NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968)

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:21):
I've proclaimed this the summer of George.
Hello everybody, and welcome to the pod and The Pendulum.

(00:42):
We are the show that covers all the horror franchises one movie
in one episode at a time. As always, I'm your host Mike
Snoonian, and this week we are boarding up the windows.
We are cramming ourselves into the fruit cellar and gathering
around the Ye Olde Squawk box for updates because we're hoping
no one bites us. Folks, it's time to cover one of

(01:03):
the big ones. It is time to talk George
Romero's classic zombie series The Living Dead series, kicking
it off with the genre defying 1968 masterpiece Night of the
Living Dead. I'm not alone.
I have surrounded myself with the way Taste of Your Brains on
my own just in case the zombies need a meal from Bloody

(01:23):
Disgusting and Manor Vellum and the soon to be released Holy
Terrorist podcast welcome on board Mr. Brian Kuiper.
Hey hey, I am here and ready to shoot some zombies in the head.
Absolutely. And we are only starting an hour
late because of all of the technical issues we've had
today. You guys are champs for bearing,
for bearing with us. We had to get the.

(01:45):
Anything for you, Mike? Yeah.
That was a non. Negotiable.
That's a non negotiable. Excellent.
Well, you just heard his voice from the Disenfranchised Pod
podcast as well as the brand spanking new Wells U Pod, a show
all about Orson Welles, Mr. Steven Foxworthy.
Hello Mike, happy to be here even though I'm dead and frankly

(02:07):
all messed up. Yeah, we're a bit messy today.
Yeah, luckily we don't have any like Harry's with us that are
just, you know, there. We don't have any Harry's on
this crew at all that are just like yelling and screwing us
around, which is great, you know.
So I think we're in good shape. I think we're in really good
shape as Steven looks around theroom a little bit and he's like,

(02:27):
what do you mean? Yeah, no, Harry's here.
I love. And you know what?
All kidding aside, like you guys, I don't know how you put
up with my bullshit. I love each and.
Everyone, we love your bullshit.That is a sincere moment.
That's part of the fun. It's part of the reason we come
back. Come on.
Well, this is going to be a goodone.

(02:48):
Big one. It's going to be a good one.
I've just doomed it. This is going to be a big one.
We'll be out of here in a tight 45, Absolutely.
So we're going to do a little bit of housekeeping and then
we're going to dive right in. If you're a new listener, and
you might be a new listener because like these big movies
tend to draw new people in. So if you're a new listener and

(03:09):
you're enjoying the show, first we invite you to go back and
check out our nearly 300 episodeback catalog filled with
franchises. So please enjoy.
If you're enjoying the show, here's an easy way to keep up
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Number one, smash that subscribebutton.
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(03:31):
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(03:53):
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(04:18):
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So F you Zencaster. So patreon.com/pod and the

(04:41):
Pendulum and that is it for plugs for right now.
Now, let's dive right in. So I guess I'll start with this,
like before we even talk about this movie, this is the first
zombie franchise we're covering and we are six years and nearly
300 episodes in. So I kind of just based on that,
know my own feelings about zombies in general, but I'm

(05:03):
wondering what your take is on like zombie movies overall.
I talked a little bit about thison our Patreon episode, but I
had a computer issue that day. All of my thoughts didn't make
it into that episode. That's okay.
So I think for me, I like many of them.
I think my favorites tend to be ones I like, the ones that sort

(05:26):
of start the ball rolling more than anything else.
I love Not a Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead.
And then, you know, like a parody like Shawn of the Dead or
something. I think says something
interesting about not only the genre, but, you know, sort of
the state of society. Something that has a brain in
its head. No pun intended, is helpful, but
I do, you know, Return to LivingDead, things like that.

(05:48):
Those are fun. But for me at this point,
there's so many zombie movies that if you're gonna do
something, you got to do something with it.
You can't just, oh, it's a zombie movie.
That's why, you know, after however many seasons of The
Walking Dead, I was just like, I'm out.
I just don't care anymore. No offense to Walking Dead fans

(06:08):
out there. Or you know, whatever 12th spin
off there is going on that. Feels like a show that people
just started to hate watch almost like at a certain point
then it's like I'm seven seasonsin, like I have to see this
through to the end right at thispoint.
Like if the last season of Game of Thrones was stretched out
over three or Four Seasons, that's what The Walking Dead,

(06:32):
which at one point was like the biggest show on television, like
pulling in like 15,000,000 viewers a week, which is
incredible. Yeah, I know.
I, it was one of those things where at first, but then, you
know, you get invested in certain characters, certain
characters die and you just kindof like I, I don't know if I
care anymore. So I, I think it works well for,

(06:55):
I think there are good examples like I think train to Basan did
something really interesting andreally different by making it,
you know, I'm going to put some heart into this.
Sometimes it works, sometimes itdoesn't.
I think, you know, a movie like Warm Bodies has its perks.
I think there are good things I like about that, but then there
are other things about it that people might not like, you know,

(07:17):
Hey, zombies in love, how does that work?
Things like that. So it's like vampires too.
If you're going to do something with one of these sort of well
trod monster tropes, you're going to have to do something
with it that engages me at this point.
So doing, you know, Day of the Dead 3 on the airplane or

(07:38):
whatever is just not going to doit for me.
So yeah, that's right. And I think that's why it's
versatile. I mean, especially the Romero
ones, because each time he revisited the series, at least
the first four, there was a different era to comment on.
He's trying to Where is it different every?
Time. Yeah, the last two not so much,

(07:59):
but the first four I think are really very much commenting on
where we are as a American and specifically American Society
right at the time of the making.Excellent.
How about yourself, Steven? I mean, I again, I feel like my
my role in the podcast is the resident new, but with regard to

(08:20):
horror, I I think the first zombie movie I ever saw was
Shaun of the Dead, which it madenot a bad place to start.
In a lot of ways the best and worst place to start because I
don't get any of the references to start with.
But like, it tells me what I need to know about the genre
while also being funny, which helps.
And from there, I kind of jumpedaround a little bit.

(08:42):
It's never been my favorite movie monster.
But in a lot of ways, I feel like it's the movie monster that
allows for the most commentary in terms of society and
politics, which is I think why we had such.
And it's one that always I think, lends itself well to
commentary because, you know, what are the zombies in this
case? And again, that's something
we'll discover a lot through thecourse of this series, the way

(09:03):
that Romero uses them to commenton various aspects of society,
be it the social aspects of thisfilm or the commercial aspects
of Dawn, of the militaristic aspects of Day, like he's always
finding new ways to comment on society.
And I think zombies lend themselves well to that as a
movie monster in ways that things like vampires or my

(09:24):
beloved werewolves don't. I think zombies are really
versatile in that regard, which is I think why we had that
zombie boom about 10 years ago when everything was zombies.
And that's kind of bedded itselfdown a little bit.
But there's still zombie stuff out there if you know where to
look for it. So I think as a genre, zombies
are incredibly or as a monster, they're incredibly versatile.

(09:45):
They as a sub genre, I think they lend themselves well.
The political commentary, as Brian said, you can do that well
or you can do that poorly, but that goes for any kind of movie
monster or any kind of sub genre.
But I think zombies are one thatyou probably have to be a little
more careful with because they're so potent.
A little goes a long way when itcomes to a zombie.
So I like them. They're not my favorite, but

(10:06):
yeah, I and I dig, I dig what Romero does with them.
So I'm really excited about thisseries.
Yeah, it's one of those things for me where it's not my go to
genre or sub genre, but the onesthat are enjoyable to me are
like absolutely incredible. Like for example, and I know we
can push up our glasses and go well actually, but like the 28

(10:30):
Days Later saga, like 28 Days Later.
They're not, actually. Yeah, we're not going to.
We'll talk more about. Close enough here.
Close. Good enough for the beach.
The wreck series for example like all the 1st and the 3rd
Return of the living dead. Like Brian you mentioned warm
bodies. I think like Return of the
Living Dead 3 is one of the bestlike.

(10:52):
Yeah, I really like that. Horror films like that's a
really great one. Haven't seen any of those, I
should probably get on that. I mean you could one.
In three or a lot. Of them one in three or what to
watch for sure. And Shaun of the Dead is
absolutely incredible even and is a film, spoiler alert, like
the last one we cover in the series, Zack Snyder's remake of
Dawn of the Dead, which I think is like an outstanding maybe his

(11:15):
best film overall and it still holds up to this day's right.
No, I mean, it's someone whose films I don't necessarily
necessarily love, but at the same time, like everybody seems
to enjoy working with him and says great things about him and
I I have nothing like I'm not one of those this guy type of
guys, you know, just he's. Not really.
Necessarily for me. He's not my guy.

(11:36):
It's not one of my guys. It's yeah, it's not him.
It's the, it's the culture. It's.
Around it's it's this. Yeah, there are elements of his
fandom that have been. I think the issue for me is
there's just so many Romero knockoffs and anybody with a few
grand that wants to make a horror movie, like that's what
they end up going to and just there's not enough like really

(11:58):
good ones. There's just so like a Dead and
Breakfast is what I really like,which is a zombie horror comedy
that's also like kind of a musical and are the apocalypse.
Which is oh, that's a great musical.
Which is an. Incredible 1 my favorite indie
horror movie. Full stop.
Like, you know, actually hold upmy own prop.
Like my phone case is the alternate.

(12:19):
Post. The battery.
Just watched that again the other day.
And I love that movie so much. I think maybe we throw that on
the patron wheel at some point. What it's called?
The Battery is a little indie horror that Jeremy Gardner made
for like literally $6000 in Connecticut.
He got 60 friends and family members.

(12:41):
He's like, what would you be comfortable losing in a night at
Foxwoods Casino? And they're like 100 bucks,
right? Great.
Give me 100 bucks and that'll beyour gamble on me.
And it's like we I my old site, like I had the cover quote of
the Blu-ray on it because and wescreened it in Boston twice,
actually once with Jeremy in attendance like I adore.

(13:02):
And it's a little two people just walking across New England
during a zombie apocalypse. And it's not like the best
zombie movies. It's not really about the
zombies, which you know, I thinkis going to apply today.
So let's shift gears and I will ask both of you, do you even
remember the first time that yousaw this movie as a whole and

(13:22):
not just like little snippets playing out across the
television screens of other horror movies?
Like, do you remember that? And what were your initial
impressions? And has that shifted over time?
I absolutely remember Mike because again, my role here
seems to be that of the horror noob.
So I first watched this one in its entirety on October 2019 for

(13:47):
a Halloween horror marathon thatI was doing.
And I I liked it. It was I, I think I gave it four
stars. I went back and checked my
letterbox. So it was a four-star movie for
me. I liked it.
It was like, I don't like the pacing, like it's really slow.
I'm not really a big fan of the performances, but it's hard to
argue with what is being done here.
And then I kept watching it and it's, it's become one of those

(14:10):
movies that I just find myself watching at least once a year.
Not because I'm like planning toand not because I have a set
date where I will do that, although my partner does for her
own reasons. And I'll get into that here in a
second. But it's one that I find myself
rewatching consistently and, andI get more out of it every time
I watch it. It's it's like some of my

(14:30):
favorite movies in that way thatevery time I watch it, I'm
seeing something new, I'm finding a new aspect, I'm
noticing something different, I'm taking something else away.
And the fact that it's that richof a text is really something.
And there aren't, to my thinking, a lot of horror movies
that demand that kind of rewatchfrom me.
So the fact that this one does is really makes it, I think

(14:52):
really something special in my mind.
And I, I maybe, maybe this is myfavorite horror movie of all
time. Like I've said, John Carpenter's
the thing forever, but I don't rewatch the thing as much as I
rewatch this. So maybe it's this.
Maybe I maybe I'm making having a grand realization in real time
for for the pot and Benjamin listeners.
But in college, my partner and her friend, who is since

(15:15):
departed, they were such big fans of this film that they shot
a complete parody slash remake of this movie in a cornfield
with nothing but a camcorder anda bottle of ketchup.
The the bottle of ketchup doubled both as blood and as the
bludgeoning weapon with which the zombies were murdered.
Excellent. Based on what I have been told,
no known copies exist. Whether that.

(15:36):
Based on what you've been told. Exactly.
Whether that's a defense mechanism or mere deflection
listener, you decide, but I haveno access to this.
I think you need to ask your partner what the patron level
would be. Then we'll just give her all the
proceedings to see to get. It the problem, the problem is
it, it lived with her friend whois, is again no longer with us.

(15:57):
So if it still exists, it would be very difficult to find.
But yeah, so I mean, and so thisis one that my partner does
watch fairly regularly for that,for the nostalgic reasons and to
to kind of remember her, her departed friends.
So it's one that since the two of us have been dating, this has
become kind of appointment viewing, which again, feeds into
the fact that I keep engaging with it.

(16:19):
So yeah. For me, it's a lot like most.
If you listen to this podcast for any length of time, you know
that I'm about to reach over to my shelf and grab a book because
I have the 1st the time I remember seeing stuff about it,

(16:40):
and it was probably before this,but it was in books.
And so this book, the album of modern horror films, was one I
used to check out from the library all the time.
And now I have my own copy, but it has, you know, photo of some
of the zombies from Night of theLiving Dead.
I remember hearing that title for the first time in
Beetlejuice. I remember actually, probably

(17:03):
from my uncle. My uncle was a huge just horror
fan and I remember him talking specifically about Dawn of the
Dead being one of the greatest horror movies ever.
And so I saw things in Fangoria.Then Halloween 2 has all those
clips in it. You know, they're coming to get

(17:23):
you Barbara and all those things.
So and my guitar teacher was really interested in the movies
too. And so when I was pretty young,
I don't know, maybe 10 years old, he, we would talk about
horror movies and he asked me ifI had seen Night of the Living
Dead. And it was one of his favorites.
And so I must have been in junior high when I finally saw

(17:43):
it all the way through. And I remember it being a very
visceral experience. It was gorier than I expected it
to be. I mean, seeing I had seen even a
picture of in Fangoria of the corpse that's in the upstairs,
you know, just that close up of that sort of skull face.

(18:04):
And but seeing that in the movieproper was like, oh, that's what
that's from. And Oh my gosh, that's really
gross. And you know, them, the feeding
frenzy where they're thrown around for intestines and stuff
later in the movie and eating the bug off the tree and all
those things really got to me atthe time.
But also what got to me more than anything, I think was the

(18:25):
ending. Just the ending felt so
immediate and so real and so dark.
It was just like I, I hadn't seen anything quite like that,
even though I had seen, you know, quite a few 80s horror
movies at that time. They never as dark as some of
them could be. They never went.
They were there was fun to be had.
This one didn't go there. This was like, there's a

(18:47):
brutality to it and a seriousness to it that wasn't
necessarily as present in the horror films I was used to.
Yeah, I I got to be honest, I have no idea when I first saw
this whole movie. I cannot recall for the life of
Maine. I remember seeing clips of it,
whether it be in other horror movies or especially Day of the

(19:08):
Dead. I have vivid memories of scenes
from Day of the Dead being in these like little like video
samplers that would play at certain like punk rock shows.
Like I would go to club Baby Head in Providence when I was a
late teenager, early 20s for shows.
And like over by the bar where they would have TV's, they would
have all these like horror samples playing and Day of the

(19:29):
Dead and Night of the Living Dead in particular having a lot
of things interspersed in. So I don't know how old I was
when I first watched this, but Ido know that like, the ending
wasn't spoiled for me. I remember feeling like that
ending was a real gut punch. You know, it wasn't one of those
films. I'm trying to think of a good
example where like with Psycho, everybody kind of knows the

(19:50):
twist of Psycho before it happens at this point.
Like in 3rd grade I made like a diorama for of the end scene of
Psycho for like some project we had to do and my teacher called
home and asked if everything wasall right.
But I had, yeah, I had no idea about the end of this one.

(20:14):
And it's weird because like the first 3 Romero Dead films, they
feel very ethereal to me. Like they feel like they're not
anchored in any specific time orplace.
And I really like Dawn of the Dead doesn't feel like a 70s
horror movie to me like where The Exorcist or Halloween does.

(20:34):
It feels like it's own thing on Word from Time.
Same thing with Day of the Dead and same thing with Night as
like a piece of like what I would call Newhall.
It doesn't feel like it belongs to anything else except itself.
And it's just like very hard to pin down my thoughts and
feelings on these films sometimes.
And I mean, we said this on the show, you can go to the archives

(20:58):
as we talked about what we're doing with this series.
Like I think we are all kind of like no one was amped up for it.
No one was like, man, I can't wait to dive in to all of these
movies. Like there was a general feeling
of like, oh, zombies. And I'm just kind of like, we
got to do it. And now like after, especially
after watching night, like a lotin the preceding weeks before

(21:23):
recording today, I've definitelyhave like a much more of an
appreciation for it. Like just in terms of Romero's
own techniques as a filmmaker, what he was doing as a
storyteller. Just also watching a lot of the
documentaries on Romero and the making of this.
And like him as a person, like how you it's hard to not have a

(21:44):
lot more respect for him as you're hearing more more about
him or watching him speak in this archival footage, seeing
pictures of him without a beard at the outset of this.
Also like his babyface. Yeah.
Yeah. And I had the Chad met Romero
once before a screening of Survival of the Dead.
He is a giant of a man. Like he I bet he could dunk is

(22:07):
what I'm saying. He was very tall.
But I definitely had a lot more respect for this film.
And I think I told you, like, I'd need to own like a good
physical media copy of this, like in.
I'm probably going to run and pick that up from Criteria.
Yep, yeah. Which is like streaming on their
channel with all the bonus features.
But I'm like, no, this belongs on the shelf as that's going to

(22:27):
happen like this weekend. After Barnes and Noble right
now. That's right, 50% off.
Gotta love it. OK, shall we talk a little bit
about the background of Night ofthe Living Dead before we jump
into the movie proper? Let's.
Do indeed. Let's do that.
And again, I, you know, I all right, so going into the

(22:49):
background of this movie, it feels like zombies are one of
those, or zombies as we see themhere, like zombies as Romero
defines them. It's a monster that was created
by cinema. Like with vampires, you have
years of Eastern European folklore.
You have tales of Drat drat Vladthe Impaler that was done by

(23:10):
Stoker. But you have just so like
centuries of folklore with vampires.
Same thing with the werewolf. You have like Mary Shelley
basically creating science fiction with Frankenstein and
reanimating a dead corpse as a living being.
Zombies, like, although they existed in like, especially in
particular like Haitian and voodoo folklore, they were like

(23:33):
a much different beast, which I'm sure we'll talk about a
little bit. There is like the French silent
film Jacques, which does like atthe end of that film.
It's a post World War One silentmovie from 1919.
The end of that like a all the dead soldiers like rise from the
battlefield and March on the living basically.

(23:55):
But they're not defined as zombies per SE.
Romero takes inspiration like hein some ways feels like this is
an adaptation of like Richard Matheson's I Am Legend.
But instead of using vampires, he's creating something brand
new with what he calls Flesh Eaters and Cools.

(24:17):
And I think Matheson took very much exception to Romero doing
this. He's like, that's not my story
and pay. Me right?
Also like pay me for the rights.Right, right.
Well, one of the things that's sort of interesting about I, I

(24:37):
jumping in on this cuz I just. Wrote Please do.
Yeah, I just wrote a a piece on on the Last Man on Earth, which
is the first film adaptation of I Am Legend.
And Richard Matheson actually technically wrote it, but he
took his name off it because he didn't like the rewrites, first

(25:00):
of all, and second of all, he didn't like that Vincent Price
was cast as the lead. He thought he was too old and
just not right for it. There are some other reasons as
well, but what is interesting. Dammit.
What is interesting though, based on all of this is years

(25:22):
later after the Omega Man with Charlton Heston and come out.
This was probably after that forsome time.
Even a reporter asked Richard Matheson, what's your favorite
screen adaptation of I Am Legendand he said Night of the Living
Dead. So I think he does.

(25:43):
He did. I should say he's no longer with
us appreciate Night of the Living Dead as a film.
He also, I think saw that, yes, indeed, he adapts in some
respects at least the concept ofhis novel.
Now, what's interesting is, and there's not really any proof

(26:07):
that Ramiro or Russo or anyone saw The Last Man on Earth, which
it came out in the United Statesin 1964, was not a hit, was just
kind of a drive in film. But if you watch that movie, you
can see a lot of things that look very familiar.

(26:29):
If you're familiar with Night ofLiving Dead, the the vampires
are very much more like zombies.They're much more sort of
shambling, dazed, brain dead creatures that don't really, you
know, they they're not vampires as we think of vampires.
They're more like the flesh eaters in this movie.

(26:51):
There's also a Hammer film that predates this called Plague of
the Zombies, which is sort of takes the Haitian voodoo thing
and also and combines it with the horde idea.
So it has a little bit of that night of the living dead feel.
There's even sequences back in the 1932 White Zombie with Bela

(27:14):
Lugosi that some of the zombies look a lot like the ghouls in
this movie. So I think that there are a lot
of, I mean, just like Alien and things like that, you just kind
of these things absorb into the consciousness and sort of have
their flashpoint in one particular film.

(27:35):
And that film happens to be Night of Living Dead.
Yeah. I.
Read somewhere that the thing that struck Romero about
Matheson's original story is thenotion that this is all
happening. But what happens to like someone
boots on the ground when this ishappening?
What happens to the ordinary people who are trapped in the
middle of this? And that kind of becomes his his

(27:58):
way into the story. So it's not an adaptation per
SE, so much as it is taking thatconcept and kind of shifting in
90°. Well, and and saying, you know,
how did this all start? Because that's something that I
am Legend doesn't really addressit.
It's this has already been goingon.
He's in the middle of this for, you know, however many months.

(28:19):
So what was the first day like? I mean, that's the real.
Shit movie gets into but. Yeah, at least there are some
shades of like Invasion of the Body Snatchers as well, when you
think of like the potty people and replicants and like they're,
you know, coming for the rest ofhumanity as well.
And they're unstoppable. They're.
Calling the Navy, Barbara. Right.
Yeah, there's definitely some things you can see there as

(28:42):
well. I mean, we'll talk about like,
what, what are the ingenious things I think this film pulls
off as it's, it's a very modern movie to the degree that it
still holds up today. And, you know, we'll talk about
its place in horror history, butit's also very much of its time
at the scene. It's almost like a way to trick

(29:04):
people, you know, like, you think you're going to get this
kind of schlocky horror movie that's going to play at drive
ins or like kids matinees at 2:00 PM on a Saturday.
I know, Steve, you'll talk aboutthis later, how it like freaked
people, especially kids, the fuck out, which is like is one
of the cool things with it. What's interesting is Romero

(29:28):
himself at the time didn't necessarily have any particular
particular affinity for horror. It's not that he didn't like it,
but he didn't set out to be a horror filmmaker.
In fact, I think it was like Night of the White Fawn or
something of a similar title, was the movie he wanted to make
a serious drama, but in his own words, he like backed into

(29:53):
making a horror movie because ashe went to financiers, he
couldn't convince them. Give me money to make my own
serious dramatic piece And what he and John Russo and the other
folks at Image Tech, his production company, realized is
like. People are churning out these

(30:15):
low budget drive in horror movies almost as a calling card.
And they don't cost a lot to make.
They're not a lot to produce. They have a built in audience.
They'll play at drive ins, they'll play in matinees and we
can do that, make our money and then do what we want.
Similar like Sam Raimi about a decade later, like that, like

(30:38):
Sam Raimi literally would go to just how many people are at
Texas Chainsaw Massacre. What are the box box office
receipts? So it's in, you know, we'll talk
about Romero, his career before becoming a feature filmmaker.
Like he was heavily involved in commercial commercials and

(30:58):
commercial filmmaking or making like industrial films, like
commercial isn't like. So this was his chance like turn
a profit and give a calling card.
And the original script, which Ihave not seen, but my
understanding is it's much more of a horror comedy.
It's like much heavier on the laughs, which a lot.

(31:18):
You know one thing about Night of the Living Dead?
You cannot call it as a funny movie.
It was centered on like teenage aliens.
And that was scrapped when Russoand Romero realized we don't
have the money to build a convincing rocket ship, so we're
not going to do that. So Russo, we're like, Russo's

(31:38):
writing a script. Romero was writing a short
story. They combined their ideas
together of like, aliens harvesting humans for food and
flesh eating ghouls into a script.
And that script was about halfway done as they started
filming. And Romero would write in
between shooting because they'reusually filming on weekends, as

(32:00):
we'll talk about. And some of the unused ideas
would go on to like pave the wayfor Dawn of the Dead and Day of
the Dead later on. I heard Judith O'deais said that
she doesn't ever remember seeinga script for this movie, but
they just kind of told her, toldthe actors OK, this is what

(32:22):
needs to happen in the scene andthey just kind of did it however
they felt it should be done. Apparently things were pretty
loose on set. Yeah, it, I mean, because
they're all friends. I mean, they all know one
another and you get into like, when you get into like, who
plays Harry? You know, Carl Hardman, like his
wife, like Marilyn Eastman was his partner at the time.

(32:45):
I think they were married like in their daughter like.
That's in life and in business, yeah.
Yeah, You know, so there's that kind of, I hope they had a
happier marriage than what's portrayed, you know?
Like. You know, it's like you can just
see them at a horror panel like a deck decades later.

(33:06):
It's like, where did you get your inspiration from?
And they just stared daggers at one another.
It's just you don't want that for anybody.
They seem to be getting along when they were talking together,
being interviewed together for the 40th anniversary.
That's good. Documentary.
That's good to know. All right, well, can we talk a

(33:26):
bit about Romero as a filmmaker in his background?
Yeah, so I got this. I thought you were going to say
no thank. God, no, absolutely not.
Yeah, good. I totally dropped the ball and
I'm I'm not I don't have anything to offer.
But anyway. So this is a lot of this is

(33:46):
taken from there was a DVDI still have from.
I don't even know if it was the 40th anniversary or when it was
from, but a lot of this information comes from that.
So if there are any holes in it you guys know of and want to
fill in, feel free. But what I have here is so
Romero dropped out of Pittsburgh's Carnegie Institute

(34:08):
of Technology, which is now known as Carnegie Mellon
University, and recruited a couple of college friends,
Richard Ricci and Russ Striner, who plays Johnny in the film,
and and also John Russo to help create the production company.
Just a production company. And he just wanted creative

(34:29):
people with him. Didn't necessarily have to know
a lot about film, but wanted people who he he got the film
bug and he just wanted creative people to work with him.
And so unfortunately, Russo was had joined the Army, so able to
join right away with them, but he spent two years and they

(34:55):
said, OK, well, if we're doing well when you come back, then
you can join us, Which ultimately ended up happening.
So Ramiro borrowed $500 from hisuncle, and they already had a
16mm camera and a few lights, and they started their
production company. Ricci found an office space and

(35:19):
paid six months of rent before leaving because he was drafted.
So twas the season at that time.But this, I guess in the winter,
this, they had to like, chip iceout of the toilet in order to

(35:40):
use it. Oh boy.
Because the place was kind of, it wasn't the best place in the
world, but it was something. And so things were pretty slow
at first. They did come up with the name
of their company which was the Latent Image and they pretty
much got weddings and baby picture gigs to start with.

(36:05):
Much like Rodney Dangerfield andeasy money.
There you go, there you go. And it really only paid enough
to keep the lights on at first. But in 1963, they were
approached by a guy named Vince Servisky Vinsky to make a film
about an East German defector. And the project fell through.

(36:29):
They ran out of money, but Servinsky kept on investing in
them for whatever reason, and actually continue to work with
Romero for quite some time. OK, so here we go.
Now we're things are getting good.
They were offered a commercial for the Bowl Planetarium sky

(36:50):
show and it featured a rocket ship landing on the moon.
And they, they didn't, they lostall, they didn't make any money
on it. In fact, they lost money on it,
but it got them enough attentionthat they started getting more
business. And so they were able to move
into a new space. John Russo came back from the

(37:13):
Army and joined the team in 1965.
Then they started getting lots of commercial work, including
the Calgon story, which is a spoof of the Fantastic Voyage,
where, you know, they shrink down and they go inside of,
instead of a human body inside awashing machine and.

(37:37):
The it's an amazing. Commercial.
It's amazing commercial. We actually have that here.
Why don't we give this a listen?It's about a one minute clip and
you can find the video of it online.
It is trippy as hell, but this is George Romero directing a
commercial for washing machine Detergent.

(38:00):
And get the message across. The Calgon Story What happens
when a Calgon research team and their submarine are reduced to
micro size and sent on a dangerous mission deep inside a
washing machine? Engines reversed.
Full captain. We're stuck.
We've got to find out what's on those fibers.
Trapped in the fibers of a giantT-shirt, the Kalgonauts discover

(38:24):
secrets of grey. No looking laundry.
What? It feels like.
Leftover detergent fill. The fibers are covered with this
stuff. This box has never been opened.
And the Calgon you'll thrill as Calgon dissolves The Dirty
leftover detergent film it's. Working.
The grey is gone, the fibers areclean.

(38:45):
Let's get out of here. I think I'm in love with you.
If you're tired of dull detergent films and Grade B
washes, thrill to the Calgon story at your nearby family
washing machine. This has been.
That's quite an ending. And then?
The beer commercial. The beer commercial where the

(39:06):
wife ends up mowing the lawn at the end and he drinks both
beers. I mean, they're telling them
they're telling these stories inthese little a brief
commercials. So they had constant work, but
they were constantly busy and constantly broke is pretty much
the way they tell the story, which, you know, hey, when
you're young and hungry, I guessyou can do anything.

(39:31):
But eventually they decided, OK,we're going to make a feature.
And they thought a horror movie like we talked about would be
how they get the most bang for their buck.
And they called it Monster Flick.
That that was what they had at start.

(39:51):
OK. So they they joined.
Yeah, they joined forces. With.
Right. They joined forces with another
production company, Hardman and Eastman and Associates.
To form Image 10. Now many of the people that work
for Hardman and Eastman and associates are in the film,
including the the people the company's named after.

(40:16):
And we'll talk about that more with casting.
Judith O'Day also worked with them.
And what's interesting is they had to continue making, they had
to continue working, making commercials while they were
filming Night of the Living Dead.
So somehow Eastman, even MarilynEastman even won an award for

(40:41):
one of the commercials they madeduring the making of Night of
the Living Dead. So somehow they got it to work.
So it's they were making, they call him not just commercials,
but industrial films, like corporate films because I guess
after New York and Chicago, Pittsburgh at the time was like

(41:03):
one of the biggest corporate centers in the United States.
So there was a ton of film companies.
And so they managed to make themselves stand out because of
their creativity. And you watch the clips from,
they're very dynamic visually, they tell stories in these

(41:24):
really short amount of times andit's pretty impressive stuff.
And a lot of those latent image videos are available on YouTube,
etc. I think too, he would make clips
for Mr. Rogers Neighborhood. Yes, that's one of the things he
did as well. Because they were in college.

(41:44):
I remember that, yeah. I so I, I, I had missed that.
But as soon as you mentioned, itwas like, yeah, that's right.
I remember all that because theywere actually filmed.
Yeah. Mr. Rogers.
Time. Conselectomy yeah, yeah, yeah,
he and Fred Rogers were like really had were knew each other
well, yeah, that's. Right.
There's like the clip of like Mr. Rogers like getting, I want

(42:08):
to say like oral surgery, like getting in, you know, Yeah.
Oh, that's tonsillectomy. And like, hey, this isn't scary.
Like, you know, it's Mr. Rogers did, like made the world less
afraid or less, less of a scary place for children.
Like Roger Romero did stuff likethat.
And I think that a couple thingsI read is like Betty Abrilin,

(42:31):
who was a cast member of Mr. Rogers neighborhood, she played
I think like Lady Elaine on the show.
Like it's been like, I haven't watched it since I was 4, so I
apologize. But she initially was up for the
role of bar, not Barbara. I think she was actually up for
the role of Helen and Mr. Rogers.

(42:54):
Fred Rogers is like, absolutely not.
Like, one thing was he was very protective of his show in some
ways, good and bad ways. Like there's no there was an
openly gay character man who he's like would not allow to
come out, basically like prevented him from coming out,
which is a knock against Fred Rogers.

(43:14):
But he was basically said, well,here's the deal.
And his reason for it makes sense.
He's like, these movies typically play at 2:00 in the
afternoon over the airwaves for free.
Like if you're just like tuning in to your locals.
I remember growing up there was like creature double features at
like one O clock and three O clock Saturday afternoons.

(43:37):
ULVI Channel 56. And they were 90% of them, you
know, were like old. They're all old movies.
He's like, I do not want a kid who watches our show turning on
like a horror movie and seeing one of our characters.
I get involved in it or whateveris going to happen.
Like, so that was his reasoning behind it, like why he didn't

(44:01):
want her to perform it. But he was like adamant, like, I
will have to let you go from theshow if you perform in this.
And I believe that was Betty Aberlin.
If I am wrong and I have the cast number wrong like listeners
like comment, send us an e-mail what not we actually got a
really nice I. Wanted to play the nun at the
beginning of Kevin Smith's Dogmathough, that much I do.

(44:21):
Know, I think Mr. Rogers by thatpoint was either dead or was no.
Longer. He wasn't dead by that point,
but he was. I do think he was like grabbing
her by the back of the nun. By the habit.
Outfit by the habit and be like you cannot do this.
Think of the children and like Kevin Smith had to forcibly have

(44:42):
Fred Rogers or move from set. It's like you're not going to
fuck up my. Movie I think Kevin Smith would
have. I think Kevin Smith would have
tried to cast Fred Rogers in another role in the film,
honestly. Trying to pitcher Fred Rogers.
Knowing Kevin Smith, that's 100%what he would.
Have done, yeah, I'm going to say here I believe the original
person cast for the guy that dies masturbating on the toilet

(45:06):
and clerks and then Dante's one his girlfriend like screws him.
I believe that was Fred Rogers. And there was just a time there
was just a scheduling conflict because the Fred Rogers was
about anything. It was about like the magazines
with the big titties. That was definitely.

(45:28):
Like I'll pick a titties in thatone.
Fuck clerks really holds up clerks is.
I haven't seen it in a while, but I do have an autographed DVD
from Brian Hollerin and Jeff Anderson back.
On God love you All right. Sorry, Brian, we got this.
I can't believe it, but I got ussidetracked with bullshit.
Well, you know, that's all I had.

(45:50):
That's why we're here. I got through.
I got through my notes. So you, you, you took over the
perfect time. Oh, no, Like, he also did like
the political ads for George Mcgovern's campaign.
And this is where you see his progressive activism coming in.
And I will insert that commercial here as well because
it's scary. Like when you listen to it, it's

(46:11):
actually a very scary commercial, and it is about the
plight of young black mothers and black children that were
dying at like an alarming rate. When you hear it, it sounds like
a horror movie. Like, So you can see very early
on that call to activism that I think it's going to be a
hallmark of Romero's films. And it's, I think in this film,

(46:32):
much more subtle. It becomes a lot more explicit,
especially as you go through thedead filmography.
But yeah, we'll play that right here.

(46:52):
This happens every 27 minutes inAmerica.
Sounds like some underdeveloped country, doesn't it?
Regrettably, it's right here at home.
Every 27 minutes a black child dies.
The past and present administrations were and are

(47:15):
aware of this situation. George McGovern feels a moral
obligation to bring this to an immediate end.
Let our children live. Join hands with McGovern.
We've got a friend. Bye.

(47:36):
Bye. Thanks, Brian.
And we'll just talk a little bitabout the production of this.
Like it basically it goes in dribs and drabs.
Like they find an abandoned farmhouse where they can film
in. They get permission from the
owners to use it. And not only do they film there,
but they also like 4 of the producers and Romero himself,

(47:59):
like they live at that farmhouseduring the shooting of this.
And it takes about seven months to complete all of the principal
photography. Like they start in July of 67.
They end in July of 68. I believe the seller scenes are
shot in the image 10s offices. Like they actually don't have a

(48:21):
seller in that home. So like they, you know, would
film those off site somewhere else.
Romero talks about, you know, obviously we're talking about
the cast here in a moment. So actually, we'll leave that
right now at that part. Oh boy, making work for myself
with. Regard to with regard to the

(48:43):
shooting schedule, Judith O'deais said she didn't know any
better. Like, she's a young actress.
And just like, I just thought that's how movies work.
Like, they just, like, call you when you, they need you and you
just show up when, whenever. And it takes seven months to
shoot a movie. She goes, yeah, I had no idea
that that's not how movies. Were.
There's a hard way for Hollywood.

(49:04):
A lot of people involved in thismovie is we just don't know how
this shit works. Yeah, but we we see that so
often. I mean like the three, I mean
you could lump in Night of the Living Dead, Texas Chainsaw
Massacre in Sam Raimi's Evil Dead and you can almost like
inter swap stories between them with the I think the exception

(49:26):
being with this one, there's a lot less like physical pain and
frustration that goes into it. Like Evil Deads just sounded
grueling from start to finish. And Texas Chainsaw Massacre like
Toby Hooper and Kim Hinkle maybeshould have gone to for what

(49:47):
they put their cast through. Where when you hear stories of
this, like, yes, it was long andyes, the conditions weren't
ideal, but it seems like everyone got along.
Like one note on the home. Russo and Romero made it a
point. Like the kitchen has to be
really nice. Like, we can mess up the rest of

(50:08):
the house, but there's no running water.
We can't really shower. People need to have an area they
can eat and have a good sandwichif they're going to be here all
the time. So don't fuck with the kitchen.
Like, they thought of things like that in order to make it
nicer for everybody there. Let's kind of talk about the
cast here because the cast is also the crew.

(50:31):
Yeah. And again, like the other two
movies we mentioned, like the some of the crew is living on
set and there's like, no runningwater in it.
But this is like a team of unknowns.
And also, like a lot of the castis they are producers on the
film as well. Like you have John Hardman.

(50:55):
I'm sorry, Carl Hardman, who plays Harry like he is one of
the, you know, business partnersof George Romero and he's
acting. You have.
Oh gosh. Who's not even credited as an
actor? Yes.
Right. He's a producer on the film like
he's. But he delivers one of the most
iconic lines in the movie, of course.

(51:17):
And then of course, Eastman, whois Hartman's producing partner
and romantic partner and wife inthe film.
Yep. And then you've got, I think
it's Judith Riley, who plays Judy in the movie was like the
receptionist for Hardman and Eastman at their offices and she

(51:38):
auditioned for Barbara and they're like, how about Judy?
Judy would might be good for you.
Judith O'Day was an actress who had worked with Hardman and
associates, like, on several things before she'd actually
moved out to Hollywood. Because as a kid, she said,
like, I'd always dreamed about living in Hollywood.

(51:58):
So that was something I knew I wanted to do.
So she was out in Hollywood doing that.
And then Hardman calls her up and he's like, hey, we're making
a movie out here. Why don't you fly back to to
Pittsburgh to be in our movie? Yes, Sunny Pittsburgh.
And so she's like, yeah, OK. And so she said I had my little
bag. I packed my little bag back up
and I flew back to Pittsburgh. And I was in this movie, like.

(52:22):
But yeah, Shriner and Hardman and Eastman.
And then, of course, Kira Shawn is the little girl.
She's actually Hardman's daughter.
And like she also plays the mangled corpse upstairs that Ben

(52:43):
drags into the other room. Actually, Eastman not only plays
Hardman's wife in the movie, butshe plays she plays the bug
eating zombie, like the zombie that picks the bug off the tree
and and eats. And I think a lot of the actors
in this film, they were maybe with the exceptions of O'Day and
Jones, do double duty. And you could.
Definitely tell the zombie. The writer of the film, like

(53:05):
Russo is the zombie that pops inlike that great jump scare when
he appears like in the living room early on behind Ben.
Like that's Russo. He originally was going to be
like the original goal until Hinsman like took that over.
So yeah, there's a lot of that as well, but probably the most
like so. Good in that, yeah.

(53:26):
The most important casting, of course, is probably Dwayne
Jones. Is Ben A?
100%. So is the role was originally
written, he was written as like a white guy that was a trucker.
And obviously like Dwayne Jones,like not a spoiler.
He's not white. And you know, Romero is on
record as saying like, look, I didn't really think at all about

(53:48):
any of the racial implications of of filming this with like a
black lead actor. Like that wasn't at the
forefront. Like Dwayne Jones was just like
the best actor for the role. So that's what he wanted to go
by. However, like Dwayne Jones was
very aware of how others might interpret his character not, and

(54:12):
not just in terms of like what it might mean for his career,
but what it might mean for him just walking down the street.
So he and Romero and Russo, like, they're in constant
dialogue as they're filming. Like, for one, the role is a bit
softened. Like originally he's a bit more
of a rough and tumble truck driver.
And I think you see, like, Ben'scharacter as much in some cases,

(54:35):
like much gentler when he needs to be.
He's much more even tempered forthe most part with, you know,
some exceptions here. He would tell, like told Romero,
flat out, like, you want me to punch a white woman in the face
and knock her out. Do you realize what could happen
to me if the wrong person sees that?

(54:57):
And sees me in the street. So he was very, very conscious
of that. And he was very conscious like
he did not want to play a stereotypical black character
in, you know, kind of one of theunfortunate things and maybe
we'll talk about when we talk about the legacy is no one here
goes on to have like a particularly illustrious career

(55:21):
in Hollywood after that. And I think this is something
you see with low budget horror in particular when there's like
a breakout movie like this. All of the credit goes to George
Romero, Texas Chainsaw, all of the credit goes to Toby Hooper

(55:41):
at the end of the day, like nobody really.
Blair Witch Project, really nobody came out of that movie.
Like even our directors of Mure,Nick and Eduardo Sanchez, like
they don't really get to follow it up in any big way like you'd
expect. But for the most part, like the
cast of Blair Witch, I think with the exception of Joshua

(56:03):
Leonard, who is a good working actor, the other two leads, like
they're no law. They haven't made movies in
years. Like one of them is a high
school, middle school, middle school principal.
I believe MM is like a works in education at this point.
They just don't get any credit and I think that is something

(56:24):
you often see when low budget horror breaks out in a huge way.
So it's kind of unfortunate the cast doesn't get the credit they
do for their performance especially.
I think Dwayne Jones is outstanding.
I have a lot of good things to say about Carl Hardman later on
as well. Carl Hartman doesn't have any
good things to say about Carl Hartman in this film.

(56:46):
He said that when he and and Marilyn Eastman watch the movie,
they're like, this is bad. Like we are so terrible in this
movie, like God, that we are unwatchable.
I and he, he was just like, it'sI'm amazed that people can, can
stand me, quite frankly, which Ifind very funny.
Well I mean even Romero was talking about when he was

(57:06):
watching the movie. All he can see is the flaws he
can see. You know.
Shit across the axis and you know, so they're talking in the
wrong directions and you know, things like that that, you know,
screen direction. It's something you learn over
time, right. But you know, I, I think one of

(57:27):
the things that I can forgive a lot with this movie is the
performances because it is so low budget.
I that's kind of what you're used to if you watch low budget
movies, your performances are wildly varied.
I think the strongest performance without a doubt in
this movie is Dwayne Jones. It's not even close The.

(57:48):
Man studied at the Sarbonne like.
Yeah. I mean, when they, when they
we're talking, Ramiro would always talk about him as he was
just the best actor of the people we knew.
Well, yeah. And he was at a level that was
far and away above as far as screen acting goes above any of
the others. And you know, he's, he did have
another follow up of this, you know.

(58:10):
Andrew and Hass, yeah. And which was also extremely low
budget movie, right, so, but again.
Another one that became a call classic over.
Time. Exactly.
Exactly. And, you know, and so he sort of
cemented himself in history withthose with in horror history, at
least with those two films. I definitely got the sense there

(58:35):
was some bitterness on the part of, like, Dwayne Jones, if not
necessarily directed at like, George Romero himself and
directed it at the fact that really, Romero got all the
credit. Like, you can hear some
interviews with him and he talksabout how the film didn't really
do a lot for his career, how he was saying, like, why is the

(58:59):
director getting all the credit?We're the ones up on screen.
We're the ones like, you're watching perform.
And he was asked, like in this interview, like, well, have you
watched any of the others? Like, have you watched?
What were your thoughts on like Dawn of the Dead or Day of the
Dead? And he was like, haven't watched
him. He's like, and he was like, it

(59:20):
was almost like a pointed comment.
And he kind of catches himself after where he's like, but I
also haven't seen like Beverly Hills Cop or, you know, the
Terminator. He's like, so don't take it but
the wrong way, but I think therewas some definite resentment
that this didn't rightfully launch him into something much

(59:40):
larger. He would go on to like teach the
basically teach theater at a university level and
unfortunately passed away fairlyyoung.
I think it like 52 years old, which is unfortunate.
And then the actor that played Tom.

(01:00:01):
He took his own life at the age of 50, and he was the one that
Romero thought of. The cast that we had was going
to be the big breakout because he was like a go go dancer.
I in an interview, I saw an interview in the 40th
anniversary documentary and Romero just calls him a cat like
10 times. He's like, that was the cat.
He's the cat. You know, you just arrive in a
convertible in the backseat sitting there going, yo-yo, he

(01:00:23):
was just a cat. He was like a go go dancer at
the time. He eventually became a nightclub
owner in an interview in like a few years before his death.
He's like, I'm, I'm not that person anymore.
Like that's not me. But like he was the one that
everyone involved, except perhaps for Jones and and
everyone who involved just has nothing but good things to say
about Jones as an actor, like anincredible actor.

(01:00:44):
They just kind of all stop when when they say a good actor,
they're like, no, no, no, like they correct themselves.
No, he was an incredible actor, like a great he.
Was, I mean, you see it here. He's so good here.
He's amazing here, like he is the breakout.
But then, yeah, because of his personality and outgoing nature,
everyone thought it was going tobe Keith Wayne, and it was not.
And it's Keith Wayne. It's so unfortunate.

(01:01:05):
Like later on he would stop acting and really stop any
performances altogether. He would go on to have a this.
Is his only movie role. Yeah, I think it is.
But he would do other things andin he would say like he became a
chiropractor and he said, look, I'm not in that life anymore.
He's like, I want to be in a position where I have control

(01:01:27):
over my own life. And then like you mentioned,
Stephen, like a couple years later, he, you know,
unfortunately takes his own lifein 1995.
So you don't know what what he was like wrestling with.
But it is it's just a sad. It's one of the sad legacies of
this film is that with the exception of Romero and maybe

(01:01:49):
John Russo, who you know goes onthe direct return of the living
dead and write other things, butRomero was really the break in.
And I would even argue Romero doesn't get the career you would
expect him to get. And we'll talk about some
possible reasons why in a minute.
But this is an extremely low budget film like I believe all

(01:02:15):
together, like they originally thought they could make it for
six grand, then they raised 12 grand.
I think overall it costs about $114,000 to make this movie or
just over $1,000,000 today. And they could not find
distribution for they thought they would easily sell this

(01:02:36):
movie. I think Russo talked about
Columbia being very interested in it, but then at the last
minute, distributors backing offbecause it's like it's in black
and white. It's so low budget.
It's like, who's got the audience for this?
It was so unlike anything anyonehad seen.
So, you know, Romero talks aboutliterally driving around to

(01:02:59):
exhibitors with reels of the movie on hand to show it.
Various Dr. Ins. It's interesting because it
seems like a movie like AIP or something like that could pick
up. Sure.
You know, but but they were had probably also moved on to color
and we're like we're making, youknow, they're making like

(01:03:20):
motorcycle pictures, Roger Corman's Wild Angels and the
trip things like that. Romero says the main reason
Columbia didn't want it is because they demanded that the
ending be changed. They wanted a happier, upbeat
ending. They wanted the hero to survive
the movie. And they were like, no, that's,

(01:03:41):
that's a different movie. We're that's not the movie we
made. And so Columbia's like, all
right, well then, no thank you. Well, I mean, an AIP probably
would have said not enough tits.That's that.
Was cool, you got that. Couple there.
Is a naked zombie in there? But.
Yeah, it's, it's true. That's true.
Yeah, Yeah. Russ Meyers, Night of the Living

(01:04:01):
Dead. Yeah, it's, I think what what
saves this movie is like one of the exhibitors in New York
literally had to turn audiences away because so many people
wanted to see the film to such adegree that, like, he ends up
taking out an ad in the newspaper apologizing to people

(01:04:21):
who wanted to see the film and couldn't.
And he's like, please come back.We'll offer you like a free
popcorn and a soda if you come this weekend.
And he starts calling other exhibitors going like, look, I
don't know why, but for whateverreason, we have this little
movie like night of the living day.
People want to see it. And we have we're turning them

(01:04:44):
away. Like you got a book, this movie.
So more and more drive insuranceand more and more little little
theaters are like turning peopleaway.
Like, like the sound of that, like sold out screenings, like
sign us up. And they start like ordering
prints of the film to be shown as well.
But you know, part of the thing that really kind of cost this

(01:05:08):
movie and one of its enduring legacies is I think it goes on
to affect copyright law because famously, there's an error in
when registering the copyright. It falls into public domain.
And Romero and Russo like almostnothing on this movie that no, I
forgot to mention in its initialrun pulls in over $15 million

(01:05:33):
nineteen $68, which that's a lotof money.
That's not quite Marvel money, but that's like final
destination bloodlines. That sinners money is what I
would say for those playing at home and overall like 30 million
in box office receipts over the ensuing years.
And Steven, do you mind taking it away?

(01:05:55):
Yeah. Yeah, of course.
They oh, I will. I'll get microscopic on this.
Just like the Calgon story. They did end up finding a
distributor. The distributor they found was
Walter Reed Junior, the son of famed Hollywood producer Walter
Reed. And they had formed the the
Walter Reed organization. Walter Reed Senior ran it until

(01:06:19):
his death and then Reed Junior took over until his, but he was
the one that ultimately picked up the film.
As Brian mentioned, the film wasoriginally known by the working
title of Monster Flick before they selected the much more
badass name of Night of Anubis, which I still think is a fucking
great title, before landing on Night of the Flesh Eaters.

(01:06:43):
And so they had the film set up under this title.
It was registered, all set up, ready to go.
And then they find out that a few years earlier, in 1964,
there had been another film released called The Flesh
Eaters. And so they're like, well, shit,
We don't want to, you know, be confused as a sequel to that
movie or, you know, get litigation from that from those

(01:07:03):
film makers. So we'll change it to Night of
the Living Dead. And so Walter Reed sets that up.
He updates the title card for the film, but in doing that
apparently accidentally omits the copyright statement for the
film with that type with the newtitle, and as such releases it
without a copyright stamp. And so as such, the film

(01:07:26):
immediately immediately falls into the public domain to the
point where in order to distribute the film, there's no
need to consult directly with Romero.
So basically when the home video, the home media market
starts to hit big, you can just anyone who has a copy of the

(01:07:49):
film can just reprint it withoutpermission.
And so this becomes one of the big hits of the home video
market like early on, because somany different distributors can
get their hands on it. Now, there are a few
distributors, Criterion obviously being one of them, who
do seek out the permission of the film makers.
And so Romero does make some money on the home video

(01:08:10):
releases, but not nearly as muchas he could or should, given how
many home video releases were made of this film.
It's also one that, I'm sorry, go ahead.
No, I was going to say when I watched this, this time on the
Criterion disc, it now says at the very end Copyright 2016

(01:08:31):
image 10 so. But he fought for years, yeah.
Criterion, I think, was instrumental in making that
happen finally, at least for theestate, if nothing else.
For, for that cut. Yeah, absolutely.
And and rightly so. Yeah.
Again, that was to see them getting the flowers that they

(01:08:52):
have so richly deserved for decades.
Is, is, yeah. It's the Bill finger situation
all over again where you know, you've got this guy who's
instrumental in the creation of this thing that everybody loves
but doesn't ever get the credit for it.
And so to see them finally getting the credit is great.
Yeah, Bill Finger, famous Co creator of the finger sandwich.

(01:09:12):
Correct. And Batman.
Batman. Batman, the man who created
everything we know that's iconicabout Batman, did not get credit
for Batman for years. Yeah, but Bob Kane signed his
name, I mean without by Bob in that nice signatures.
Right. I think the first time Bill
Finger got credit was on the aforementioned Zack Snyder's of

(01:09:34):
Batman V Superman. Dawn of Justice was the first
time Finger was credited as one of the creators of Batman.
So again, it's one of those things that's.
Long correct. Not a good film.
Not a good film. Sorry Snyder Bros, don't add me.
Actually, do so do at Steven. Mike.

(01:09:55):
Just say nice. Things, Mike, No.
Say nice things. I so the the pro of this
obviously is that the film gets into gets seen by a lot more
people than it might have otherwise.
The wide distribution of it makes it a cult classic, a
midnight movie screening staple.Like everybody, it's a genre

(01:10:17):
classic. I don't think it would have
become quite as we're highly regarded had it not been so
accessible. An argument can be made, but the
con obviously is that, you know,Romero doesn't get the the
financial recompense do have a thing which he spoke publicly
about for years. So that's kind of the double
edged sword of this, this ratherflagrant error on the part of

(01:10:40):
the distributor is the fact thatyes, tons of people get to see
it. It becomes a classic that we all
acknowledge and love. On the other hand, the people
that made it don't get what they're due and what they're owe
as a result. And then so it becomes this
artistic sticking point for a number of years as a result.

(01:11:03):
It's to me, I don't buy the like, well, not as many people
would have seen it argument likethat because by the time the
home video market had come out, he had already made Dawn of the
Dead by then. And Day of the Dead is 85.
It's really like mid 80s when the home video boon really,

(01:11:24):
really happens. And you know, like Sam Raimi
made a low budget horror movie that launches his career.
Toby Hooper makes a low budget horror movie that launches his
career. People saw those movies.
Maybe not in the same numbers, but enough people saw them.
The follow-ups for Romero were not as strong, though, as those

(01:11:46):
as that as that initial outings.You have the crazies, you have
Martin. You know, I mean the crazies is.
A lot fun. There's always vanilla.
That classic, classic film. There's always vanilla.
But you know, it's and it's a good ten years before he
revisits. You're right, like a zombies
again. I think specifically to your

(01:12:07):
point, like he wasn't as commercially successful, but
like, you know, Raimi follows upEvil Dead with time crimes,
right? Which is not a hit.
Hooper follows up Texas ChainsawMassacre with Eaten Alive, which
was not a hit. So I love Eaten Alive.
I think that movie is like so much fun.

(01:12:28):
Just Robert England. Oh yeah, I'm talking about butt.
And I came here yeah anyway, which no, no question thought
fuck Quentin Tarantino stole that line wholesale and even in
his book, even in his book cinema speculation did not even

(01:12:49):
talks about eating alive and he doesn't even mention that hey, I
like this line so much that I put it in Kill Bill, but are.
You suggesting I? Am I suggesting film makers?
Quentin Tarantino would just steal from another film.
Maker, Brian. I don't know.
I'm not. Sure.

(01:13:11):
Yeah, The other aspect of this is this movie, it fucks people
up when it comes out. Like fair to say that like as as
controversial is in groundbreaking as Psycho was in
a lot of ways, in a lot of otherways, it's a fairly conventional

(01:13:32):
film. We're going to get to Psycho
later this year. Spoiler alert.
To me, it's like very much like the first half is heads and
shoulders like stronger above the second-half to the such a
degree that I can't put Psycho and Hitchcock's top five like
the second-half. Kind of a drag.

(01:13:55):
First half perfect. This is so.
I don't think that's that controversial of a.
That's true. Not anymore.
Not yeah, people are. People have really reassessed
psycho. Yeah, and it's no north by.
North we talk about psycho. It's no North by Northwest,
which by the way didn't even mention Romero was APA on North

(01:14:16):
by Northwest for. Hitchcock.
Is that right? I did not know that.
Is actually just dropping the ball all.
Over I really am. I, I, I, I'm telling you, I I
should just fire myself. I should tend to tender your
resignation, man. Well, it's kind of the
experience that it is. It's kind of the experience that

(01:14:39):
Romero, like Step Y, he's like, I don't really want to make
movies in Hollywood because he found the whole thing so
clinical and so surgical that it's like, this is not what I
want to do. Like, I want to have a lot more
freedom in camera movement and telling my story and
performances. And I'm not suggesting Romero
was on par with Alfred Hitchcock.

(01:15:00):
I would far be it for me. But Hitchcock famously was like,
the least interesting part of filmmaking is actually filming
the movie. Like, that was Hitchcock's
thing. It's like, it's almost like by
the time he's hit action, he waslike, I've already made this
movie in my head, why do I have to go through this?
But yeah, Romero was APA on North by which I fucking love

(01:15:24):
that movie so much. It's great.
But can we talk a bit, Steven, about how this really messed
with people, especially young children, on its release?
So you mentioned earlier in the podcast, Mike, how movies of
this ilk were tend tended to be released as matinees.
Yeah, for kids. And yeah, you know, for.

(01:15:45):
Kids. You know, for kids.
You know, for kids. And so this movie comes out at
premieres in Pittsburgh in October 1968.
That is a full month before the establishment of the MPAA film
rating system. As such, this film does not
really receive an MPAA rating. As such, there is no way to warn
people of the themes and gore included the herein.

(01:16:10):
And so the matinee screenings tended to be frequented, you
know, by kids, adolescence preteens and and children who
went to this movie expecting, you know, just kind of the
cheesy horror affair of the day.Like as the film, like they

(01:16:30):
would like scream when the zombies first showed up, Like,
you know, they're goofing off and having a good time.
And then as the movie progresses, they get
progressively quieter and more like stayed and more freaked the
fuck out by everything that's happening.
There's this great quote I foundon Wikipedia from Roger Ebert.
I'm just going to read it whole cloth because it's so good.

(01:16:50):
The kids in the audience were stunned.
There was almost complete silence.
The movie had stopped being delightfully scary about halfway
through and had become unexpectedly terrifying.
There was a little girl across the aisle from me, maybe nine
years old, who was sitting very still in her seat and crying.
It's hard to remember what sort of effect this movie might have

(01:17:11):
might have had on you when you were six or seven, but try to
remember, at that age, kids takethe events of the screen very
seriously, and they identify fiercely with the hero.
When the hero was killed, that'snot an unhappy ending, but a
tragic one. Nobody got out alive.
It's just over, that's all. Which, Oh my God, there's such,

(01:17:33):
such a great way to kind of lay that out and just kind of speak
to the level. Like this is so unexpected for
films of the time. The reviewer for Variety called
the film quote an unrelieved orgy of sadism, which dibs on
that for the name of a podcast. I feel like I I think Mike said

(01:17:58):
he was going to rename Pot in the Pancho on that after the
next after after this. We were thinking about kicking
it around for episode 3 O one. I think that was it.
Was in the group chat, yeah. So we'll see.
We'll see what happens. But yeah, no one was ready for
what this movie was at the. Time.
I mean, you see things in this movie that you have never seen

(01:18:20):
in the genre picture to date. I mean, you see a child murder
their parents in pretty graphic fashion here.
And it's like, Yep, just a thing.
And it's funny. You're talking about like how
kids stick with things. Like my daughter loves horror
movies and she would watch movies with me at far too young
an age. I remember like I was watching

(01:18:42):
the thing in the basement, all of that, this big feed bean bag.
And I'm like, I'm not getting upfor any reason.
And she wandered and I'm like, if you have nightmares, you have
to go tell mom, no, wake me up. And she loved it.
And she was like 9 years old when we walked like Texas
Chainsaw massacres, like the first movie that messed her up.
And I remember looking at her and going like, this is what

(01:19:05):
happens when kids don't eat their vegetables.
So make sure you eat every vegetable on your plate because
you know. That's so fucked up it.
Really is, but she coined the phrase like vacation Freddie
when she was 9 about Elm Street 4 when he puts on the sunglasses

(01:19:26):
so they can handle it. Like this is like, there's no
joy in Mudville with this movie.There's no humor.
It is just scary as hell. And you know, as we're famous
for saying on this show, like fuck those kids.
We don't want them to be messed up.
We want to indoctrinate them very, very young into, you know,

(01:19:46):
especially me because like, as my clients age out, I need more
clients for my counselling practice.
So please. So instead of fuck those kids,
it's fuck up those kids. Absolutely, absolutely.
OK. Well, I think that's as good of
a note as any to kind of move into the.

(01:20:07):
Movie discussion proper, which we do kind of flip in and out of
here. How responsible do you feel
Night of the Living Dead is for giving birth to the modern
horror movie or genre films as we recognize them today?
Like some people say Psycho, I feel as much as I, and I do love

(01:20:28):
a lot of Psycho, that it is verymuch of its time.
The two movies are Night of the Living Dead in Texas Chainsaw
Massacre are the 2 that are mostresponsible for what we still
still still see in 2025. Yeah, Psycho for me, I used to

(01:20:53):
name that as sort of like the ripping point.
But if you actually look at the films that came in Psycho's
wake, they're very much it's shifted things a bit, but
they're still kind of fall undera classic style, classic gothic
element, even though most of them are modern set.
They're almost like modern gothic.
So that cast a long shadow. And then you've got to realize

(01:21:15):
happening at the same time as Psycho is, you know, Hammer
films, you know, you have the the Corman Poe cycle happening
at the same time. So those are very gothic.
So 1968 is like the year where things really change.

(01:21:37):
I'm going to name 4 movies. There were two that were big
hits. Night of Living Dead, obviously
I'm with that, you know, like the farmhouse look, there's
certain aesthetic elements of this that I'm not sure Texas
Chainsaw even exists without this movie to some extent.
Obviously, I mean, you, you can't say that because who knows

(01:22:00):
what's going to come out of someone's mind, But there are
certain elements of this that I think find their way into Texas
Chainsaw and to that sort of lowbudget, down and dirty,
nihilistic 70s horror film. That is the trend obviously

(01:22:21):
through the whole decade, but into the 80s and things get
slicker. It's it's, but it's sort of a
reaction to this. It's, it's not.
So that is all still there. The second one is Rosemary's
Baby, which is like big, bigger budget.
We have it's big stars, it's people that are familiar to some

(01:22:45):
extent, a studio that leads to things, you know, The Exorcist,
etcetera. Next I named Witch Finder
General, which is sort of the beginning of the modern folk
horror film is that you get Blood on Satan's Claw, you get

(01:23:05):
The Wicker Man, you get that sort of new wave British horror.
And the last one is Targets, which Peter Bogdanovich's movie.
That movie was not a hit at all when it was completely under the
radar that it became a cult film.
And when people discovered it, it was like, it's the meta thing

(01:23:30):
is there. I mean, that's what that movie
is. And what I think I have with
Targets is as far as the thesis on what's happening in horror,
it states it the most clearly. We are transitioning from gothic
horror in this year specificallyinto real world horrors, into

(01:23:55):
things that scare the modern audience.
And so to me, 1968, because of those four movies, is like the
rend in the curtain between classic and modern.
Obviously there's overlap that always happens, but after that

(01:24:16):
year things are just completely different.
Well, I think of films as well, like Bonnie and Clyde.
Because now we're like firmly when you're thinking the larger,
yeah, when you think of the larger picture, yeah, for sure.
You think of the end of like Bonnie and Clyde and the end of
that movie are two protagonists are like gunned down and granted

(01:24:37):
like they're not heroes. If anything the best you can
call them anti heroes, but as anaudience like you're rooting for
them essentially for like 2 hours and then they're gunned
down at the end, which historically is accurate, but
it's not something you would typically see in a film.
Even movies like Mike Nichols, the Graduate from 1967.

(01:24:59):
When you think of the ambiguity at the end of that film where
you have this big kind of like, climactic, like, you're running
like, you know, Mrs. Bouvier andjust that's The Simpsons, what
am I thinking? But you have, like, Dustin
Hoffman, like, running off with his bride.

(01:25:20):
And they get on the bus and theywere happy for a moment.
And then it hits them like, OK, now.
And the film ends with this lookof like almost shock and
contemplation, like it's not a happy ending.
Sure, you're starting to see that more and more in the.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is another good, good

(01:25:43):
example. The Wild.
Couple years later they'll be Easy Rider.
Easy Rider. Maybe the real flashpoint for
New Hollywood is that movie. But and the rise of new
Hollywood, I think syncing up with this establishes not just
in the in the horror genre, but across Hollywood.
Things are changing. We're looking to young,
energetic directors who are telling different kinds of

(01:26:05):
stories than the ones we've toldin Hollywood up to this point.
And so I think this movie comes at just the right moment in that
to to really shift the paradigm of what horror is going to do
going forward. I was gonna say also, you know,
like the racial element of something like in the Heat of
the night, bringing that in. I mean, he Sidney Poitier slaps

(01:26:29):
a white guy in that movie and that was like the big deal.
And then watch this is like, OK,he slaps a white woman, then he
kicks a white guy's ass. This is like 1 upping that.
Heat of the night. Like when Sidney Poitier slaps a
white guy, audiences cheered. Like that was the real turning
point. Like audiences are like, yeah,

(01:26:49):
we're in. Like we're support.
Like white audiences cheered. Yep.
That is a big flashpoint. I would make the argument that
more so than like the copyright debacle, making this movie like
such a cultural touchstone. The fact that it arrives when it
does and it arrives in 68 when audience are they are either

(01:27:12):
coming off the this is not like AI wouldn't say this movie is
necessarily inspired by the French New Wave.
Like, I'm not saying, you know, this is, I'm not saying no.
But you can see that aesthetic for sure.
The kind of what audiences are hungry for at this point and
this these is of these new directors coming up and

(01:27:33):
audiences saying like, we're on board for it.
This being pulled in its wake much more so.
But to me, when you watch this like talk in a minute, like
every every zombie movie from this day, whether they're fast

(01:27:55):
or slow or whatever, they still pull so liberally from Night of
the Living Dead like it's. It's the ur text, yeah.
It's just like you, I have not seen one yet that completely
deviates from it in a way that is like, no, now we're going to
redevine this whole like sub genre.

(01:28:17):
Like this creates a sub genre ofhorror that Simply put like it
was not there before. It did not exist before this
movie there. Is not Twilight for zombies.
No, there is not even warm bodies.
They. Tried they?
Tried. They didn't succeed, so yeah.

(01:28:44):
Can we certainly see the the inspiration?
You know, it's there's certain tropes that are always there no
matter what. Like, you know, you kill them by
shooting them in the head. I mean, which, OK, I guess that
makes sense. On The Walking Dead, they even

(01:29:05):
came up with like a scientific reason for it, which I thought
was like, OK, it was like, well,you know, the brain stops
working then they they're going to stop.
Every zombie movie, I just kind of want to run through some of
these and I think it's going to be interesting as we go through
the next 7 movies as well to seehow many of these tropes, like

(01:29:26):
show up in each of the films. But it feels like every zombie
movie at some point becomes likea siege film.
Like the idea is you're going tohold up somewhere and you're
going to like basically be undersiege.
Yeah, and there's sometimes there's a mixture.

(01:29:47):
There's listening to the commentary on The Last Man on
Earth. He described them as either a
bug in movie where you siege movie essentially, or a bug out
movie where you go on the road and you try to escape.
Yeah. Most of them are a combination
of both. There are elements of in Dawn of

(01:30:08):
Escaping and there's obviously the the siege element as well.
Yeah, right. You know, Shawn of the Dead is
kind of a road movie for part ofit, for example.
Part of it, yeah. Zombie Land is a zombie Rd.
movie. Yep.
But they're ultimately trying toget to 1 place to hold up
exactly correct. Trying to get 28 Days Later,

(01:30:30):
Yeah, 28 Days Later, they there's a road movie until they
get to the fortress, you know, and then, yeah.
Well, that's one of the other major tropes like, and you see
it here, the news broadcast saying here is where you need to
go. This is where you need do you
need to make your way to like safety is here.
And that plays to, in effect, a dramatic effect at the beginning

(01:30:53):
of Dawn of the Dead. And we can definitely, you know,
I want to talk a little bit about how like Romero's
perception of the news and how he depicts the media definitely
changes from night until Dawn ofthe Dead.
Like, and there's the cynicism that's in that movie, but
ultimately it's like, oh, there's somewhere else we need

(01:31:15):
to go. Like the someone is telling us
go here is another thing you seein almost every zombie, even the
battery becomes about. We need to go find this place
where that we're actually not wanted.
Like if you come here, we will kill you.
Yeah. So like, that is something you
see in a most zombie movies. What else do we see in all of

(01:31:37):
these? Well, there's when you have the
siege mentality, there's always the scene, hey, let's board
things up. Let's block all the entrances.
You know, whether it's with giant trucks or with just, you

(01:32:02):
know, boards and nails. There's tends to be that scene.
But all I think inherent in all these two people end up being
more of a more of a danger than the monsters eventually do at
the end of the day. Like humanity is more of a
monster than the zombies. You also have the person who is

(01:32:24):
bitten or infected kind of and and kind of maybe hides it for a
while. Like we don't really have the
hiding it in this one. Like that becomes a trope later
on, but the person who's bitten and infected eventually coming
back to to kill, or at least some of the main group that that
is, is established here with with little Karen before Karen

(01:32:44):
became synonymous with another type of predatory figure, namely
a white woman who needs to speakto the manager, damn it.
Boy, yeah, there's definitely the speak to the manager scene
here as well, which you take to.Spade your mother.
'S you're going to get like, thecharacter that you come to care

(01:33:08):
about or identify with is eithergoing to turn or be like, killed
off in a gruesome way. Yeah.
The hopelessness that tends to be synonymous with the genre in
a lot of ways. It's established here and, and
honestly, I think this opens thedoor for a lot of other horror
films to embrace the hopelessness of a, of a given
situation. There's, there's a, there's kind

(01:33:30):
of a freedom, I think in that for a lot of film makers that
they can, oh, we can make these things fucked up now Like we
can, we can end on a downer. Let's let's do that.
Mm hmm. Cannibalism, obviously it's
pretty big key element. Now these are, it's interesting,
you know, because here we have all just straight cannibalism,

(01:33:53):
you know, whereas eventually they focused on the brains and
Romero was like, that didn't make any sense to me because
that would be like opening a coconut.
They wouldn't know how to open acoconut, so why would they do?
That the all the all the intestines were donated.
One of the backers was the ownerof a local butcher shop, and so

(01:34:16):
he donated all of the awful for that scene.
Yeah, all the all the intestinesand things that they're eating.
Those were donated from a local butcher know.
When we talk about Day of the Dead, that those intestines I
guess got pretty rank. Yeah.
Oh, I really. Yeah.
That sounds like the same Chainsaw Massacre shit right
there. It's it's the same intestines

(01:34:37):
every time you see intestines and they're real.
Yep. Another.
You know what? Refrigerating them between
takes. How interesting.
Well, yeah, the the lights didn't help that situation, I'm
sure. I think one of the things that I
find funny about most zombie movies is they never use the

(01:34:58):
word zombie. It's the best because it's and
it's, it's almost like at this point it's almost a running joke
that you don't call them zombies.
Don't use that word. What word?
The Zed. Don't use the zed word.
The Zed word, it's like, becauseit's ridiculous.
Yeah, so this way, Shaun of the Dead is like to me, the perfect

(01:35:18):
parody, but also just like the perfect installment in the genre
in a in its way. It's a parody that embodies
everything rather than it. It pokes fun at it, but it's
such a labor of love that they're making a parody that
fits perfectly within the genre too.
Yeah, yeah. And that's a rarity.
Ken Ferrey's character uses it in Dawn, at least in the

(01:35:41):
extended cut. Like at the end of the movie he
uses the word zombies at one point and I don't know if that
made the theatrical cut or Argento's cut because I have to
go back and rewatch those. But that two hour and 20 minute
cut which is the what the fuck were you thinking making it this
long cut? You are really in that mall with

(01:36:04):
them and and Ferrey's character uses it at least once.
OK, OK. Yeah.
So one of the tricks of this movie, I think what Romero does
really well is it does borrow soheavily from like is being
movies and driving movies, like right down to the soundtrack

(01:36:27):
being like a lot of like stock music that works really well.
And and its core, it feels like this is going to be just another
schlock fest, but it's so much more horrifying.
Like, it really lulls you in by playing it straight and not

(01:36:48):
being a parody and then this graphic violence that you see.
And not only that, but the levelof conflict between the men and
women in that home as well. Like they are, you know, like,
we'll talk about Judith Odeus Barber a minute.
Like, she is essentially like checked out of the movie from

(01:37:08):
minute 20 on. The conflict between Harry and
Ben and Harry and his wife, you know, and Tom and just trying to
keep the peace. Like all of these things.
Making it all the more harrowingbecause as an audience member,
when you're watching it, you're like, guys, the bigger problem

(01:37:29):
is outside get your shit together because you're never
for a moment able to forget that.
But you just get things like theradio announcer talking about
like creatures from outer space and a meteorite from from
Jupiter. And it's like, that's a very
cheesy sci-fi movie trope. And yet it is not.

(01:37:52):
It is not that at all. Well, it's not front and center
because it's since it's in the background as sort of a
speculation. It's, it's fascinating, sort of
fun to think about, but it's really more like the birds where
you don't know why this is happening and you never will
really. And that makes it scarier

(01:38:13):
because, you know, there's no reason for it.
It's just, I don't know, it's the Millennium.
That's that's another one of those tropes that I think this
movie establishes is the uncertainty as to why this is
all happening and what is the thing that's caused all of this
becomes another one of those tropes where it's never
explained. It's just kind of happening.

(01:38:34):
And I think even Toronto, the dead plays with that a little
just by like different radio broadcasts in the background and
things like that, kind of hinting at what it could be or
people speculating, but no one really knowing for sure.
Yeah. And, and Speaking of kind of the
50s sci-fi throwback, you have the, the cameo at the end from
Chili Bill Cardill, who was essentially like the progenitor

(01:38:56):
of the late night horror host inPittsburgh at the time.
And they literally just called him up like, Hey, do you want to
have a cameo in our movie? He's like, I, I, I work like,
and they're like, we'll do it at, you know, we'll do it around
your schedule. He shows up, waits for several
hours, and then they just like, film him out in, in like a
couple hours. But like, he's like, I was
exhausted filming that. And he was the first person to

(01:39:20):
promote the movie on his show Chiller Theatre in Pittsburgh,
which is really fuck any place himself.
Essentially just a more serious version of himself, which is
kind of rad. I'm really struck by in this
film how much more trust there is in institutions, which

(01:39:42):
completely goes away in the nexttwo films, let alone the next 5
movies. Like here.
You know, you see the scenes in Washington that play out across
the television. And there's like, even though
there's disagreements, like it'scivil disagreements, like
there's a lot more cooperation where by the time you get to

(01:40:03):
Dawn of the Dead, you have like crew members, like giving the
scientists, like the Bunny ears when they're live on air.
You have basically everything devolving into it almost by
dawn. It predicts the rise of like 24
hour cable television and like it's going to be presented.
More spectacle and ratings, likethe idea that we don't even care

(01:40:26):
if this information is accurate,we just need to get it on the
air or people will stop watching.
It's almost prone to Bergen in that way.
And it's commentary on media or here, you know, there's a lot
more trust in like what the media, they might not be 100%
correct, like they might not know the answers, but they are

(01:40:46):
trying to be is true to form andtrue giving the best possible
information. And part of that, you know, the
genius of showing it in black and white or filming in black
and white is when you see it in black and white, it does have
that kind of news reel feel to it.
You immediately think this is real.
Like there's a level of truth toit that's here and there's less

(01:41:09):
artifice to it. But this idea like nobody is
trying to get one over on the other person.
Like we need to all band together, even the sheriff at
the end and the grooving grand. Like you hear them, like when
I've heard like modern takes, oh, they're a bunch of Hicks.
They're a bunch of hillbillies, you know, and Ben dying at the

(01:41:30):
end, getting shot in the head, like that's shocking.
But there aren't like implications that it's like a
race motivated killing. It's wrong place, wrong time
type of deal. And I think Romero and Russo
etcetera at all were much more idealistic, you know, in 19, you

(01:41:53):
know the height of. The 70s, yeah.
Yeah, because I mean, by Dawn ofthe Dead, you know, Romero's
talking about how we were all pissed off because the 60s
didn't work and everything was afailure.
And we're, you know, everything's dark and doom and,
you know, we got Reagan and we got Nixon and we got, you know,
this and that instead. I was gonna say, you have the

(01:42:14):
damn Nixon thing. Nixon gets elected what, later
that year in 68, Is that right? Yeah. 68.
Am I doing the math on that? Right.
So like, it makes sense that they would be idealistic in 67
and 68 and then less so moving into the 70s.
Yeah. And so that's, I think when we

(01:42:34):
get to Dawn of the Dead, I thinkyou just see that.
I mean, and this has a pretty nihilistic ending.
I mean, it's like, you know, you're you're a failure no
matter what happens in this situation.
But I mean, I think even though Dawn, yeah, even though Dawn
doesn't, doesn't have its bleak original ending, it's a pretty

(01:42:57):
bleak movie in a lot of ways, atleast subtextual.
Even though it's mostly sort of an action adventure, fun romp of
a movie, There's the darkness that underlies it.
I think it's a cynicism. It's a cynicism.
Yeah, yeah. Uh huh.
I think if you look at most cinema like there's a Oh yeah
undercurrent that runs through it, which is why films like Jaws

(01:43:21):
and Rocky and Star Wars resonated so much because it's
not just that they were incredibly well made films, but
there's like a breath of fresh air.
If you use the original ending of Rocky where he like throws
the fight and then gives up unboxing.
We're probably not getting to like Rocky 4 where he defeats
communism by beating up Ivan Drago, which, you know, he ends

(01:43:45):
the Cold War. It's one punch.
With a punch, yeah. Yeah, So, you know, if Jaws goes
the book route in, like, Chief Brody's wife is like banging
Hooper, right? Like, you're probably like, all
right, this is it's good, but we're probably not talking about

(01:44:06):
it quite as fondly 50 years later, which folks go back.
And for Jaws's 48th anniversary,we covered that whole series
because we're nothing if not timely.
The one thing we're always thinking about here?
Is is releasing anniversary things like that?
Absolutely. So yeah, he's got a.

(01:44:29):
Strike a couple years before that iron is hot.
Yeah. Well, and, and Romero was
adamant, and I actually do believe him, that he wasn't
thinking about the racial implications at the time of
filming. And he says, like he says that
he and one of the producers weredriving the print of the film to

(01:44:49):
New York when they heard on the radio that Martin Luther King
Junior had been assassinated. And when he hears that, then
he's like, shit, Like what? I have a movie that ends with a
black man getting shot right in the forehead at the end of it
and then you have like this montage of photos that they look

(01:45:11):
like lynching photos for lack ofa better.
Though that's honestly the most chilling part of the movie for
me. With the music.
Playing over it. Credits.
So much more, more so than Ben being shot is like those still
photos and then he's like, it hit him all at once.
Like what the power of that could be.
To me, this is much more a movierated rooted in like

(01:45:33):
generational conflict and that, you know, Nixon, like, you know,
with Harry representing Nixon's like the silent majority that
Nixon would speak about and Dwayne and Barbara and really
Tom and Judy, to be honest, likeTom and Judy being rooted more
in that like spirit of the 60s, like love and togetherness,

(01:45:55):
right? You have like this real
conflict. That is where the real conflict
of the film comes in, and that generational divide.
Yeah, he's even talked about, you know, the we weren't
thinking about race, we were thinking about revolution, you
know, 11 society literally devouring the old, you know, and

(01:46:17):
I think that's there for sure. And, you know, honestly, I
believe Romero when he says thattoo, because I think it's like,
Oh yeah, he would have totally taken credit for that.
I mean, if they if, if it was, if it was like, yeah, we have
that in mind all along. I mean, there, I think there are
a lot of film makers who would have, we weren't thinking of it,
but hey, we'll take credit for it.

(01:46:37):
But Romero never did. He kind of gave, frankly, I feel
like he gave the credit to to Dwayne Jones in that sense.
And I think Dwayne Jones is the one that got it.
He's the one that saw on the page.
Like this guy has written this and it's now now it's impossible
to watch the movie without. And, and every time I bring, you

(01:46:58):
know, up the the social aspects of it, people like, yeah, but
that wasn't intended. I'm like fuck you, it's there.
Like you can't watch this movie without discussing it.
Regardless of the intention, it's baked into the fabric
because your lead is a black. Man, I don't buy that.
There is like no social commentary that was intended
like that is. If someone says that they're

(01:47:19):
being like, to quote Barbara, you're being ignorant.
You're ignorant. The first image, one of the
first images you see is a giant American flag and Romero's name
as director transposed against that as you have them driving to
a cemetery where the sign forward is riddled with bullet

(01:47:40):
holes and you're in the midst like Vietnam escalating.
Do not tell me that there's likeno intentional social commentary
here. I think later on, like Romero
was much more explicit and sub tax becomes tax.
But but he's also he's, as we said, someone creating political
ads for progressive candidates, including ones that are centered

(01:48:05):
on the plight of African American children.
So and he's filming children's programming from Mr. Rogers.
It's like what his concerns are.So to say that that would not
have been, you know, at the forefront of his mind like that
just rings as false to me. Well, and every movie he made,
it had some sort of political underpinning.

(01:48:30):
I don't think of an yeah, I can't think of an exception
where he was not because he someone asked him, you know,
about his process, he said. Well, basically I write with CNN
on. And so those things were
bleeding in. But I mean, like, like the best
political horror film makers in particular, I think you know,

(01:48:52):
him and Craven come to mind immediately.
They're telling a story 1st and for the most part, those
political elements are layered in beneath it, underpinning the
whole thing. If you take it out, the story
falls too. But the story, the surface is

(01:49:14):
what you know, is, he even said,You know, sometimes doing the
surface is the hard part becauseyou need to make sure that you
are telling a compelling story and not just, you know,
preaching to your audience well.I think too of like the the idea

(01:49:36):
of the zombie as a Clarion call.It's like a call to action when
you think about what you see here, like 1 zombie on its own,
not necessarily scary. Like I'm a big guy.
Like the Mummy? Even I can get away from like 1
slow moving zombie like and I'm a big guy.
Like it's not like I could like step to the side and pivot and

(01:50:00):
you know, one's not going to worry me.
But it's when they start piling up.
Like, one of the best shots of the film is when Ben butts one
of the zombies in the head with a gun and the zombie whips his
head back and you reveal behind him four more zombies walking
into frame. That is, like, such an amazing

(01:50:21):
reveal. But then you have, by the end,
hundreds of zombies. That's where the power is.
It's this collectivism. That's where the fear comes in.
And that to me is activism, likeone voice on its own, you're not
going to be very effective, but you amplify those voices in
mass, and there's a lot more power to that.

(01:50:42):
Yep. Can't wait for the one star.
Loved this show until they had to get political with the woke
mind virus. That is the real cause of
zombieism is the woke mind virus.
Like very much looking. To that, everybody.
To that. Yeah.

(01:51:09):
What do we make of, you know, we're talking a lot about the
subtext here, but just what we see on screen, artistic
flourishes that Romero brings just in his filmmaking.
Like what do we see here that wereally appreciate?
For me, it's a lot of the lighting choices I think are
very dynamic. He knows he's working in black

(01:51:33):
and white and he knows how to work in black and white.
I I think people were another other.
This is from an interview. He said his big inspiration as
far as like shot setups and lighting were Orson Welles.
And you can see that the harsh heavy shadows, especially, you

(01:51:57):
know, he's talking about the really low budget ones like the
the Shakespeare films. You know, Macbeth is was made
for $10. I swear.
I mean that. But yeah, but it, but it's a but
it you cover so much with great lighting and just composing your

(01:52:19):
shots in such a way that you canuse your limitations to your
advantage. And I think by surrounding so
much of the frame and darkness and then just having your
particular light in the in the perfect spot.
I think there's a zombie that heshoots.
He discovers that you have to shoot it in the head during the

(01:52:41):
scene. You know, he shoots it in the
chest. I swear the zombie looks exactly
like Michael Imperioli to me. So I'm going to call him the
Multi Sante zombie. He shoots it in the chest, the
multi zombie, if you will. Yeah, there you go, the multi
zombie and nothing happens. And then, you know, he tries it
again and you know, he keeps, hecomes back and then, you know,

(01:53:03):
shoots it in the head and it goes down.
But most of that is shown just like this sort of the light just
partially on the face of that particular ghoul.
And it's, it's really effective.I mean, cuz the makeup is not
extensive for a lot of these zombies.

(01:53:23):
These these aren't, you know, Day of the dead is when the
zombies really look, you know, fucked up.
There are a few in Dawn, but here I mean they're mostly, with
a few exceptions, they look likepeople.
You get a couple where they've got like, I think some like,
putty from like a funeral parloror something that they're
putting on their faces to look like infected or something.

(01:53:45):
But yeah, by and large, you're right.
They just look like people. Yeah, with washed out faces.
Exactly. Me, it's a lot of the angles
Romero uses, like you get these extreme close-ups, especially of
Barbara, and you get these tilted almost like 15° angles
where it just adds to the sense of disorientation that this

(01:54:09):
movie really does. Well, Like a lot of like, you
know, one thing I forgot before I watch it again is how quick
Barbara gets to the farmhouse. Like it is 11 minutes in to the
movie and she's already there and we're off and running.
Like it does not waste any time whatsoever to kind of get
moving. And it's almost like dizzying in

(01:54:32):
a way. And the way like you push in in
a couple of moments on like Ben's face and it's almost like
a almost a Dutch angle and it's a little bit Askew.
And it adds, it fuels the sense of like, unknown unease and
like, paranoia that I think thisfilm does really well.
Yeah, I was. I was gonna comment on Romero's

(01:54:53):
use of the camera as well, like the the shots from below.
A particularly when Ben is confronting other characters in
the farmhouse, particularly the Coopers or I guess Harry's
specifically, like he, he's almost always shown from a, an
upward angle kind of giving him the power, the authority and,

(01:55:14):
and like, and, and there's just,and again, intentionality is the
word that keeps coming back to me here.
Like he's just very aware and very cognizant of where he's
putting the camera and what thatangle says about the emotion the
audience is intended to feel. You know, the wide shots from
outside the farmhouse where you see the zombies kind of
assembling en masse is, you know, really those are all

(01:55:37):
really very effective. Like to give you kind of a scope
and a scale. The the scene where they're all
kind of funneling through the door.
And then you get the scene from below where he's filming the
zombies from below as they're coming through the door.
And then you get another scene from the bottom of the stairs up
the stairwell to bend barricading the the cellar door.

(01:55:58):
Like just using these kind of upward angles to kind of give
you a sense of the space that everyone is operating within and
kind of where everyone is in relation to each other is really
very effective. Yeah, I think.
And and again, that intentionality and attention to
detail is what ends up making Romero such a great film maker
later on. There's that small moment that

(01:56:21):
sort of lets us into Barbara's mind a little bit where she,
like, looks into the music box she's shot through the sort of
opening and closing doors of that music box.
It's almost a superfluous, superfluous shot.
But something about the something about that moment, I

(01:56:43):
always, I always remember it. It's striking, even though the
movie narratively doesn't reallyneed it.
Nope. I think it adds to the
psychology of the character, especially because she's kind of
now I wrote in the notes here, Ithink Judith O'deais gets a
little bit of shit for her performance because she is,

(01:57:05):
she's frantic, you know, in the dialogue sequences when when
she's talking about Johnny, stopit.
You know what? She's sort of, she's in a
psychological state at that point where she's, you know, I
think she sells it pretty well. I mean, even though it's it's a

(01:57:26):
tough role, it's kind of a thankless role.
I think if there are limitationsto the performance, I think they
mostly come from the writing, because the writing sort of
takes her out and doesn't reallylet her be.
It removes her agency after those first 11 minutes.
It does. It does.
There's also a really good detail that to know that Johnny

(01:57:48):
is the one that kills her at theend is really powerful.
Just to have that driving glove pop into the frame across him
because he doesn't have his glasses at that point.
He looks kind of different. But that driving gloves you
like, you know, is Johnny. And Johnny is the one who came
to get you, Barbara. The lead up to that where she's

(01:58:12):
like been hysterical the whole time and then sees like, I think
it's right after Judith runs outor Judy runs out of the the
farmhouse and she realizes that this is kind of the last stand.
And so she she rallies herself at that point.
And I think that's the culmination of the character.

(01:58:33):
And it sucks that there's been no build up to that.
She goes to Helen. She does.
Helen has abandoned like Ben andBarbara and but when she's in
danger, Barbara kind of snaps out of it and it tries to help
her out and then it's just overrun so quickly.

(01:58:53):
And it it plays into the hopelessness.
But again, I feel like that moment gets so often overlooked.
Like, that's so Day says that's really what connected her to the
characters, that final moment where she does run up to try to
help. And then just the fear and
desperation and hopelessness on her face when she sees that it

(01:59:16):
is Johnny at the end and that Johnny is one of them now.
Like, I'm tearing up just just thinking about it.
Like that look on her face I think says so, so much.
And that that's all Judith O Day.
That is all her performance. And you.
You. Yeah, I I agree the writing of
her character is not great but. Going back, and I think that's a

(01:59:37):
a very much an issue in a lot ofthese dead films is that there's
just not a lot of great strong portrayal of like women see.
They often get often get sidelined in these films as
well. We'll see.
But going back to that opening, like you have this relationship
with Johnny and Barbara and you can see clearly how different

(02:00:01):
the two of them are. Like Johnny saying, you know,
they're going to the cemetery topay respects to what I believe
is. With their father and Johnny's
and you get the feeling like they didn't really know their
dad that well. Like Johnny is like, I don't
even remember what the old man'sface looked like.
And he's more concerned. Like I don't think he's

(02:00:22):
necessarily wrong. Three hours each way to lay a
wreath on a grave. That's an not the best way to
spend a Sunday. No.
You can't really blame him, but there's a level of disrespect
that you can get a full feeling like Johnny kind of a CAD, like
not the best guy. Oh, and he sort of, you know,

(02:00:45):
chides her for, you know, hey, church was this morning.
Yeah, you know, praying for church.
Let's go. Right.
Yeah. And Barbara being maybe a bit
more grounded and still frightened like in Johnny, like
when he sees that like this whole setting, like I, you know,
like, I'll be honest, like deathis one of my fears.

(02:01:07):
I will say that upfront. I have taken recently to like,
walking my dog in the cemetery nearby, in part because it's
just like very easy to get in and out of, like if I want to
cut the walk short, but also in part because I have found, like,
being there, his like, lessened my fear.
I have fewer intrusive thoughts about it because it's something

(02:01:29):
I'm facing. So I have found it's almost like
calming in a way. But you can see this whole
setting has really upset Barbara.
And Johnny sees that. And much like many siblings do,
decides to like, antagonize her more.
And you get really the most, and, you know, one of the most

(02:01:52):
iconic lines not just in a horror but in movie history.
Like they're coming to get you, Barbara, They're coming.
And he does it in a very aft to speak to targets like Boris
Karloff. A voice.
Yep, absolutely. We didn't even really mention
Bill Hinsman as the first ghoul that we see, but part of

(02:02:15):
Johnny's disrespect as well. Not even knowing like it.
Then that's almost Hitchcocky and you see Hinsman's ghoul
where way in the background in acouple shots and you know you're
now you're seeing a movie, Nightof the Living Dead.
Something might be up, kind of like Hitchcock showing you the
bomb and then you're waiting forit to go off.

(02:02:38):
I think it was Hinsman who actually came up with, well, if
I'm dead, I should be slow moving.
I should be shambling. Whether it'd be fast or slow was
more Hinsman saying if I were dead and walking the Earth, how
would I do this? And I think when you see with
him, he has great closing speed.Once his the prey is insight, he
can speed up. I think that's so capable of

(02:03:00):
using like tools and like, yeah,yeah, to get to where he needs
to go. And that's one of the things
that I remember Greg Nicotero saying about the zombies and
Walking Dead was they based him on his zombie because he is a
little bit quicker. He does have the capability to

(02:03:21):
sort of instinctually think and use, you know, tools and things
like that, rather than because the dawn of the dead zombies,
you know, they're the ones that walk into walls.
They're more of what we think ofwhen we think of zombie zombies.
And these are 9 living dead zombies aren't quite there yet.

(02:03:42):
They're a little different. Well, you see a little bit
though of that thinking or that like, we're content remembering
who you were. Because at the end of dawn, like
Steven remembers where the hidden door is, where they've
gotten to. He wanders up and he remembers
to like close the door to the room they're in behind him

(02:04:05):
because he wants to like, keep the other zombies out.
So you do see some of that, likethere's something that's in
there that retains some muscle memory or part of their own
life. There's a zombie in the porch in
the last scene where they're fighting everyone off.
This zombie just kind of picks up a brick and just kind of
casually, like just tosses it like underhand into a window.

(02:04:26):
And I laughed so hard. It's such a great 'cause he's
not, he's barely even trying. It was almost like, don't
actually break the window, but like, act like you're gonna
break the window. And so he just kind of barely
tosses it and it like shatters the window inside.
I just, it took me out for a second because it was just so
like the, the non commitment with which the zombie threw the
brick and then the intensity with which it shattered through

(02:04:48):
was so incongruous for me that it just made me chuckle.
And I, I, I had to, I had to point that out.
I wonder if George C Scott's follow up to Man hit in the
groin by football would have been like zombie hit in the
groin by Brick. I wonder if.
That How do you think that wouldsound, Mike?
You know the sound board is fucked, so I'm gonna like damn

(02:05:11):
it. And we had the whole you.
Can put it in post. Yeah, we'll do that in post
hoax, but my crotch or with a brick, it would hurt more.
I think it'd be a higher pitch. Oh, this movie, you know, let's
get to the Ben in Harry of it all.

(02:05:34):
Let's definitely talk about them.
There are, you know, Ben is yourhero of this film as much as
there's any hero. Like, it subverts your
expectations so much, partly because of that ending where
it's like we've gotten through the night but everybody else is
dead and now he's dead as well. But also there is, I don't want

(02:06:00):
to say inconsistency, but there's more of a humanity or
fullness of humanity to his character in that he can get
frustrated with others. He's not like Tom is the more
even keeled. Like, can't we all just get
along? You see, Ben, how he deals with
Barbara, It can alternate between anger and exasperation.

(02:06:23):
And this like, OK, she needs me to be more supportive right now.
What do we think of like, DwayneJones and his portrayal here as
Ben? Oh, he's he's.
Incredible. I think we said it earlier like
he's the standout performance ofthe movie and it's not even
close. Like he's clearly done his work,

(02:06:47):
like with regard to building this character from the ground
up and which he essentially doesbecause as you mentioned before,
the character is written is nothing like what we see on the
screen every time. This is all over like in in a
lot of that is owed to him. And I think coming into this
film, as you know, it's not written for a black man.
Nothing was changed when he was cast in terms of the story or

(02:07:10):
the dialogue, but the fact that now everything, because he's a
black man, everything is viewed through that lens.
And he plays the tension of that.
Even in moments where you don't recognize.
It's like he's very again, as asan actor, and we've mentioned
this before, very aware of what his role within this framework

(02:07:33):
is, which is why he's constantlytalking to Romero and Russo on
the set and suggesting changes for the character.
And you're right, there's a humanity here, but there's also
it, it breaks the trope of the black guy dies first in these
kinds of movies that that's that's been kind of the gold
standard for the genre for years.

(02:07:55):
And this is the first time that we see a black protagonist
that's not only not subservient to the white people in the
movie, but telling them what to do and, and slapping them around
a little bit. And like there, that's
incredibly progressive for the time and also, I think a huge

(02:08:16):
step forward for horror as a genre that this kind of
character doesn't need to be relegated to the sidelines but
can take a leading role. And unfortunately, it's taken
Hollywood way too long to learn to learn that lesson that Romero
figured out in the 60s. So.
But no Jones is incredible. He has a gravitas and authority

(02:08:37):
to him that just kind of just comes across in his physicality,
too. And he's got a great voice that
just sort of kind of commands attention and respect.
And when he comes down on Harry,it's like you need to make your

(02:08:57):
decision right now. I'm the boss up here.
You can be the boss downstairs and then you know it, basically
telling, you know, the other, I'm sorry, the other guy, the
young guy, Tom, Who's Tom? That's like, you need to make
your decision right now. Are you with him or are you with
me? And you know, it just doesn't

(02:09:18):
give any options. And I think that's not in a way
that is unkind. It's just like we got a
situation here and you need to decide.
There's no time to waste. It was an emergency.
Deals with Barbara, like trying to get her to snap out of it and
then doing like what a lot of usmight do is just kind of like

(02:09:41):
talk to her very calmly, very peacefully, almost like he's
changing the subject in some ways and then getting extremely
frustrated, culminating in that scene where he basically knocks
her out with one punch. Like after she slaps him, he
reacts like very physically and that's a powerful thing.
But you see when he first sees Harry and Tom, this frustration

(02:10:05):
and anger that he has because they've been at this house for
however long and no the other. Just ignored it.
They've been dead, right? And their stories don't add up.
Well, we thought you were the dead.
You know, we didn't know if you were those things.
Well, we heard you shouting and didn't know what was going on.
It's like, at least get your story right.

(02:10:25):
But it's like get your story straight, man.
I mean, just the, the dropping of that, you know, that little,
that little vocal edition of maninto that makes a, it's actually
really, I mean, because that is,you know, it came from the jazz
era where where a black musicianstarted calling each other man

(02:10:48):
because they had been called boybefore that.
So that it's a, it's a small little thing, but there is even
a racial element in just his choice of language in a, in a
very powerful and subtle way. He knew what he was doing.

(02:11:13):
He absolutely knew what he was doing, even if Romero and Russo
had no clue. Right.
Yeah, I didn't even think of that, that key addition of one
word to the implications of that.
Right. Thinking along the lines of
like, his frustration with them also getting in the way of doing

(02:11:35):
what not necessarily what's right, but what might be best
for everybody like him. That's right.
Drawing that hard line, saying Iam fighting for everything up
here. Like whatever's downstairs is
yours, but everything up here ismine, including Barbara.
Like she is staying with me and he's taken.
Iran as a protector? Yep.

(02:11:56):
Oh yeah, no. He, he knows that that she, she
cannot function in this moment without him.
And so he's going to take on that role willingly.
It's a, it's a really kind of a,a moving thing.
And that tension between he and Harry is so immediate that
there's just like, you know, they say that you never get a

(02:12:17):
chance to make another first impression, right?
That there's just no, especiallygiven this situation, there's
going to be no way for the two of them to compromise with one
another. And that comes back to not just
burn Ben, but really burn everybody.
Like everybody ends up dead. Like his don't keep people alive

(02:12:42):
like Tom and Judith end up dyingbecause they're not able to get
a good idea in theory. Let's get out of here and go but
it's already too late by then. Like they're already surrounded
so they should be waiting it out.
This idea of like it's either the seller or we stay up here.

(02:13:03):
My thought is like why not both?Why not barricade the shit out
of the upstairs and then if pushcomes to shove then we head
downstairs as a last resort which is what ends?
Up what he eventually ends up doing.
And that's one of the great ironies of the film.
Harry, in a minute. Harry is right.

(02:13:24):
Yeah, But Harry, he doesn't havethe juice to.
And Harry knows he doesn't have the juice.
Like Ben. You're immediately drawn to Ben.
And you're like, I will follow this guy to the ends of the
earth. Like, dude knows his shit,
Harry. Just like it makes me so sad to

(02:13:46):
think that Carl Hardman watched his performance and was like,
yeah, it wasn't any good. Because the more I watch this do
have like he is like Carl is thehe's the antagonist of this
film. Like he is the Colonel Rhodes of
this movie, although not nearly to that level.

(02:14:08):
There's something in the way Hardman presents himself like I
think of like Bart Simpson when Bart was like pictured as a rat,
like when when Lisa pictures like Bart is a rat eating cheese
for her science project. There's something about the way
Hardman presents himself that isalmost rat like in this movie.

(02:14:29):
This kind of like nervous energy, this like high strung
way of talking, this like too quick, almost like Howard Hawk
style of like speaking patterns.Like it's too fast and he can't
he like he's in a rush to get everything out because he knows
other people won't let him if hegoes on for too long.

(02:14:50):
Right. He's almost like halfway in a
panic attack at any given moment, Which again becomes
another kind that the the, the tetchy guy becomes another trope
of these films, another thing that gets carried on in a lot of
these. There's always that kind of one
guy with that very intense nervous energy who ends up being
a villain at some. Point And I think he's

(02:15:10):
representative of the older generation in this movie.
He has he seems to have that, oh, I went through the
depression and, you know, foughtWorld War 2 and you better
listen to me because of that. And you have the children of
these people saying no, because now we're in Vietnam and you

(02:15:31):
won't listen to us about why this is a problem.
Things of that nature. I, I think that there's that
political subtext going on because that's in the script.
I mean, that's the the generational tension is
absolutely in the script in a way that the racial tension is

(02:15:54):
doesn't really arise until you cast a Dwayne Jones.
And then all of a sudden that element gets added on to
Hardman's performance. Just by virtue exactly.
The guy he's talking to is a black guy, right?
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
And he's part of that old guard the, you know, the the old
school southern cops, if you will, with the dogs on chains.

(02:16:18):
So, you know, I think there's a lot of that generational tension
going on, so. Well, to your point about the
previous generation, like what is it?
What is something that each older generation fears like
we're living through this right now?
Being taken over by the younger.Yeah, they feel then the world

(02:16:39):
is changing around them, like the world that they always knew
and recognized. Like, they don't recognize that
world anymore. Like for some people, it's like,
what do you mean? I have to put pronouns in an
e-mail? Like, how dare you?
Like in my day, we drank from the fire hose.
Forget about. I don't even know what a pronoun
is. You just use.
What a lucky, lucky, lucky little boy.

(02:17:01):
Get to drink from the fire hose.Right, good Sir, The world is
literally changing under Harry'sfeet in real time and how scary
and terrifying that is and whereI gain some level of sympathy
for him. We'll talk about why that gets
used up very quickly in a minute.

(02:17:21):
Is he realizes his shortcomings.Like you see it in his face.
You see how unempowered he feels.
You see how he knows how other people sees him.
And that relationship between heand his wife is like he and
Helen is just, it's ugly. Like it is an ugly relationship

(02:17:43):
and Helen has one of the best lines in the film when she says
to him like we might not like living with one another.
Dying together here doesn't makeany sense.
And I know I misquoted that and I apologize.
But you get to some nation of their relationship with the

(02:18:07):
first glance that she gives him.And it's like it's important to
you isn't to be right and everybody else be wrong.
Like they loathe each other. Oh yeah.
Yeah. And yet he feels, and maybe it's
the societal, it's the societal pressure, but he still feels the

(02:18:31):
need to act in his own way as they're protector, as the
protector of both wife and daughter.
Like he's, I think that's the reason why he's, he shoots down
so many of Ben's ideas on the onits face because of the two of
them, because of Helen and Karen.
And so you have kind of this like I am, I'm the man I need to

(02:18:54):
protect my family. And I don't care about the rest
of you because you're not the people that I'm charged with
protecting. You're not my wife, you're not
my child. I don't have to give two shits
about you. My concern are down in that
cellar right now and that's that's where my my priorities
lie. That selfishness.

(02:19:16):
Inherently, yes. And we see how that culminates
with, you know, basically Harry tries to kill Ben twice time by
like, really not letting him back in to the house and then
not helping him board up the home until it's almost too late

(02:19:38):
after the truck explodes. And then, you know, Ben is
forced to kill Harry because otherwise Harry was going to
kill him in cold blood. And it's a shocking moment.
Again, like we talked about Sidney Poitier, like slapping a
white man in In Heat of the Night and audiences cheering
when audiences cheered for Ben shooting Harry in cold blood.

(02:20:03):
Audiences were into it. That's when you knew, like, all
right, they get this movie because Harry was just going to
straight up murder Ben at that point rather than help him out.
Well, and we see we talked earlier about how every older
generation fears the younger oneovertaking them.
That's literally how Harry and Helen end up dying in this movie

(02:20:26):
is they're in the basement and they get eaten by Karen.
Like literally the younger generation consumes and destroys
them. Like that is their literal
progeny. Like it again, it's it's right
there on its face and it's it's incredibly well executed and
absolutely bone chilling. But then you see them start to
rise and then you have Ben has to take them both out and he's

(02:20:47):
basically down there in the basement with three corpses and
it's, it's fucked up. Yeah, I've always been the.
I remember the first time I saw this and Karen stabbing the

(02:21:08):
mother with the spade was horrifying.
And, you know, and that same interview, it's on the Criterion
disc. It's from Toronto Film Festival,
I think. And Romero said there was a
point where they got an influx of cash while they were filming

(02:21:29):
the and they said they could switch to 16mm and shoot in
color or keep it 35 and continuein black and white.
And Romero fought to have it stay in black and white because
to him, I mean, this is what newsreel footage looked like.

(02:21:52):
This is what television news looked like even even at that
time. And the blood just looked more
real, looked in black and white,and that is played out at that.
He was right. When he gets the dawn of the
dead and the blood is pink, The blood is.

(02:22:14):
I mean I haven't watched. I saw the 4K restoration in the
Theatre of Dawn and it looked better, but watching a lot of
the old versions of VHS and DVD versions of Dawn of the Dead,
the blood is like pink. It's bright, bright red.

(02:22:35):
The version I just watched. Like it's looks like red paint
is what it looks like. It looks like fire.
Engine red in the 70s. Yeah, a lot of that 70s blood
looks like that. And.
I still have that connection they use.
Chocolate syrup for the Chocolate syrup for the blood.
Yeah, yeah. And The thing is a.
Lot of choice for the great horror film makers.

(02:22:56):
It looks so authentic. I mean that is.
Like, say there were reasons forit, like Savini going for a more
comic book level of violence at that point to kind of offset
well. And we'll talk more about that.
Yeah, in a week. Spoiler alert, we get to Dawn of
the Dead. So.
Blood from the three M company. You just mentioned like what if

(02:23:17):
this was in color and it is. I mean you can actually watch
free on. YouTube they.
Colorized it. It's I did not watch the whole
thing. I could not.
I don't know what it would be like to watch all of it, and I

(02:23:37):
think that might be a bit off off putting, but like it didn't
look as I thought it was going to be awful to even watch a
minute. It didn't look awful, But I
agree, I think having this in black and white again, it kind
of makes it feel like it's out of place and out of time.

(02:23:58):
And I think that really benefitsDawn, which is a decade later,
even though it's supposed to take place a few weeks or months
after this initial outbreak. I think the way color film, like
the way it had just changed overthose 10 years and the fashion
and it would have been really off putting, I think, to watch
that. But can we just talk maybe at

(02:24:19):
the end here some of the different versions that exist of
this movie? And this is by no means a
complete list, but because it didn't have a copyright, it's
there's so many ways to access it, it's kind of insane.
Like, there is a period in the 2000s where if you did one of

(02:24:42):
those 50 horror movies for $10 on DVD, like those are littering
every like Dollar General bin across the country.
You can bet your sweet patootie that, like, that box set is like
in a dollar store right now. Like literally hundreds of
those. Oh yeah.
In 86 there's like an official colorized version that is

(02:25:06):
authorized and produced. Damn you, Ted Turner.
Yeah, not good. Not what we're looking for.
John Russo. Crazy that, you know, even like
recent additions of like It's A Wonderful Life still have the

(02:25:29):
colorized version. It looks so bad.
That is what looks bad, yeah. Yeah.
And so I, yeah, I mean, I, I don't think the 4K that I have
has it on there, but I mean, there were some, I remember
buying it on DVD and there was both versions, the black and
white or the colorized version, I was like.
I listened to a, a podcast mighthave been Evolution of Horror,

(02:25:52):
which is one of the best podcasts that are out there.
And like, I think the guest on there talked about watching
Night of the Living Dead for thefirst time when it was on VHS in
color. Like that's what they owned it
on. And he was like, what if I just
turned down all of the color offon my television set?

(02:26:12):
Because back then we had the knobs and you would and he's
like, this is how you're supposed to watch it.
Oh, this looks so much better. I just remember that story
standing out. But even like writer John Russo,
he gets in on the ACT in 1999. He releases like a 30th
anniversary edition one year after the 30th anniversary.

(02:26:36):
And he does it with Romero's blessing.
I think Romero was like, dude, make a buck.
Like if you can make a couple bucks, please, please do.
But Russo wrote and directed newscenes for the movie as well,
including like Bill Hinsman returning as the ghoul 30 years
later. So definitely time wins folks.

(02:26:59):
Just remember like father time always wins and Hinsman returns
as a ghoul and Russo gives him aback story where in life he was
a convicted child murderer. So basically Freddy Krueger's
cousin? Yeah.
Would you have a note, Brian, about Craven in this movie?
So maybe now's a good time to slip that in.

(02:27:22):
Sure, why not? One of the things that was
interesting, you know, I think alot of people know that Wes
Craven, raised in a fundamentalist household, wasn't
allowed to see movies. So by the time he had was
setting out to make the last House on the left, he had seen
exactly 1 horror movie and it was Night of the Living Dead.

(02:27:46):
Oh, I thought you were going to say Herbie the Love bug.
How fortuitous that you bring that up on this episode, Brian.
I know, crazy, crazy, but but I think what he did realize, first
of all, it was a screening that was like a wild screening.
So people screaming, running up and down the aisles, that kind

(02:28:07):
of, you know, great story that you hear about.
It's the opening of screams too.Right, exactly, you know that
kind that kind of a of a viewing.
And so he was just enthralled bythis idea that this could genre
could have that kind of power, but also even more so for him as
a politically minded individual as he was, that you could tell a

(02:28:30):
socio political story in that context in a way that you
couldn't get away with in a drama or a comedy or something
else. And so The Last House on the
Left is kind of infused to some extent with that idea of telling
a radically revolutionary kind of story, a savage story about

(02:28:56):
real world anger and politics inthis horror package.
Yeah. It's a lesson he took into
really a lot of his films all the way into, you know, things
like People under the Stairs andetcetera, etcetera.
Yeah, and I think Craven would say in that same interview,

(02:29:17):
like, I could make a way better movie than that piece of shit
which got caught. No, I don't think he ever
thought that. Be amazing if he did.
Like Wes Craven just starts to flex.
Let me tell. You.
Well, The thing is, The thing iswhat's funny is, you know, I
mean, for years Wes Craven disowned the last house on the
left. He was made such a pariah after

(02:29:38):
that movie came out. He's like he got a I read this
in Joe Madry's book on Wes Craven.
He said he got a fan letter about from someone said I love
this movie so much and then you love it so much you can have it.
And he literally dropped a box on the doorstep of this guy that

(02:29:59):
had the cans of the film, all the bunch of other like the
script, all sorts of stuff and it.
So made that guy's day, I'll tell you that.
Craven would be like, can't we just talk about my porn career?
Can we talk? About that.
And I think he preferred, I think he probably would have
preferred that. But what's interesting, he came

(02:30:20):
around on it later because he realized that there was a power
to that kind of a movie. Well, Craven.
I'm nowhere near the Craven expert that Brian is on Craven,
but to me he's someone that three times defined where horror
was going to go for the like theyears out with last house on the
left with A Nightmare on Elm Street, like I don't think you

(02:30:44):
get Halloween for without A nightmare on Elm Street, like
slasher films were dead and withScream, like with three times he
redefined where horror was goingto go So that that alone is like
quite the one time is the legacy, but he was one of the
best to do it. And again, like Romero, like so

(02:31:05):
many other horror directors, like one of the gentlest,
nicest, like no one says a bad word about Wes Craven.
Yeah, I mean, I love watching interviews with Romero.
He's just seems like this shitless dude.
Yeah. I love hung out and got in a
beer or get stoned with that guy.
It would have been so much fun. Yeah, I mean, he's not even

(02:31:25):
cantankerous, like John Carpenter or something.
He's like, really amiable. Craven was that way too.
Craven was like, I'm a professor, you know, and I'm
going to. It's just like, yeah, I just
want to hang out with this guy because he's really interesting,
you know? That's the way it came across to
me. You know, and Sam Raimi took out
all his aggression on Bruce Campbell, so he got it out of

(02:31:45):
his system. And Toby who?
Can be nice to literally everybody else.
Weirdo. Sam Raimi just seems really
impish to me. Yeah.
Just like he loves to pull a practical joke and that's.
That's his. Especially on his buddy Bruce
Campbell. Best, especially on Bruce.
I, I just have a couple more versions I'll know and Brian, I
know you do as well. In, in 2010, there's a Night of

(02:32:10):
the Living Dead reanimated, which it's the audio track of
Night of the Living Dead. And then like 30 or 40 different
like animated pastiches all in different styles like claymation
cell drawings. We like back when I ran a site
called All Things Horror, we every month in Boston, we had a

(02:32:33):
Little Theatre in Somerville andright next to the Museum of Bad
Art, which was at the basement of the theatre.
We had like a 40 seat screening room.
Were we booked indie horror? Like we booked stuff that was
playing the festival circuit or like we did the battery, We did
Spring by Benson and Moorhead. We did American Mary and Dead

(02:32:54):
Hooker in a trunk. We actually did Mike Flanagan's
first film Absentia, like we were able to screen that.
So he had like this really cool.So we got approached to a screen
this and I'm like, yeah, this will bring people in.
Of course, by the end of like the middle of Act 2, everybody
had walked out like, it's reallybad.

(02:33:14):
It's an interesting experiment that doesn't work.
It was like the worst screen experience we did in five years.
I've I've seen other kind of experiments like that, I feel
like those always, almost alwayswork better in concept than they
do in execution. I want to say really quick,
Speaking of like George Romero and Martin, his vampire film,

(02:33:37):
there is like a a take on that homage and that it came out in O
nine. It was the first film we
screened. I had caught it at the New York
City Horror Film Fest and it stars AJ Bone and Michael Parks.
It's a black and white vampire film called Maidenhead where AJ
Bowen is trying to like caretakefor his father, Michael Parks,

(02:33:58):
who may or may not be a vampire.Easy to find.
It is amazing. It's one of my favorite.
That sounds really cool. In 2010, Anchor Bay released a
3D version of the film Because, you know, it worked for Avatar,
so why not Night of the Living Dead?

(02:34:19):
So when we saw the my son and I went and saw Dawn of the Dead
two years ago, I want to say they did some release of it.
It was in 3D and there was literally no point to it
whatsoever being in 3D. There are a couple of moments
where they shoot seltzer and things, hit this camera and

(02:34:44):
things. Like high fire.
Yeah, there was. There was just no point to it.
However, that same year, like within a couple months of that,
we saw Jaws and you could see, wow, this actually really plays
in 3D because Spielberg uses thespace of the blocking so
dynamically that it, I was like,this movie doesn't need to be in

(02:35:04):
3D. No, it doesn't.
But it actually worked in 3D. Whereas Dawn of the Dead, it was
like there, there was really no reason whatsoever.
Ed version of that film is the reason why it is so hard to get
like an inexpensive physical copy of Dawn of the Dead.
Because basically the dude who will talk a lot more about it

(02:35:25):
next week, the guy who bought the right spent 6,000,000 on
converting it and made $0.60 on converting it.
So my understanding is like the rights of that movie to like
distributor so prohibitively expensive because he's like, I
got to make up that $6 million, which to me, if you have

(02:35:46):
$6,000,000 to $6,000,000 to upscale Dawn of the Dead to 3D,
you have what I would call fuck you money.
And like 6,000,000 is probably adrop in the bucket to what this
guy's actual wealth is. So we have that to talk about

(02:36:07):
next time. Brian, you mentioned your 40th
anniversary DVD. Yeah, it has a parody on it
called Night of the Living Bread, and it's awful.
It's. Sounds.
Terrible. How dare you?
And then, and how about this one?
Have you seen Flight of the Living Dead?
I have not. It's probably on Tubi.

(02:36:30):
I would not be surprised. If you I think.
It's got Sid Haig in it of. Course Sid Haig, of course.
Of course he is, if you combine Oh.
Sid. Night of the living Bread with
Stevens Partners short film thathas ketchup.
You get the makings of a sandwich.

(02:36:51):
You got a start to. Yeah, you know, I saw, I saw a
little bit of that extended cut you were talking about and I
could not get through it. Yeah, it was just like, because
I'm sorry, they picked the rightguy to direct the movie.
And John? Russo, and that was what we've
even mentioned, like at first they didn't know who was going
to direct it. Like it was kind of a whole.

(02:37:13):
And I think it ended up going toRomero because he had shot so
many commercials. Like Russo was originally going
to direct is my understanding. And he's like, I don't want to
fucking direct this. And it ended up going to Romero,
which thankfully, you're right, like it did.
Any other final thoughts? Anything we have before we wrap
it up here? It's a great movie.

(02:37:41):
A Little Long Deal podcast. Just blank it really.
I was gonna say we've been at this for over 2 1/2 hours at
this point, and that's not including the hour lead up where
we're trying to figure out audio.
I know. And then I recorded a different
episode. I recorded a different episode
right before this too. I'm keeping it under 3 today.
I feel like I've done my job as a host today.

(02:38:05):
So I got six more hours in me. Let's go.
Yes, I'm doing well. I think we've done it, folks.
I think we can. You know, the dawn is coming.
We're going to put a cap on Night of the Living Dead and
let's talk about what we all have coming up.
Like Steven, what would you liketo plug right now?

(02:38:27):
I would like to plug my podcast.I actually recently, and it'll
be a few weeks old by the time this episode comes out, but I
recently guested on Bodies of Horror, the podcast hosted by
our good friend Nicole Goble. We talked about David Lynch's
The Elephant Man on that episode.
It was such a fun conversation. That is such a great podcast.
If you have not checked it out, please do so.

(02:38:50):
I also have a couple of podcastsof my own.
You can listen to the Disenfranchised podcast.
Brett has been back for the lastcouple episodes.
He's been busy lately, but he's he's managed to come.
Back from the last couple. So came out of the basement.
We had a couple really fun conversations on Chris White's
Afraid and the terrible 2009 film Land of the Lost.

(02:39:13):
So those episodes will have beenout for a while by this point.
And then on my other podcast, Wells, you, my friend Hope Stout
and I talk about one of our favorite film makers and
historical figures, Orson Welles.
I think by the time this episodecomes out, we might be ready to
finish up his school years and his upcoming trip to Ireland,

(02:39:37):
where he spends about a year making a name for himself on the
Irish stage. So check that out.
This in French pod on blue sky, Wells U pod on blue sky, and
then I'm of course truly Walrus on blue sky as well.
Excellent, Brian, how about yourself?
Got a couple of articles that should be on Bloody Disgusting

(02:39:59):
by the time this drops. One on The Last Man on Earth
like I mentioned. Another one on Shadow of the
Vampire because I fucking love that movie if you didn't know
that already. And see here I should have some
coming up on The Descent as well.
There. And finally, for those of you
who have been waiting with batedbreath for it to finally arrive,

(02:40:21):
I have finished and turned in and it shall be published in
July. My epic 5000 word piece on Young
Frankenstein is finally going todrop.
Excellent. So that that will be out.
And hey, today happens to be MelBrooks's 9th birthday as we're
required. Wow.
So love you Uncle Mel and the man still with us.

(02:40:43):
And he's going to play yogurt inspace.
Baseballs too coming out very very soon.
Unrelated. To 150.
The Naked Gun reboot looks amazing.
I'm so excited to see. Liam Neeson being.
Cast just like Frank Robin's son.

(02:41:03):
Is like the best piece of casting in a long time and.
It's the greatest cut because Leslie Nielsen, we forget he was
a matinee idol and, you know, this sort of serious actor.
And then he was, you know, put into these things by the Zucker
brothers. They had a whole second, third
act because of it. Maybe the best joke.

(02:41:25):
It's in the trailer, the joke when they're all kneeling in
front of like their dead father's photos and you have the
one of OJ Simpson and the character's just like shakes his
head. Nope.
Like it's so integrated the. Camera just shakes his head.
It's so. Good.
So inappropriate. It's so amazing.
And I'm like, I am first in linefor this movie.

(02:41:47):
I cannot. And I think there's been some
advanced screenings and the wordis like very positive so far.
So that's that. But oh, but John.
I I cannot wait for this movie folks.
For myself, I am a Mike's Noonian on Blue Ski, Mike's
Noonian on Instagram and Mike Chump Change on Letterbox, which

(02:42:10):
is really where I'd like people to follow me for the show.
You can follow us at Pod and I'mon Blue Sky.
You can like intermediate, just call it different names.
I'll be right in one of them. You can follow us Pod and
Pendulum over on Instagram or Instagram or whatever that is
called. We have a YouTube thing like

(02:42:31):
these are on YouTube. If you look up pod in the
Pendulum, we're there. I don't know how they get
posted. I'm not sure which ones are
there and which aren't. Some have like thousands of
views and some have 5 views. I didn't even realize we had a
thing like that, but OK. And you can go to our site pod
in the pendulum.com, where we have all of our back episodes up

(02:42:56):
for your listening pleasure. You can leave us reviews there
that'll get posted to all the socials.
And you can leave us like emailsfrom there.
We actually got a really nice e-mail from Hans in Sweden this
week who said some very kind words about the show, except
about Stephen. He was really pointed in his
criticism of Stephen. I felt it was.

(02:43:16):
Is it because I had a lot? Swedish is.
He No, it was not. He did not say anything negative
about you at all, Steven, nor would anybody.
He wanted to know when are we doing the howling, which is the
very. I have floated.
I have floated as my wheel pick for next year.

(02:43:37):
I floated. I love the first howling.
I love. The first one.
Oh, the first Howling's a masterpiece.
Then it's goes. It's those pesky sequels.
It's like the very definition ofA1.
It's like, why don't we do the American Werewolf in London
series? Well, mostly because of an
American. American Werewolf in Paris.
I was going to say, we have an American, well, orphan in

(02:43:59):
London. Mike refuses to acknowledge
American Werewolf in Paris, No. We will not do.
That it's like, it's like I willnever watch The Descent too.
I just refuse to see it. No, can't blame you.
Cannot blame you for that. Or I.
But anyway, that is our site andyou can also become a Patreon at
patreon.com/pod in the Pendulum where we have a ton of bonus

(02:44:25):
content that is up for your listening pleasure there.
And that is it. Like we will be back with a Dawn
of the Dead in a week. So that should be a lot of fun.
That is considered by many like the greatest zombie film of all
time. I think it will be interesting
to hear are varying agreements and disagreements with that

(02:44:48):
take. The version that we watch might
play very heavily into it. So it is for sale for 9 bucks I
think on Amazon if you buy a streaming copy of it.
And I don't know if I said this before, but like, there are some
very good rips of it available on YouTube for free as well.

(02:45:11):
And I think the extended cut andat least one of the other cuts
are up there. So yeah, if you don't want to
spend like $80.00 on a Blu-ray, which who can blame you, you can
purchase it legally be you're streaming for less than the
price of a fast food meal. And aren't we all fast food
meals at the end of the day for zombies?
That is it folks. We'll be back as the Summer of

(02:45:35):
George continues. We got one down and seven more
movies to go in this series. Let's see if it plays.
I've proclaimed this the Summer of George.
God damn you. That's it listeners, have a
great one.

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