Influence of 'Night of the Living Dead'

By the 1960s, “I Am Legend” further impressed itself to the zombie genre by way of director George A. Romero, who acknowledged its influence when directing the 1964 adaptation, “The Last Man on Earth”, upon his film “Night of the Living Dead”.

The story of 'Night of the Living Dead' begins with two people named Barbra and Jonny driving to a cemetery visiting their father's grave. A pale-faced man approaches them and after a sudden brawl with them, the man kills Jonny. Horrified Barbra escapes to an abandoned cottage still being followed by the pale zombie. A man named Ben also arrives at the cottage in a pickup truck. They soon realize the house is being surrounded by a mob of zombies so Ben boards up the house and retreats to the cellar, discovering other people already in the cellar, one of whom is a young girl who has been bitten and fallen ill.

During the film the survivors die one by one in failed attempts to escape in Ben's pickup truck, as well as the sick young girl reanimating as a zombie herself and killing her own parents. Towards the end of the film the zombie break into the house with Ben as the only remaining survivor who retreats into the cellar, locking the door behind him.

In the morning, a posse approaches the house and proceeds to kill the remaining zombies. Hearing the commotion, Ben ambles up the cellar stairs into the living room and is shot in the head by a posse member who mistakes him for a zombie, ending the film.

Romero revolutionized the horror film genre with “Night of the Living Dead” and the modern Zombie stereotype came from the ghouls (as they were actually referred to in the film rather than zombies) featured in the movie (pictured left).

Similar to the infected from “I am Legend” Romero depicted his ghouls as both re-animated corpses and infected hosts who moved in mobs and waves, seeking either flesh to eat or people to kill as well as being capable of passing whatever syndrome that caused their condition onto others. Also like the infected in “I am legend” the ghouls had conscious minds and control over their own movement, unlike traditional zombies from Voodoo folklore or older films as “White Zombie”.

However Romero introduced more striking features which would later become zombie stereotypes such as the exhibit of physical decomposition (such as rotting flesh), discolored eyes, open wounds, and moving with a slow, shambling gait. Although they were generally incapable of communication and showed no signs of personality or rationality they could sustain damage far beyond that of a normal, living human.

I will use the majority of these stereotypes for the zombies, although they had already been repeated thousands of times in other media it therefore means that viewers will recognize the monsters in my film as zombies.