< Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse: August 2005

Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse

Monday, August 08, 2005

Night of the Living Dead.

I had never seen Night of the Living Dead, but I had the opportunity to watch it while at work last weekend. Thank you archive.org and the public domain in general. Lots of good freebies out there to be had.

Earth is bombarded with radiation from a probe that had been to Venus causing the recently deceased to hover in that undead state. They scour the earth in search of human flesh (which the comsume without even salt or pepper. Barbarians!). Ben, our hero, and a few other people find themselves holed up in a country home with the undead all around. They formulate a plan for escape...

I was happy to see a hero that had sufficient brain cells at his disposal to come up with a good plan. Ben was in charge and capable. Zombie slayer extraordinaire. His help wasn't quite as good, but you work with the tools you have apparently.

Gender roles were a little old-fashioned. Being a woman is not very safe in Night of the Living Dead except under the protection of capable men. Capable Ben I should say. I much prefer the stronger female roles as in 28 Days Later and even Quilla June from A Boy and His Dog.

It had a typical struggle for power between male characters (sadly, I wasn't taking notes so I forget the other guys' names) and eventually fisticuffs when Ben had to force his way back into their shelter after a botched attempt to fuel a truck.

An enjoyable low budget movie which I have yet to see the end of because the streaming file from archive.org was cut at the end. Damn! But I'd recommend what I've seen so far to anyone.