By Nicole Prieto, Editor-in-Chief
Nearly a year ago this July, horror film legend George A. Romero died at age 77.[1] He left a legacy defined by one of modern history’s greatest low-budget horror films, Night of the Living Dead.[2] As AMC show The Walking Dead relishes in the aftermath of its crossover event with Fear the Walking Dead,[3] it only seems appropriate to pay belated respects to the film that kickstarted the modern zombie genre (and, notably, was shot in Pittsburgh’s backyard[4]).
As a note, I am no horror fanatic; I could barely avoid squirming in my seat watching The Cabin in the Woods for a literary theory class in college. But as a teenager, I developed a specific fixation on zombies. Perhaps I can attribute that to the popularity of tongue-in-cheek fare during the aughts — from The Zombie Survival Guide to Plants vs. Zombies. Whatever the reason, I have marathoned the Resident Evil live-action films more times than I know, and I still hold out hope that 28 Months Later will still be a thing one day.
Yet, for a movie that has been in the public domain since its fated premiere in 1968, it took me until just this mid-April to see Night of the Living Dead. When the film was released, it suffered from one overlooked defect under copyright law as it existed at the time: It failed to state the work was copyrighted (i.e., give notice), all due to a title card change.[5]
Perhaps as a bittersweet development, works may now immediately enjoy copyright protection as of the Copyright Act of 1976,[6] regardless of whether they are registered with the U.S. Copyright Office.[7] Not that this was much help to Romero or the Walter Reade Organization.[8] But copyright or no copyright, legal disputes related to the film and its progeny remained alive and kicking. A quick search of “Night of the Living Dead” on Lexis Advance, for instance, pulls up the Pennsylvania Supreme Court case Image Ten, Inc. v. Walter Reade Organization, Inc.,[9] and the federal district court case Dawn Associates v. Links.[10] Romero was even unaware of a more recent legal tussle centered on the videogame Dead Rising and its disputed similarities to the movie’s sequel, Dawn of the Dead.[11]
Copyright fluke aside, perhaps the most notable feature of this late ’60s film is its casting of black actor Duane Jones in the lead role of Ben, the second living person a distraught Barbra (Judith O’Dea) encounters at a lone farmhouse — and the only person she can truly rely on. Ben is the everyday-man hero of the movie. He comes up with ways to ward off the “ghouls” from the house with fire and is the one to board up all the windows. He stands up to the cowardly Harry Cooper (Karl Hardman), who would rather hide in the basement and who locks Ben out of the house when the group’s escape plan goes south.
This casting decision made waves for its time: Brown v. Board of Education was decided in 1954;[12] the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was enacted;[13] Loving v. Virginia was decided in 1967;[14] Thurgood Marshall became the first black U.S. Supreme Court justice in 1967;[15] Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in 1968,[16] among other notable deaths that same decade; and, media-wise, the first interracial kiss on TV happened in 1968.[17]
Among the literal and figurative warfronts America contended with,[18] race relations remained among them. It was not lost on the actors that the original script needed some adjustments to accommodate the onscreen presence of a black man with a white woman — particularly given that the pair exchange physical blows at one point in the film.[19] And yet, according to Romero, casting a black actor as the lead man was not quite intended as a statement.
“We had no preconceived notion as to the role being a black role,” Romero said in a 1972 interview. “Duane came in, he looked right, he read well, so we used him. We never took any further note of it.”[20]
By the end of the film, Ben is the last man standing. When his attempts to rally everyone to work together fail, he tries and fails to defend Barbra against the horde that breaks through their defenses. With no other recourse, he barricades himself in the basement, and he waits out his fate as the undead continue to beat against the walls and basement door. Outside, all-white posses of the living clear out the undead and cremate their bodies in makeshift pyres. They eventually come within range of the farmhouse. Ben emerges after hearing the sound of police dog barks in the distance. And the moment he comes within view of a window, he is unceremoniously shot between the eyes; we watch documentary-like, photographic scenes of him being carried off with meat-hooks to a pyre.
For Boston Globe columnist Renée Graham, as a child, it was a devastating moment that presented her with her “first lesson about race in America” and has now become an ominous scene in hindsight. “It evokes the callous killings of Philando Castile, Jordan Davis, Trayvon Martin, Rekia Boyd,” she writes, “and too many others whose only crime was to be black in a nation that irrationally fears us.”[21]
Jones himself had an interesting take on the significance of his character’s undignified death. “I convinced George that the black community would rather see me dead than saved, after all that had gone on, in a corny and symbolically confusing way,” Jones said, as reported by The Wrap. “The heroes never die in American movies. The jolt of that and the double jolt of the hero figure being black seemed like a double-barreled whammy.”[22]
Whatever the initial intent of Romero or Jones, the film left a mark on pop culture and modern audiences forever. I can certainly attribute to it more than the pop-culture refuse of my high school years. We can attribute to it more than the stiff gait of the “slow” zombie or the significance of a headshot. It is a movie that, during one of the most socially and legally transformative periods in mid-20th century America, unselfconsciously addressed race without trying to be a film about race.
Consider this is my belated eulogy both to Romero and to Jones, the latter of whom died too early in 1988.[23] May they rest in peace, and may the film — and its cultural legacy — live on forever.
Sources
[1] Nivea Serrao, Night of the Living Dead filmmaker George A. Romero dies at 77, Entertainment Weekly (July 16, 2017, 05:52 PM EDT), http://ew.com/movies/2017/07/16/george-romero-dead-night-living-dead-director-dies/.
[2] For the uninitiated who wish to avoid spoilers from here on out, check out Criterion’s restored February release of the film, available to rent or buy on iTunes. See Glenn Kenny, ‘Night of the Living Dead’: Zombies Restored to Their Full Beauty, N.Y. Times (Feb. 15, 2018), https://nyti.ms/2C3iH1n; Night of the Living Dead, The Criterion Collection, https://www.criterion.com/films/29331-night-of-the-living-dead (last visited Apr. 16, 2018).
[3] As of this writing, my review of the finale is forthcoming for the April 19, 2018, issue of The Duquesne Duke. TWD/FTWD fans can catch “Survival Sunday” on AMC’s website.
[4] Criterion Collection, supra note 2.
[5] Clark Collins, From the Archives: How the 42-year-old zombie movie Night of the Living Dead refuses to die, Entertainment Weekly (Oct. 28, 2010, 06:45 PM EDT), http://ew.com/article/2010/10/28/walking-dead-zombies-night-of-the-living-dead/.
[6] See Jonathan Bailey, How a Copyright Mistake Created the Modern Zombie, Plagiarism Today (Oct. 10, 2011), https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2011/10/10/how-a-copyright-mistake-created-the-modern-zombie/.
[7] Copyright in General, Copyright.gov, https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html (last visited Apr. 16, 2018) (“In general, registration is voluntary. Copyright exists from the moment the work is created. You will have to register, however, if you wish to bring a lawsuit for infringement of a U.S. work.”).
[8] Walter Reade served as the theatrical distributor for Romero’s film. George Romero digs up a lost scene from Night Of The Living Dead, AV News (Oct. 19, 2015, 5:36 PM), https://news.avclub.com/george-romero-digs-up-a-lost-scene-from-night-of-the-li-1798285495.
[9] 456 Pa. 485, 487 (1974) (addressing whether there was jurisdiction under Pennsylvania’s long-arm statute to hear this breach of contract case re the “‘sole right and privilege’ to distribute, exhibit, rent, advertise, and otherwise market” the film);
[10] No. 78 C 3585, 1978 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 15245, at *1-4 (N.D. Ill. Sept. 28, 1978) (addressing whether to grant preliminary injunctive relief where “plaintiffs alleged that defendants have: (1) represented their film as a sequel to ‘Night of the Living Dead’, which it is not,” among other items related to uses of promotional material).
[11] See generally Andy Chalk, George Romero Unaware of Dead Rising Lawsuit, The Escapist (July 2, 2008, 16:14), http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/84794-George-Romero-Unaware-of-Dead-Rising-Lawsuit.
[12] 347 U.S. 483 (1954).
[13] See Pub. L. 88-352.
[14] 388 U.S. 1 (1967).
[15] OCT 2: This Day in History, History, https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/thurgood-marshall-sworn-in (last accessed Apr. 16, 2018).
[16] See generally Martin Luther King, Jr. Assassination, History (2010), https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/martin-luther-king-jr-assassination (last accessed Apr. 16, 2018).
[17] Bill Higgins, Hollywood Flashback: ‘Star Trek’ Showed TV’s First Interracial Kiss in 1968, Hollywood Reporter (May 26, 2016, 12:00 PM PDT), https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/tvs-first-interracial-kiss-star-896843.
[18] See generally Vietnam War, History (2009), https://www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war/vietnam-war-history (last accessed Apr. 16, 2018).
[19] See Joe Kane, How Casting a Black Actor Changed ‘Night of the Living Dead’, The Wrap (Aug. 31, 2010, 5:20 PM), https://www.thewrap.com/night-living-dead-casting-cult-classic-20545/.
[20] Alex Ben Block, George Romero Discusses ‘Night of the Living Dead’ in Previously Unavailable 1972 Interview, Variety (Oct. 25, 2017, 10:00 AM PT), http://variety.com/2017/film/news/george-romero-discusses-night-of-the-living-dead-in-previously-unavailable-1972-interview-1202598349/.
[21] Renée Graham, What ‘Night of the Living Dead’ taught me about race, Boston Globe (July 21, 2017), https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2017/07/21/what-night-living-dead-taught-about-race/hSDDXITitEwcdkHclOX9MO/story.html.
[22] Kane, supra note 19.
[23] C. Gerald Fraser, Duane L. Jones, 51, Actor and Director Of Stage Works, Dies, N.Y. Times (July 28, 1988), https://nyti.ms/29mNSYA.
