Those are the two celebrities that Harry and Helen Cooper remind me of.
Specifically, an older, middle-aged, declining Julia Roberts, as she will perhaps be in ten to twenty years, as she's already described herself in the 1999 film "Notting Hill".
I am being subjective in this review, because I think my subjective reactions to, and memories of, this film, are the most unique thing I have to offer about it.
I remember being scared by ads for this film on the radio in November 1968. I think WMCA 570 Khz AM in NYC (home of "The Good Guys") played these ads. They contained horrible, jagged, five note (or chord) piano music, between the spoken words "Night" and "of the Living Dead". The radio ad also contained screams, and the tag line, "The living ... whose bodies are the only food for these ungodly creatures !"
I remember looking at a TV Guide cover while hearing these ads. The cover showed Robert Morse and E.J. Peaker, stars and co-hosts of the ABC variety show, "That's Life" ! The fear I felt from the radio ad made E.J. Peaker's smiling, big-toothed face, surmounted by a blond bangs and pony-tailed hairdo, look horrible and menacing, like that of a vampire. Date that TV Guide cover, and you've dated those radio ads.
I didn't see the film in a theater. Still haven't, to this day. I remember a Reader's Digest article about in, I think, their May 1969 issue. It summarized the film, described how children had been scared by it, urged more caution on the part of parents, and suggested that the then-new G M R X rating system may have been of some help, except that the Walter Reade Organization, the film's distributor, refused to subscribe to this system.
I first saw the film on ABC TV on a Friday night in mid-March 1973. I found it moderately scary, mostly because I saw it at night. I remember listening to the radio after the film was over, and thinking that the discordant vocalizing in War's single "The Cisco Kid", reminded me of the moans of the attacking ghouls in the film. A caller to a radio talk show said he'd just seen the film on TV, and had been sexually aroused by it, urging his fellow listeners to get off in one great orgasm of disgust. The talk show host told him he was sick.
A week later, when I attended college orientation, I saw that the newspaper of my college-to-be, had a brief humorous article about the film, with a photo of the face of the half-eaten "lady upstairs".
To quote Stephen King, in the film, Romero plays many taboos like a virtuoso, to the hilt. Not only of course cannibalism, being burned alive, necrophilia, matricide, patricide, fratricide, and sister-cide, but : a white woman at first apparently alone in a house at night with a black man, and a blond white woman, at that. When Ben puts the unconscious Barbara on a couch, then unbuttons and unbelts her overcoat to help her breathe more easily, does the racist in us ask : is he going to fondle, molest, rape her ? No, he's a man of honor, and too focused on barricading himself into the house to protect himself and Barbara against the marauding ghouls.
The film has a great economy of effect. Romero scares us, not only with the ghouls, but by making the "good guys" look grotesque also. There's Barbara's bulging forehead, high hairline, and weak chin. The black smudge on Harry Cooper's bald pate, that suggests a bullet hole. The sudden successive view of animal heads mounted on a den wall is reminiscent of a later scene, in a museum, in the "Escape Route" segment of the "Night Gallery" pilot TV movie.
In her review of "The Exorcist" for The New Yorker, Pauline Kael commented on the novel it was based on, remarking that, what Blatty did not have his characters do, he had them talk about, thereby providing flip-page torture, cannibalism, sadism, and lycanthropy. Romero does something similar in NOTLD, with the voices of the radio and, later, TV, announcers, speaking of victims showing signs of having been partially devoured (thereby confirming our worst fears concerning the half-eaten face of the lady upstairs, with its exposed eyeball, teeth, and gums, reminiscent of Bert I. Gordon's "The Cyclops") and of the corpse in the morgue from which the limbs had been amputated, which, nonetheless, opened its eyes, and tried to move its trunk.
There is also Ben's story of what happened to him at Beekman's Diner, all the more horrific, because we know its sole audience is the in-shock, and, at best, half-comprehending, Barbara. It also foreshadows Tom and Judy's fate in the ill-fated truck later on.
Speaking of "The Exorcist", junior ghoul Karen Cooper's trowel attack on her mother both prefigures and surpasses Regan MacNeil's attack on her mother in "The Exorcist", albeit without self-mutilation with a crucifix, followed by an invitation to cunnilingus and mother-daughter oral incest. One can't have everything, but, as a bonus and an aside, note the taboos that Blatty played like a virtuoso in HIS novel and film.
Humor ? Sure. Mostly the sheriff, and his numbnuts posse : "Get a club or a torch, beat 'em or burn 'em." "Kill the brain, and you kill the ghoul !" "These ghouls are slow-moving ?" "Yeah, they're dead, they're ... all messed up !"
Unanswered questions : who was the half-eaten lady upstairs, and how did she get there ? Where did all the ghouls that laid siege to the farmhouse come from, and why was there an ever-increasing number of them ? Did they come from the cemetery where Barbara's father was buried ? Did they unearth themselves ? They would have had a long walk ... er, lurch ... from the nearest hospital, morgue, or funeral home, to the abandoned farm house, and would have sought closer victims in adjacent towns and cities first.
Specifically, an older, middle-aged, declining Julia Roberts, as she will perhaps be in ten to twenty years, as she's already described herself in the 1999 film "Notting Hill".
I am being subjective in this review, because I think my subjective reactions to, and memories of, this film, are the most unique thing I have to offer about it.
I remember being scared by ads for this film on the radio in November 1968. I think WMCA 570 Khz AM in NYC (home of "The Good Guys") played these ads. They contained horrible, jagged, five note (or chord) piano music, between the spoken words "Night" and "of the Living Dead". The radio ad also contained screams, and the tag line, "The living ... whose bodies are the only food for these ungodly creatures !"
I remember looking at a TV Guide cover while hearing these ads. The cover showed Robert Morse and E.J. Peaker, stars and co-hosts of the ABC variety show, "That's Life" ! The fear I felt from the radio ad made E.J. Peaker's smiling, big-toothed face, surmounted by a blond bangs and pony-tailed hairdo, look horrible and menacing, like that of a vampire. Date that TV Guide cover, and you've dated those radio ads.
I didn't see the film in a theater. Still haven't, to this day. I remember a Reader's Digest article about in, I think, their May 1969 issue. It summarized the film, described how children had been scared by it, urged more caution on the part of parents, and suggested that the then-new G M R X rating system may have been of some help, except that the Walter Reade Organization, the film's distributor, refused to subscribe to this system.
I first saw the film on ABC TV on a Friday night in mid-March 1973. I found it moderately scary, mostly because I saw it at night. I remember listening to the radio after the film was over, and thinking that the discordant vocalizing in War's single "The Cisco Kid", reminded me of the moans of the attacking ghouls in the film. A caller to a radio talk show said he'd just seen the film on TV, and had been sexually aroused by it, urging his fellow listeners to get off in one great orgasm of disgust. The talk show host told him he was sick.
A week later, when I attended college orientation, I saw that the newspaper of my college-to-be, had a brief humorous article about the film, with a photo of the face of the half-eaten "lady upstairs".
To quote Stephen King, in the film, Romero plays many taboos like a virtuoso, to the hilt. Not only of course cannibalism, being burned alive, necrophilia, matricide, patricide, fratricide, and sister-cide, but : a white woman at first apparently alone in a house at night with a black man, and a blond white woman, at that. When Ben puts the unconscious Barbara on a couch, then unbuttons and unbelts her overcoat to help her breathe more easily, does the racist in us ask : is he going to fondle, molest, rape her ? No, he's a man of honor, and too focused on barricading himself into the house to protect himself and Barbara against the marauding ghouls.
The film has a great economy of effect. Romero scares us, not only with the ghouls, but by making the "good guys" look grotesque also. There's Barbara's bulging forehead, high hairline, and weak chin. The black smudge on Harry Cooper's bald pate, that suggests a bullet hole. The sudden successive view of animal heads mounted on a den wall is reminiscent of a later scene, in a museum, in the "Escape Route" segment of the "Night Gallery" pilot TV movie.
In her review of "The Exorcist" for The New Yorker, Pauline Kael commented on the novel it was based on, remarking that, what Blatty did not have his characters do, he had them talk about, thereby providing flip-page torture, cannibalism, sadism, and lycanthropy. Romero does something similar in NOTLD, with the voices of the radio and, later, TV, announcers, speaking of victims showing signs of having been partially devoured (thereby confirming our worst fears concerning the half-eaten face of the lady upstairs, with its exposed eyeball, teeth, and gums, reminiscent of Bert I. Gordon's "The Cyclops") and of the corpse in the morgue from which the limbs had been amputated, which, nonetheless, opened its eyes, and tried to move its trunk.
There is also Ben's story of what happened to him at Beekman's Diner, all the more horrific, because we know its sole audience is the in-shock, and, at best, half-comprehending, Barbara. It also foreshadows Tom and Judy's fate in the ill-fated truck later on.
Speaking of "The Exorcist", junior ghoul Karen Cooper's trowel attack on her mother both prefigures and surpasses Regan MacNeil's attack on her mother in "The Exorcist", albeit without self-mutilation with a crucifix, followed by an invitation to cunnilingus and mother-daughter oral incest. One can't have everything, but, as a bonus and an aside, note the taboos that Blatty played like a virtuoso in HIS novel and film.
Humor ? Sure. Mostly the sheriff, and his numbnuts posse : "Get a club or a torch, beat 'em or burn 'em." "Kill the brain, and you kill the ghoul !" "These ghouls are slow-moving ?" "Yeah, they're dead, they're ... all messed up !"
Unanswered questions : who was the half-eaten lady upstairs, and how did she get there ? Where did all the ghouls that laid siege to the farmhouse come from, and why was there an ever-increasing number of them ? Did they come from the cemetery where Barbara's father was buried ? Did they unearth themselves ? They would have had a long walk ... er, lurch ... from the nearest hospital, morgue, or funeral home, to the abandoned farm house, and would have sought closer victims in adjacent towns and cities first.