Birth of the Living Dead | |
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Directed by | Rob Kuhns |
Written by | Rob Kuhns |
Produced by |
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Cinematography |
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Edited by | Rob Kuhns |
Music by |
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Distributed by | First Run Features |
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Running time | 76 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Birth of the Living Dead (sometimes known by its working title Year of the Living Dead) is a 2012 American documentary film directed by Rob Kuhns. It is about the 1968 horror film Night of the Living Dead and that film's legacy. It features interviews with Night of the Living Dead director George A. Romero, Elvis Mitchell, Jason Zinoman, Larry Fessenden, Gale Anne Hurd, and Mark Harris.
Rob Kuhns interviews a range of authors, critics, and filmmakers about the impact, legacy, and enduring popularity of Night of the Living Dead. Romero describes the film's background, production, and distribution, including how it accidentally fell into the public domain. Fessenden describes Night of the Living Dead's aspects of postmodernist film, including an early commentary on horror films inside of a horror film – Johnny's taunting of his sister, Barbra, in the opening graveyard scene. Hurd cites the film as an influence on her own work as executive producer of The Walking Dead . Mitchell, among other things, describes how the film presents a strong Black male as the protagonist of a film without resorting to racial commentary. The final scene, in which Duane Jones' character, Ben, is killed by a posse is compared to historical footage of 1960s lynch mobs and police brutality, and scenes of violent zombie attacks are compared to footage from Vietnam broadcast on television.
Also interviewed are a Bronx schoolteacher who uses it as an aid during his lessons and people who saw it on its first release.
Fessenden, who also executive produced, became a fan of Night of the Living Dead after he saw it on television in the 1970s. [1] After Fessenden was contacted for an interview, he offered to help out. Several other people, such as John A. Russo, were contacted, but they declined involvement. [2]
Birth of the Living Dead premiered at the Tallgrass Film Festival on October 19, 2012. [3] It was released to iTunes on October 15, 2013, and received a limited release on October 18. [4]
Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregator, reports that 96% of 23 surveyed critics gave the film a positive review; the average rating is 6.8/10. [5] Metacritic rated it 65/100 based on nine reviews. [6] Frank Scheck of The Hollywood Reporter wrote, "Although highly entertaining, this loving tribute to Romero's cult classic could have used a little more meat on its zombie bones". [7] Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly rated it A and wrote that it is "full of juicy anecdotes". [8] Andy Webster of The New York Times made it a NYT Critics' Pick and called Romero "a most agreeable raconteur". [9] The Los Angeles Times called it "a nifty little tribute" that lacks commentary about Romero's later work. [10]
Jeff Shannon of The Seattle Times wrote that the film "pays wide-ranging tribute to an enduring pop-cultural milestone". [11] Ernest Hardy of The Village Voice wrote, "What distinguishes this doc from much of the tedious critical prose Romero has inspired is the fan-boy and fan-girl ardor that fuels its smarts". [12] Joshua Rothkopf of Time Out New York rated it 4/5 stars and wrote that the film finds interesting analysis not already covered by previous works. [13] Chuck Bowen of Slant Magazine rated it 2.5/4 stars and wrote that the documentary is charming despite its lack of new information. [14] A. A. Dowd of The A.V. Club rated it C+ and also criticized its lack of new insights. [15] Noel Murray of The Dissolve rated it 3/5 stars and called it "little more than a glorified DVD featurette" but still enjoyable. [16] Eric Ortiz Garcia of Twitch Film wrote, "Kuhns' love letter to Romero's masterpiece is a welcome and fresh addition to our history of the modern screen zombie." [17]
Night of the Living Dead is a 1968 American independent horror film directed, photographed, and edited by George A. Romero, written by Romero and John Russo, produced by Russell Streiner and Karl Hardman, and starring Duane Jones and Judith O'Dea. The story follows seven people trapped in a farmhouse in rural Pennsylvania, under assault by reanimated corpses. Although the flesh-eating monsters that appear in the film are referred to as "ghouls", they are credited with popularizing the modern portrayal of zombies in popular culture.
Dawn of the Dead is a 1978 zombie horror film written, directed, and edited by George A. Romero, and produced by Richard P. Rubinstein. An American-Italian international co-production, it is the second film in Romero's series of zombie films, and though it contains no characters or settings from the preceding film Night of the Living Dead (1968), it shows the larger-scale effects of a zombie apocalypse on society. In the film, a phenomenon of unidentified origin has caused the reanimation of the dead, who prey on human flesh. David Emge, Ken Foree, Scott Reiniger, and Gaylen Ross star as survivors of the outbreak who barricade themselves inside a suburban shopping mall amid mass hysteria.
George Andrew Romero Jr. was an American-Canadian film director, writer, editor and actor. His Night of the Living Dead series of films about a zombie apocalypse began with the original Night of the Living Dead (1968) and is considered a major contributor to the image of the zombie in modern culture. Other films in the series include Dawn of the Dead (1978) and Day of the Dead (1985).
Survival of the Dead is a 2009 horror film written and directed by George A. Romero and starring Alan van Sprang, Kenneth Welsh and Kathleen Munroe. It is the sixth entry in Romero's Night of the Living Dead series. The story follows a group of AWOL National Guardsmen who briefly appeared in Diary of the Dead.
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Night of the Living Dead is a 1990 American horror film directed by Tom Savini and starring Tony Todd and Patricia Tallman. It is a remake of George A. Romero's 1968 film of the same title; Romero rewrote the original 1968 screenplay he had originally co-authored with John A. Russo.
Living Dead, also informally known as Of The Dead is a blanket term for the loosely connected horror franchise that originated from the 1968 film Night of the Living Dead. The film, written by George A. Romero and John A. Russo, primarily focuses on a group of people gathering at a farmhouse to survive from an onslaught of zombies in rural Pennsylvania. It is known to have inspired the modern interpretation of zombies as reanimated human corpses that feast on the flesh and/or brains of the living.
Fido is a 2006 Canadian zombie comedy film directed by Andrew Currie and written by Robert Chomiak, Currie, and Dennis Heaton from an original story by Heaton. It was produced by Blake Corbet, Mary Anne Waterhouse, Trent Carlson and Kevin Eastwood of Anagram Pictures, and released in the United States by Lions Gate Entertainment.
Glass Eye Pix is an American independent film studio based in New York City, New York known primarily for producing horror films.
Diary of the Dead is a 2007 found footage horror film written and directed by George A. Romero. Although independently produced, it was distributed theatrically by The Weinstein Company and was released in cinemas on February 15, 2008 and on DVD by Dimension Extreme and Genius Products on May 20, 2008.
The zombie comedy, often called zom com or zomedy, is a film genre that aims to blend zombie horror motifs with slapstick comedy as well as morbid humor.
A zombie is a mythological undead corporeal revenant created through the reanimation of a corpse. In modern popular culture, zombies are most commonly found in horror genre works. The term comes from Haitian folklore, in which a zombie is a dead body reanimated through various methods, most commonly magical practices in religions like Vodou. Modern media depictions of the reanimation of the dead often do not involve magic but rather science fictional methods such as fungi, radiation, gases, diseases, plants, bacteria, viruses, etc.
Zombie apocalypse is a subgenre of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction in which society collapses due to overwhelming swarms of zombies. Typically only a few individuals or small bands of survivors are left living. In some versions, the reason the dead rise and attack humans is unknown, in others, a parasite or infection is the cause, framing events much like a plague. Some stories have every corpse rise, regardless of the cause of death, whereas others require exposure to the infection.
Night of the Living Dead is a zombie horror media franchise created by George A. Romero beginning with the 1968 film Night of the Living Dead, directed by Romero and cowritten with John A. Russo. The franchise predominantly centers on different groups of people attempting to survive during the outbreak and evolution of a zombie apocalypse. The latest installment of the series, Survival of the Dead, was released in 2009, with a sequel, Twilight of the Dead, in development. This would be the first film in the series not directed by George Romero, who died on July 16, 2017.
American Zombie is a 2007 American mockumentary horror film directed by Grace Lee, written by Rebecca Sonnenshine and Lee, and starring Lee and John Solomon as documentary filmmakers who investigate a fictional subculture of real-life zombies living in Los Angeles.
Ojuju is a 2014 Nigerian zombie thriller film, written and directed by C.J. Obasi. The film which has a zero-budget, stars Gabriel Afolayan, Omowunmi Dada, and Kelechi Udegbe. It premiered at the 4th Africa International Film Festival, where it won the award for "Best Nigerian Movie".
Shock Value: How a Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood, and Invented Modern Horror is a 2011 American book by Jason Zinoman. It traces the evolution of horror films as they began to focus on more reality-based, less campy subjects during the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Jason Zinoman is an American critic and author. He has written for The New York Times, Time Out New York, Vanity Fair, and Slate. In 2011, he published Shock Value, a non-fiction book about horror films. In 2017, he published Letterman: The Last Giant of Late Night, a biography of David Letterman.
Darling is a 2015 American psychological horror film written and directed by Mickey Keating. It stars Lauren Ashley Carter as a young woman who slowly goes insane after becoming a caretaker in a large New York City apartment. It also features Sean Young, Brian Morvant, Larry Fessenden, Helen Rogers, and John Speredakos. It premiered at the 2015 Fantastic Fest and released to limited theatres in the United States and VOD in April 2016.