Birth of the Living Dead is a documentary about the making of one of my favorite films; Night of the Living Dead. It contains a treasure trove of trivia about how George A. Romero, NOTLD’s director and screenwriter, added the zombie to the classic monster roster with the help of a rag-tag group of investors and first-time actors and filmmakers. But unlike Frankenstein’s Monster, Dracula, and The Wolfman, zombies were added as a whole, as a collective. Forty-five years after NOTLD’s release, zombies are more popular than ever, which makes me a very happy man.
Birth of the Living Dead is a documentary about the making of one of my favorite films; Night of the Living Dead. It contains a treasure trove of trivia about how George A. Romero, NOTLD’s director and screenwriter, added the zombie to the classic monster roster with the help of a rag-tag group of investors and first-time actors and filmmakers. But unlike Frankenstein’s Monster, Dracula, and The Wolfman, zombies were added as a whole, as a collective. Forty-five years after NOTLD’s release, zombies are more popular than ever, which makes me a very happy man.
From my first time seeing NOTLD, zombies grabbed me. I was 10 years old, and ignorant of the concept that only a threat from outside humanity seems to allow humans to overcome their own ego, fear, and hatred of one another long enough for us to get along. For there to be an “us” we need a collective “them.” Zombies provide that more than any other adversary: “They’re coming to get you, Barbara.”
The term “socio-political” wasn’t even in my vocabulary yet, so it was wasted on me that zombies seemed unbeatable despite their lack of alacrity, due to their sheer numbers and relentless, mindless effort–kinda like government officials! A scene that’s in every zombie movie is when a character who’s been killed by the living dead staggers into frame a zombie themselves, driving home the hopelessness of mankind’s situation. Your very friends and family may turn. (Zombification as a metaphor for Republicanism slipped past me, as well.)
I was unaware of NOTLD’s commentary on the Vietnam War, a war that television brought into American living rooms for the first time. I don’t think I noticed that the hero was a black man long before Shaft or Superfly, or how, in a film released shortly after the assassination of Martin Luther King, the hero slaps a white woman, and shoots a white guy, because Romero didn’t see any reason to change the script simply because an African American man won the lead role.
Forget all that crap, it had animated corpses that ate living flesh, and ate centipedes off trees! Hell, it had patricide, matricide, and matri-cannibalism! And it didn’t have a happy ending like most Hollywood films of the day, because sometimes the good guys lose. I was in heaven. NOTLD’s subject matter seemed to be directed at kids, but the presentation was decidedly realistic and aimed at adults. There was even brief female nudity if one was lucky enough to catch it at a theater or drive-in, where it was paired with more conventional, less imaginative, grindhouse fare.
Like rock & roll, NOTLD uses a few simple elements to enormous effect. You could condense the plot to a single sentence: “Zombies attack a group of survivors in a farmhouse,” which is pretty much the plot of every zombie movie that followed. It may be moved to Return of the Living Dead‘s medical supply warehouse, or Dawn of the Dead‘s shopping mall, or Shaun of the Dead‘s pub, but if it works, don’t fix it.
In BOTLD we learn that Romero never used the term “zombie” in the original. They were “marauding ghouls” and their existence was never exactly explained. The newscasts offered some theories: That a space probe may have brought a virus back to earth is the generally accepted one, and one that was furthered in later films. The newscasts were realistic (for their time) because Romero used actual newscasters who wrote their own copy. The cops and police dogs were also really cops and police dogs. It was a simpler time, before the term “independent film” existed, and a film shoot was enough of an event that just asking the police if they’d like to come by and play the police yielded results. Roller rink owner/production manager Vince Survinski volunteered to be set on fire, with his instructions in their entirety amounting to: “If you get hot, lay down.” Ad agency customers and investors took part as well; playing zombies and digging into actual buckets of entrails provided by a local butcher.
The rightful star of the documentary is George A. Romero himself, a raconteur of the first order. I saw a special showing that included a Q & A with BOTLD’s director, Rob Kuhns. He shared that the DVD will have even more Romero footage, so I’d suggest you wait and get the DVD because BOTLD only drags when the stuffed shirts are talking about the socio-political commentary, and other egghead concerns. Like the zombies Romero created (with a nod to Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend), you spend the entire documentary waiting for Romero to come back onscreen. He comes across like Pittsburgh’s answer to Martin Scorsese. Both were born in New York City, and are intelligent, personable, funny men with heavy-framed eye wear–and both of them are at least as interesting as the actors they direct. While Romero’s oeuvre isn’t as respected, like Scorsese, within his niche he’s so far ahead of his imitators that he’s unable to see them when he looks over his shoulder. Romero’s films include Martin, an update on the traditional vampire, a few Stephen King adaptions, and the sequels to NOTLD; Dawn of the Dead, Land of the Dead, and Diary of the Dead, and the similarly themed The Crazies where it’s a military virus that causes people to go postal. I don’t have to tell you what his biggest successes were.
Romero and his investors didn’t make any money from the stacks of VHS and DVD copies of NOTLD (of varying quality) that exist. Through an oversight, when the title of the film was changed from Night of the Flesh Eaters, the copyright symbol was left off the title card, and the film quickly became “public domain.” But Romero doesn’t seem embittered by that, or by anything. The guy just clearly loves making movies, and seems happy to have been able to do what he loves for a living.
Romero went to school in Pittsburgh, and sharpened his skills on industrial films, commercials, and short films for Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, including “Things That Are Soft” and “Mr. Rogers Gets A Tonsilectomy,” which he jokes are the scariest films he’s ever made.
There are quotes from the “legitimate” movie critics who hated the original, and later recanted, but with the exception of The Walking Dead‘s producer Gale Ann Hurd the talking heads in the documentary are second and third-tier authorities. One guy has a nasty growth on his neck that would nudge a more image conscious individual toward turtlenecks, rather than parading it on film.
If there’s a zombie fan on your Christmas list, I’d suggest you buy them BOTLD on DVD, which sounds like a breakfast order in a Waffle House. If they’ve been really good toss in the excellent book on the making of NOTLD; “The Zombies That Ate Pittsburgh.” It’s out of print, but available for around $40.
Lord Carrett