Mocking Halloween: Night of the Living Dead

I know what you are thinking, how dare I make fun of this movie considering its status as being one of the greatest horror movies of all time and seen as one of the most successful indie films too. That won’t stop me because after watching it again, there was something about it that disturbed me… no, not the zombies eating but something else. Let me first start off by saying that I am always a fan of the slow lumbering zombie rather than the 28 Days Later running zombie. I’ve always stated Night of the Living Dead as an example of a good slow moving zombie movie… but that has been compromised.

It may seem like a trivial thing and I’m not quite sure why anybody hasn’t noticed this but when the cemetery zombie attacks Barbara, she runs towards her car… and the zombie RUNS after her. Yes! There is a running zombie in a Romero movie. The zombie then picks up a rock and tries to smash open her window, while acting like a spaz. I was sort of surprised to see this and I guess it would have been fine if the rest of the zombies didn’t act like lumbering drones. So my question is, why was the cemetery zombie the only one to run and use a blunt object to attack with while the rest of the zombies walks slow and grab?

The other thing that I noticed was Barbara herself. I’ve already elaborated on this before (Click here) but it’s sort of misleading. I wanted to see Barbara as this strong woman who tries to pull herself together and help Ben and the rest fight off the zombies but she doesn’t. Throughout most of the movie she looks like she is high and tripping balls. Perhaps that’s the way it was meant but… it would have been nice to see her act a little better.