THE END IS NIGH! (And it starts in Pittsburgh) George Romero's Living Dead trilogy I just can't let them go. I love 'em too much. Zombies rule, baby. And if you're sick and tired of me talking about them, you obviously shouldn't be reading this magazine. If you're the type of person who thinks they're ridiculous, then you've been brainwashed ny Michael Jackson and you should really go watch The English Patient again. Because you probably won't understand me when I say that a trilogy of zombie movies can form a true milestone in cinema history. They can. George A. Romero's Living Dead trilogy - Night Of The Living Dead, Dawn Of The Dead and Day Of The Dead - is a truly classic filmseries, transcending genre boundaries and short-sighted dismissiveness. And I'm going to put my money where my mouth is, and explain to you exactly why. So make yourself comfortable, because this article is even longer than the one I did on James Cameron. Part 1: Night Of The Living Dead - 1968 A grainy black and white horror movie, shot for almost no money by a man who had previously only made a Calgon commercial. Of course it's an instant classic. In the history of horror cinema, Night Of The Living Dead is one the most important and influential films ever made. It broke with tradition, set new standards, made daring choices in casting and signalled the arrival of a great filmmaking talent. Night Of The Living Dead came about after the people working at Latent Image, a Pittsburgh-based film company specialising in television commercials, had decided they wanted to try their hand at making a feature film. Lack of interest from the local business community forced them to finance the film themselves, which meant having to cut back as many risks as possible. The result was that the film would have to be shot in black and white and that the subject matter would have to be commercially viable. So out came that staple of low-budget cinema: the horror film. A total of ten people formed a partnership to produce the film, kicking around many an idea for the film's storyline. In the end it was George Romero who proposed making a film about flesh-eating zombies. The idea didn't just fall from the sky. Several years earlier Romero had written a three-part allegorical story detailing what would happen when one society replaced another. In the case of Romero's story, the new society consisted of the living dead. The story was loosely based on the novel I Am Legend by Richard Matheson, which detailed the exploits of the last man on earth after a deadly virus has wiped out a huge part of mankind and turned the rest of them into zombie-like vampires. The story of Night dealt with a sudden state of emergency sweeping across the country: for some reason, the dead are coming back to life to seek the flesh of the living. Fleeing from the zombie epidemic are Barbara, a young woman whose brother was killed by a zombie, and Ben, a salesman. They both wind up in a seemingly deserted farmhouse to find shelter. They discover that five others having taken refuge in the building's basement: young lovers Tom and Judy along with Harry and Helen, a bickering married couple, whose little daughter Karen has been wounded during a zombie attack. As they work towards fortifying the house with boards and planks, the hordes of zombies gathering outside grow larger and larger. In all previous films dealing with zombies, these creatures had been innocent people, revived and controlled by their powerful master to do his evil bidding. More often than not, the zombies were actually used not as weapons but as a work force, providing cheap labour for a rich tycoon. From 1932's White Zombie, starring Bela Lugosi, through to 1966's Plague Of the Zombies, made by legendary Hammer Studios, this was the blueprint on which these films were based, finding its source in voodoo mythology. Night Of The Living Dead dispensed with all of this. In a radical break with tradition, and seeing the full potential of using living dead in a horror film, Romero made zombies pure evil, out to eat the flesh of the living and controlled by nothing but their own instinct. But the great ideas didn't end there. Night is also a turning point in the use of special effects and make up. Where previously horror films had been about rubber monsters lumbering around in the dark, this one was about flesh eaters. And that meant showing flesh eaters. Not once in the sixty years prior had any horror film (or any film for that matter) actually shown murders and gory sequences. Everything always happened off camera, or as shadows on the wall. In Night, a woman playing a zombie ate a live cockroach, a decaying disembodied head was shown in full close-up, and the living dead could be seen gnawing on the limbs and entrails of their human victims. This was absolutely unheard of in motion pictures. Not showing the graphic or disturbing scenes was a rule of thumb in cinema, breaking that barrier didn't even occur to filmmakers. When Romero and company actually did, the shock was too great for adults and children alike. But it was all part of the strategy behind Night. All of it was born out of necessity. In order to keep healthy box office figures the film had to perform well beyond merely an opening week. By showing violence and gore, Night's creators hoped to created word-of-mouth, where audiences would inform the people they knew about the unique experience this film had proven to be. Cost effectiveness ran through every facet of the film, causing many an artistic invention along the way. As a matter of fact, Night has been analyzed to the point of dissection by film critics, resulting in the 'discovery' of the most ridiculous and far-fetched subtexts. People have read meaning into the film's use of black and white, the grainy look of the film stock (an accident because the lab had to switch to cheaper stock), the use of effects and the anonymous masses of the zombies. In the end there was only one explanation for all of these aspects: money. But the most oft-discussed point was without a doubt the casting of Duane Jones in the lead role of the hero Ben. The fact that this film had a black man in the lead gave critics a field day. Suddenly the film became a social commentary. Especially the final scene, where Ben emerges in the morning as the only survivor of the zombie attacks only to be shot by a posse of gunmen - white gunmen - who believe him to be one of the living dead, gave rise to feverish speculation about the social significance of the film. With all the racial unrest going on in the US during the late sixties, seeing the Ben character as being a comment on society was almost inescapable. But the real reson for Romero's casting of Duane Jones was as simple as it was banal: he was simply the best actor they could get for the money. The part of Ben had never been very well defined in the script, and there certainly wasn't any indication of the character's ethnic background. Duane Jones was the best man for the job. It's that simple. Night Of The Living Dead has aged. There's no denying this. Modern day audiences will probably find it dull and cliché-ridden, perhaps they will even find it laughable. But the films they base those opinions on, the zombie movies they know, the ones made in the eighties, are the movies that owe their existence to George Romero's great film. Today Night Of The Living Dead needs to be seen in context. Even if it has lost much of its entertainment value, its historic and artistic value will last forever. Click here for part 2: Dawn Of The Dead