Night of the Living Dead — 1968
The first Review of the Dead reviews the first zombie movie
The movie that started it all
Night of the Living Dead wasn’t the first zombie movie but it was the first one that featured what we think of as zombies now. It had a larger impact as well. I’ll be going into that shortly — first, there are spoilers. Lots and lots of spoilers. If you don’t want a movie from 1968 spoiled I suggest you go elsewhere.
What came before
Before Night of the Living Dead zombie movies were different. They were all voodoo based. White Zombie was the most famous one. Basically, a zombie was a corpse that rose from the dead at the bidding of a voodoo priest and that voodoo priest would control the zombie. There wasn’t anything quite like what we know of as zombies now. There were ghouls, which followed the basic template, but they were not the same thing. They were limited in number, not the hordes we see now.
Then there was horror in general. Horror movies followed a pretty similar template. They took place in castles or manors. They tended to the gothic. Period costumes were mandatory. A remote castle, wolves howling in the distance, Vincent Price (or Bela Lugosi if you go a little further back in time). Universal Studios did a lot of…
