Night of the Living Dead

And this week's Friday night movie has been... Night of the Living Dead!

Original image located here. Accessed 2nd October 2020

Well it's become something of a tradition with this series that October is a month spent wholly committed to watching horror movies. And this year, we're kicking off the year's run with a swing for the fences: A movie that a launched a thousand zombie tropes.

I have spoken previously how intimidating it can be encountering a movie that stated a whole lotta trends: In such cases, the lessons this movie gave have been used and replicated so many times that to go back to the source can leave it with having less bite than it should have.
So is this movie dated? Yes. Is it clearly shot on the cheap? Of course. Does it still pack a punch over half a century later? I do believe it does. Stunning lightening, chilling atmosphere and being done straight-faced all add up to deliver a striking (and gory) whole.
Also of note is that this movie truly functions as the bridge between the horror movies of the pre-mid-sixties and the more modern horrors movies. Here the rules got re-written and have been studied extensively since.
There is a part of me that would say that this movie should not have the punch it does, given the passage of time and a horde of imitators that emerged in it's wake but somehow, it still does so.