones groundbreaking performance is a cinematic marvel.

The other incredible thing about this film is the lead character of Ben.  This film was one of the first of its kind to feature a black person in the lead.  Director George A. Romero has said that the character was not written with race in mind, and that actor Duane Jones simply gave the best audition, it's impossible to look past the significance of this character.  At a time when an entire race of people were fighting for to change the status quo, the character of Ben is the only leader in the film.  He is presented as strong, intelligent and a voice of reason... I can only imagine the shock of seeing this in 1968.  The shocking end of this film (which I won't ruin) only serves to showcase the struggle to fight oppression and injustice in America.

Night Of The Living Dead is as important of a film today as it was 50 years ago.  It should be required viewing for all Americans, especially in today's society where the fight for progress is under assault from enemies, both foreign and domestic.