Review by C.J. Bunce
Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The Poseidon Adventure. Prince of Darkness. 28 Days Later. Shaun of the Dead. The Walking Dead. Get Out. These are the movies influenced by the 1968 cult horror classic, Night of the Living Dead–or at least movies that will come to mind when you read Night of the Living Dead–The Official Novelization.
Titan Books has released a new edition of the 1974 novelization, a hardcover re-release of the book by John A. Russo (co-writer of the cult horror classic movie’s screenplay with director George A. Romero). With a new foreword by Shaun of the Dead actor Simon Pegg, fans of horror will get a new view of the movie’s place in cinema history. As Pegg calls it, this was the first of the modern zombie stories–stories about zombies that go beyond the subject’s voodoo origins. Including the original introduction by Romero and a 2010 preface by Russo, Night of the Living Dead–A Novelization is now available in bookstores and here at Amazon.
The War of the Worlds. The Thing from Another World. The Blob. The Birds. Virtually any thriller where people were stranded and trying to defend themselves from some kind of monstrous onslaught–all fed into the story of a group of disparate and desperate people in a rural town trying to fend off the flesh-eating, shambling undead.
Like most zombie tales (Netflix’s Kingdom is a rare exception), the original zombie horror movie doesn’t reveal what causes people to become zombies. Is it alien? Is it some created virus? The audience never finds out for certain, yet do all signs point toward an alien virus? Had Russo and Romero seen Plan 9 from Outer Space before creating their movie? No doubt M. Night Shyamalan saw Night of the Living Dead before creating his version in The Happening. Is Night of the Dead really a science fiction story as much as pure horror? Of course these genres frequently intersect.
Russo’s novelization is a good horror story and a good read. Both Russo and Romero acknowledged the story’s re-tread of horror tropes. It was low-budget stuff and they used the horror framework that always seemed to work for audiences willing to drop a few quarters on a B-movie horror matinee. Night of the Living Dead mirrors the framework of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds in its depiction of boarding up a house to fend off the outside threat, and the shock value of revealing the earlier victims. It’s the same feeling evoked in The Poseidon Adventure as the passengers were trapped–like these unrelated people trapped inside the farmhouse–only their threat was a sea of water. When you see Alice Cooper among the street zombies outside the building in John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness, you’re reminded of the staring, lifeless threat surrounding that farmhouse. And the use of the radio to share updates in the national threat is a direct callback to Orson Welles’ radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds.
But what about that surprise ending? And what about the way Russo and Romero depicted a child as a zombie? Yep, this may have been the beginning of creepy little girls in horror. Taboos were certainly broken, and there’s no doubt a new era of horror movies would be the result.
Sequels in film and book form followed the original movie, one we reviewed here at borg back in 2021. Writer Daniel Kraus picked up a story begun by Romero himself decades ago, a story about a zombie virus that leveled our world, a behemoth 654-page follow-up to Romero’s movie series called The Living Dead: A New Novel. Romero, who passed away in 2017, was the modern horror auteur, known as the “Godfather of the Dead” for his works including the films Creepshow, Monkey Shines, and an adaptation of Stephen King’s The Dark Half, in addition to all those zombie/ghoul sequels. He inspired countless horror directors, including Edgar Wright, director of Shaun of the Dead. But his 1968 black and white original is what he is known best for.
Note: The simplicity, nuance, and 1960s style of Night of the Living Dead is long gone in The Living Dead: A New Novel, replaced with a fully modern zombie spectacle–think 28 Days Later and The Walking Dead. Its framework of characters destined to have intersecting paths is like a Quentin Tarantino movie, and this is the kind of story anyone could see him adapting to the screen. Kraus takes a Romero story treatment of what starts as “some kind of bird flu thing” and attacks it from numerous vantage points, including the unique viewpoint of the thoughts of the dead as they re-emerge as zombies. The worst of the story is a freakish, more Clive Barker’s Hellraiser-esque examination of a demented minister on board a U.S. ship at sea that falls victim to the plague. But it’s really just the evolution of slasher horror movies and gore that began with Night of the Living Dead.
Don’t be put off by the short 180-pages. Russo did all he needed to in this tightly-written thriller. Night of the Living Dead–A Novelization is now available in bookstores and here at Amazon.
