Night of the Living Dead: Comparison and Contrast with World War Z

 Today a plethora of zombie movies and television shows wash ashore of the various streaming services like so much flotsam and jetsam. The quality of such productions is as variegated as the directors who have dipped their big toes in the bloody pool. Though not the first movie ever about zombies, we can say Night of the Living Dead (NOTLD) is the first contemporary cinematic expression of the zombie tale.

George A. Romero's "classic" is the first of several in a series he made, though it isn't clear whether this includes remakes and reworkings of the stories. It's a low budget, black-and-white film released in 1968, only five years before The Exorcist. Romero did not break ground by casting black actor Duane Jones as the protagonist, Ben, but Jones was part of a 60s wave of such integrated casting that had included Sydney Poitier in a number of films, Greg Morris in the Mission Impossible TV series, and Nichelle Nichols as Uhura in Star Trek, who also pioneered the first interracial kiss on television with William Shatner.

There is a fascinating moment in the movie when, considering the racial tensions of the day, Ben punches blonde Barbra when she panics and tries to leave the house. It comes after she has slapped him. The punch knocks her out, and the bruise it leaves on her left jaw is easily discerned in a number of shots. In light of the film's popularity, sterling box office performance, and subsequent cult status, the punch did not offend too many people, even though a black man hitting a white woman was something not typically ignored in those days.  

As Glenna has written, the movie thrives on a sense of isolation. The establishing shot is one of a drive on a lonely, cracked road to a people-less cemetery. Later, Barbra, Ben, and others find or have found refuge in an old, remote, two-story home surrounded by a lot of trees. This is confirmed at the end of the movie, when an armed patrol is sweeping the area and make the isolated home its last area to check.

NOTLD also thrives on panic. The mystery of what generated this "epidemic of mass murder being committed by a virtual army of unidentified assassins" frightens people in this Western Pennsylvania rural area, and that fright is elevated by the slow, inexorable walk of the attackers toward their living victims. Though there have been a few signs of gore, it isn't until two-thirds of the movie has been completed that news reports describe the undead feasting on the flesh of the living. 

How did the dead become undead? A probe returning from Venus displays increasing levels of radiation which has mutated and reanimated the brains of the recently dead but unburied. Scientists learn at this time, too, that the undead must be killed by a shot to the head or a skull-crushing blow to it. Cremating the newly dead is a must and can also be used to destroy the undead, which makes sense.

NOTLD shares a scientific genesis of the reanimated dead with World War Z (and I Am Legend), although it wasn't clear to me what that genesis was in WWZ. It shares a sense of panic as people take or propose foolish measures to protect themselves or under stress fail in the execution of a good idea, as happened with the young couple in NOTLD. Thus you have Mr. Cooper trying to force everyone into the basement (ironically, this works for Ben when the rest of the house is overrun by zombies), which is sure to trap everyone. Barbara tries to bolt from the house into the waiting arms of the undead, but is stopped, and Cooper tries to trap Ben outside to punish him for making him look like a fool.

In World War Z, soldiers try to fight the zombies as if they were a typical army, leading to disastrous results; others try to get out to sea on a boat, but zombies can swim and way far at that. Forces abandon the civilians they are supposed to protect, then have to fight them when trying to reclaim territory for the "country". Suddenly, adopting a Hitlerian plan to save the country is righteous, even when that plan goes against traditional American military mantras where "no one gets left behind".

In both stories, sweeps by armed patrols play a role in attacking and regaining control from the zombies.

In NOTLD, the people win the war and are on the path to restoration but with an ignorant bliss as to what might have gone wrong in achieving that victory, as highlighted by the tragically mistaken shooting of Ben. WWZ is more of a mixed bag. For many, the psychological damage will remain, perhaps permanently. No one wanted to die in NOTLD, but many did and committed suicide during the zombie war of WWZ or in its aftermath. 

In one sense, each story is a counterpoint to the other, NOTLD focused on a localized event and particular persons whereas WWZ broadens the action to the globe, losing the sense of isolation but perhaps creating a sense of tsunami - a wave of terror that overruns the Earth. WWZ tries to create isolation through fragmentation.

The biggest difference for me is tone. In spite of Romero's bold casting move, it's just a terrific story with terrific characters we know and with which we can identify. World War Z is largely about elites and their expertise, how they have to save each other while everyone else gets chewed on. Romero's tale-telling is straightforward; Brooks is preachy and forced as, for instance, his take on secession. People tend to equate secession with the South and slavery; they fail to remember that our existence as these United States is predicated on secession - secession from the United Kingdom, and that rebellion is built into the Declaration of Independence. Brooks even has to acknowledge through one of the characters that the government, by abandoning its sacred duty to protect the people, has abdicated from any claim of sovereignty over them.  

Lastly, it should be noted WWZ is derivative of several other works, including the vastly superior 28 Days Later, even though, technically, 28 Days Later is not a zombie movie. NOTLD was influenced, I have read, by Matheson's I Am Legend, but there are differences, differences which would become more distinct in Romero's sequels.