The best scary movie of all time is Halloween. This is an undisputable fact and anyone who disagrees is not only a liar, but is also very ugly. The second best movie, though, is contestable. No, it's not Halloween 2, 3, 4, 5 or whatever 6 is calling itself these days. It isn't the Shining, though I've just realised that I should probably have covered that at some point. Maybe next year.
The second best horror film ever is either Night of the Living Dead (a George A Romero film about zombies from 1968) or Dawn of the Dead (a George A Romero film about zombies from 1978). It's a tough call, but for now I'm going to go with the original.
You have probably heard of Night of the Living Dead (herinafter referred to as Night; not to be confused with Night of the Hunter, One Night at McCool's or M. Night Shyamalan). It is pretty much the most influential zombie film ever, setting the tone, iconography, narrative structure and rules for pretty much every zombie movie that followed. It is not the first film in which the living dead rise en masse; that honour goes to 1932's White Zombie, directed by Victor Halpern. But Night is pivotal in its depiction of the zombie, and of the cultural significance of the zombie movie. So, yes, sorry, it is responsible for Resident Evil 2 and the truly boring Outpost. But, redeemingly, it is also responsbile for Shaun of the Dead, and - by direct consequence - my cool Shaun of the Dead 'Zombie Killer' T-shirt. So I forgive it.
The zombie films of the 30s onwards were more about Haitian Voodoo, where mystical witch-doctors with stupid facial hair raised the dead to act as servants and do all the washing up. The fear factor was not about being attacked by zombies, but about becoming one - losing one's own will and spending the rest of your life having to put Bela Lugosi's recycling out. Looked at now, the films are thinly veiled parables of American scientific ratonalism winning out against ethnic superstition. The zombies are all black ( and thus irrational ) and the (white) heroes win by being unimpressed by such nonsense and shooting it repeatedly until it stops.
Romero's films cut right against this pro-Western, 'America is ace' ideology and created a morally ambiguous universe where the zombies represent much more than the simple fear of the 'other'. For a start, Romero's zombies are almost all white. And they don't live on some far off island either - they live in the suburbs. And - best of all - they don't have a boss anymore. That's right - at some point between 1932 and 1968 one particularly lucid zombie must have tabled the motion 'Sod carrying stuff about, let's start eating people's brains and see if that isn't more fun.' The motion was passed by a huge majority.
So, the protagonists of Night don't have to go looking for trouble in the Caribbean. It wanders right up to them and starts chewing on their faces. Before too long, a bunch of squabbling survivors are holed up in a country house, frantically nailing coffee tables to windows. Outside, a shambling mass of the walking dead gather, mulling about aimlessly like those people you see queuing to audition for the X Factor. Only less gormless.
The rest of the film is quite a slow burn. The dead make the odd attempt to thrust their arms through the makeshift barricades, and the scenes where they consume their victims break new ground for gross out visuals. But the main trouble comes from the living people inside the house. Night is born into an America that is seeing dead bodies on the news every night; bodies of American troops in Vietnam, and also bodies killed by those same troops. The idea that America is the great bringer of civilisation and hope to the world doesn't look quite so convincing from here. Romero plays heavily on the question of where the monsters really are, and how easy it is to tell the difference.
For a while I only owned this film in a hideous colourised version. You know the kind - it's like someone let a child loose with a set of crayons and said 'Make sure everyone's shirt is nice and colourful!' It was rubbish. Now it is, thankfully, much easier to get the DVD in the original black and white. It is a film which really works in monochrome - the shadows and light play gorgeously against each other and there is a real sense of claustrophobia thst you just don't get when everyone's hair is bright yellow and wobbles like jelly.
The rest of Romero's Dead films are variable in quality. Dawn (1978) is amazing, and in some ways a better film. Day (1985) is a more acquired taste, but has some good moments. Land, Diary and Survival all get slowly worse and are not essential.
That's all for now. Good night. If you can.
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