“Night of the Living Dead” will suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder after watching it, the pioneering work of zombie movies”
嬬卝
2019-08-02 15:02
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01. What is a zombie?
Before introducing the movie, let’s briefly explain “how do zombies come from”.
Zombies are not the same species as the “zombies” that stick out their tongues slightly in oriental fantasy literature.
In European culture, the concept of “zombie” originated from a horror legend of Haitian voodoo.
Voodoo, also known as Voodoo, is a primitive religion of West African witchcraft mixed with Catholic teachings.
In West Africa now, you can still see the voodoo “fetish” market▼
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In voodoo, a zombie is a dead person resurrected by witchcraft.
They are not vicious, but they are miserable. They are cheap labor who are “squeezed” by wizards to work.
In 1932, the first zombie movie in history was born, called “Pale Zombie”.
In the film, Haitian voodoo wizards resurrect a large number of the dead and imprison them to work in a sugar factory.
No salary, no vacation, no five insurances and one housing fund…
They also tried to turn all the beautiful white women who came to “Haiti” into zombies▼
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So, in this movie, it’s voodoo, not zombies, that is really scary.
It was not until the movie “Night of the Living Dead” appeared, which gave zombies a new screen image, that the “zombie group” finally had its status improved▼
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02. Why are zombies in this image now?
Zombie movies are an important branch of horror movies.
Whether it’s “Train to Busan”, which exposes the darkness of human nature, or “Resident Evil”, where the heroine’s force is overwhelming.
Over the past few decades, no matter how the styles of these series of movies have changed, the “code of conduct” for zombies has always been the same.
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“Be a Good Zombie” Code of Conduct
The guys who moved slowly through the streets, chasing people who were biting and drooling at the corners of their mouths.
They will be defined as “zombies” instead of idiots in the movie, and they are inseparable from these “zombie codes of conduct” that have been implemented on the movie screen for more than 50 years.
They are the foundation of the story frame that makes up a zombie movie.
These important principles come from the director of “Night of the Living Dead” – George A. Romero, known as the father of modern horror movies▼
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In 1967, 27-year-old George A. Romero and his partner John made the film, which cost only $114,000.
After its release, it won the 1969 European film box office champion.
The film has been popular in the United States for nearly a decade and has been translated into more than 25 languages around the world.
When it was re-released in ten years, it won a global box office of nearly 30 million US dollars.
Up to 300 times the income!
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The story tells that the heroine Barbara and her brother went to visit their father’s grave, but they were accidentally attacked in the cemetery ▼
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A tall man with a pale face and strange behavior, with great strength, chases and bites two people for no reason ▼
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Zombies are pretty cool…
My brother tried desperately to hold the man in exchange for Barbara’s chance to escape. She ran all the way and hid in a house ▼
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When I entered the house, I found that not only the phone could not get through, but there was also a gnawed corpse on the second floor.
——This is obviously a house that has been attacked by zombies.
After several frights, the tense nerves of the heroine finally couldn’t hold up ▼
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As she breaks down, the camera turns indoors, where six humans are hiding.
A black male protagonist who is actively surviving ▼
(In the US in the 1960s, it was rare for an African-American to star in a white film)
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A young couple▼
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A family of three hiding in the basement.
Their youngest daughter seems to have just been bitten by a zombie. ▼
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In this closed space, people with different thoughts passively become a community of destiny related to life and death.
Under the premise of limited resources, they entered a state of “zero-sum game”.
Father is cowardly and timid, he hopes everyone will retreat to the basement to protect themselves ▼
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The couple and the black male protagonist are actively collecting intelligence in the house, trying to save themselves.
Who should I listen to?
——This group of people has serious differences ▼
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After fixing the TV, they saw the government and scientists’ inferences about the “living dead”:
1. Radiation from Venus probe, causing dead people to come back to life
2. Only hit the head of the zombies to destroy them▼
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So far, the four codes of conduct for zombies are basically completed.
Establish a basic world view and pave the way for character contradictions.
——The film entered the real “Asura Field” at this time.
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03. Where is the scary movie?
“Night of the Living Dead” is a black and white movie more than 50 years ago. In order to save money, Bosco chocolate syrup is used as blood plasma, and there are no special effects at all.
Why scare the audience like that?
——This is to praise the skill of the director and screenwriter.
First, from the perspective of visual effects, the director uses a close-up shot with a strange angle▼
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spooky close-up
Great adjustment of the light and dark contrast of the picture▼
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And the actor’s strong body language ▼
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With the drum beat of the background music, it creates an atmosphere of extreme despair and horror.
For the first time in this film, the zombies “divide and eat” the picture.
The zombies who retain the human face before their death, throw open their blood-stained mouths, and can’t wait to eat the stumps and arms of the same kind.
The rotten skin brought from the cemetery on his face showed a greedy and contented smile.
This picture has left a great psychological shadow on the audience who have come into contact with zombie movies for the first time…
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Second, from the perspective of psychological stimulation, the screenwriter uses the unique attributes of zombies to set an extremely unethical, but very logical dilemma in the script:
——The child who turned into a zombie, killed the parents who could not bear to resist with a blank face.
——The brother who once sacrificed his life to protect himself appeared in the zombie group. The dynamic picture of the zombie is terrifying to scare people to death . If you don’t shoot him, you will die. How should you choose?
Between such close relatives, they have to raise their knives against each other, and must personally separate the survival pressure of your death and my death.
It not only caused a visual impact to the audience, but also a profound psychological torture.
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Third, the horror of the zombie image is that it is infinitely close to humans: “They are us”
Since ancient Greece, artists from all over the world have reached a consensus: the human body is the most beautiful art.
Conversely, the mutilated and corrupted human body is the most terrifying art.
Therefore, compared with animal corpses, humans feel more visceral fear of mutilation and distortion of similar bodies.
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Such a terrifying monster did not come into existence out of thin air.
Romero, director of the movie “Night of the Living Dead”, once said in an interview:
All my zombie movies are kind of microcosms of their era.
The “zombie image” under his lens actually comes from the apocalyptic culture of the United States during the Cold War.
04. Proletarian Zombies and Doomsday Culture
As a resident guest of horror movies, why are there only noble blood princes and handsome werewolf princes in film and television literature, but there are very few “zombie princes”?
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Why vampires can be beautiful ancient nobles, werewolves have both strength and speed.
Only zombies, always looking like tattered and tattered people at the bottom of the proletariat?
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It’s not fair!
Because the image of zombies originated from the American prejudice and inner fear of the middle and lower proletariat at that time, especially the black people.
The commonality of zombies: ignorance and blindness, huge numbers, ragged clothes, hordes, and extremely aggressive.
——Just like the lower class people who have lost order.
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American society in the 1960s was a mess.
At the height of the Cold War, the United States was deeply involved in the Vietnam War, and domestic anti-war demonstrations spread all over the country.
Internally, there are class divisions and serious racial conflicts: the “Black Equal Rights Movement”, “Feminist Movement”, and “Hippie Movement” broke out.
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In the movie “Night of the Living Dead”, the extreme behavior of “zombie cannibalism” is considered to be an insinuation of the war atrocities and turmoil in the United States at that time.
The “apocalyptic scene” often depicted in zombie movies at that time was just a pander to the public views of the fragmented American society at that time.
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Film and history are always parallel lines that mirror each other and extend all the way forward.
In the ending of “Night of the Living Dead” in 1968, the black male protagonist “Ben” was the only survivor after the zombie siege.
The night passed, when he heard a team passing by outside and went out of the house to ask for help.
The black man who did not die in the hands of the zombies was shot to death by the white man on the opposite side.
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