Leofwine_draca BIRTH OF THE LIVING DEAD is a fun tribute documentary exploring the making of George Romero's low budget horror classic, NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, exploring the things it was influenced by as well as the genre it influenced. The main disappointment is that none of the cast or crew involved with the making of the film provide comment other than Romero himself, but the director is such an engaging personality that it doesn't matter. Plus, plenty of modern filmmaking-related figures are happy to talk about the movie too.This documentary works so well because it explores the political context surrounding the film's making. Riots, the Vietnam War, race relations, and gun violence all play their part and are discussed here. It's the type of documentary that makes you look at the film in a new light, and the bits about the casting of Duane Jones in a non race-related role are particularly interesting. I find that when documentaries like this are made with such obvious love and enthusiasm for the subject matter they're impossible to dislike in turn.

Red-Barracuda Very, very few films can truly claim to have wholly created a new sub-genre. George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968) is such a rare beast. It is truly the year zero moment for the zombie film as we understand it today. Sure, there had been sporadic examples of zombie films before Night but they all focused on a decidedly different type of thing. The early zombie, both in cinema and literature, was a sort of sleepwalking being in a deathly trance. Romero's film was the first example anywhere to postulate the idea that bodies returning from the dead would be rotting corpses who relentlessly pursue human beings in order to rip them apart and eat them. Nowadays, of course, zombies are simply everywhere. In the last decade in particular the idea of the Romero zombie has become so well known that it is a cultural reference that practically everyone understands. For this reason, it goes without saying that Night of the Living Dead is easily one of the most influential and important horror movies ever made. And that's only part of the reason why.Birth of the Living Dead is a very good focus on the making and impact of this seminal film. It looks at the social climate of the time and considers how this influenced the making of the movie. The late 60's were one of the most dramatic periods in American history. The counter-culture was in full swing but about to come crashing down, political distrust was widespread, racial tensions were resulting in violence and the deeply divisive Vietnam War rumbled on ominously in the background. All of these elements and more led to the crumbling of the Hollywood studio system whose movies no longer connected with the rapidly changing times, this of course led to the brief but glorious New Hollywood years where many personal and left-field films were made by the big studios.While all this was going on a bunch of inexperienced film-makers from Pittsburgh were putting together a low budget horror movie, so low budget that it was being shot in black and white. This very fact was a serious obstacle back then given that the move to colour was pretty widespread by 1968. But this independent film went against the grain in other ways too. For one thing it had a black lead actor. Not only that, but the film never even made any reference to this and dealt with it in a matter of fact manner, making the decision seem all the more bold. This may not sound like much now but in the 60's it was still quite a hurdle and ultimately transgressive. Also, the film brought in a unique seriousness to its b-movie material. Everything is played completely straight. The influence of the European New Wave can be detected in the television scenes of the news reports detailing the carnage. They are messy and naturalistic in a manner like an actual news-feed; this of course added to the urgency and realism and magnified the fear factor. With this more serious framework, Romero introduced graphic violence which added to the overall terror. Gory violence had been a staple of some schlock horror of the earlier 60's in the form of the films of H.G. Lewis and his imitators but these films always essentially had their tongues in their cheek. Romero removed the humour safety valve and so the visceral violence is all the more terrifying as a result. We have zombies eating human remains and a little girl bloodily murdering her mother in full on sequences. The film even had the nerve to end on an incredibly bleak and ironic note with the hero Ben being killed at the end when a gung-ho mob shoot him thinking him a zombie. But this hero also had survived by doing the one thing he advocated against the whole film, so this was a film that presented the viewer with many questions and gave few easy solutions.The documentary interviews many of those involved in the making of the film. We get to understand the financing problems and the way that everybody involved had a variety of roles in the creation process in order to save money. We also learn how difficult it was to sell the movie afterwards, even exploitation distributors AIP only wanted to release it if it had a happy ending added. When it did eventually get a distribution deal it met with initial hostility and only later did many actually understand it. It was ahead of its time in truth. It also is notable for falling immediately into the public domain for not having a © mark on it, leading to the film-makers who made this incredibly influential work not making a cent on it! This film details all this and much more, it's essential viewing for anyone at all interested in this most important of horror movies.

poe426 NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD was the very first movie I ever bought (on Beta, for $50) and when I took it home to watch it- alone-, it spooked me so bad that I had to call up a buddy and have him come over to watch it with me. (And that was AFTER I'd seen it several times in theaters- at a midnight showing and on a double bill with the remake of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS.) It remains, to this day, one of my all-time favorite films. Like the boxing documentary CHAMPIONS FOREVER, BIRTH OF THE LIVING DEAD delves into the turbulence of the 1960s that might've played a part in the overall FEEL of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. (And it's an even more valid approach to a fright film in THIS day and age, with the Middle Class literally having been CONSUMED by The Greedy Politicians and Lawyers who own and run this company- er, country...)I've long wondered why someone- the original creators themselves, for instance- hasn't made a movie about the making of a horror classic like NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. The behind-the-scenes contretemps (as chronicled in many a book and article and behind-the-scenes commentary over the years) would no doubt make for an interesting (and funny) film. Hell, I'd even settle for an audio autobiography by Romero: he has the easy-going conversational style that would make for a fascinating evening's listening. NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD still resonates with power because of its uncompromising integrity. Elvis Mitchell sums it up nicely in BIRTH OF THE LIVING DEAD: "It's completely terrifying- and the perfect ending." The bonus features on the DVD should've been incorporated into the documentary itself: an extended interview with Romero, a Monroeville Mall zombie walk with the late Bill Hinzman, and the audio from the June 6, 1970 Museum of Modern Art Q&A with Romero.

envisiondentallab If you read the "storyline" description of this Documentary you would assume it's about the production of the film "Night of the living dead", and yes we get maybe 15 minutes of some interesting tidbits on the investors and players involved BUT the remaining 60 minutes is pure drivel. I give it 3 stars for the 15 minutes of somewhat entertaining stories. It loses 7 stars from the somewhat laughable metaphoric connections to the late 60s in terms of racial violence and the Vietnam war. They could have spent 5 minutes on how it was somewhat unusual to cast an African American in the lead at the time and how some of the shooting visuals looked a little like riot and war footage. Instead we get an hour of Vietnam and race riot footage and trying to connect it to different scenes in the movie. The taglines and plot descriptions on various websites like IMDb and vudu look like it's targeted to 'Romero' fans but should only be shown in a political science class and that's a stretch.