#Why Night Of The Living Dead Was Mired In Controversy After Release

Made on a scrappy budget of $114,000, “Night of the Living Dead” still stands as one of the most successful independent films ever made. As The Take observes, it pushed the envelope of onscreen violence in ways that might seem quaint now, but that were shocking to audiences at the time. This is one reason why it was so controversial.

As the zombie apocalypse unfolded in and around a Pennsylvania farmhouse, a new level of gore opened up, with the taboo of cannibalism lingering in the background. This is nowhere more evident than the scene where zombies descend en masse on a truck, reaching for the remains of two young lovers who have burned to death inside. The zombies wander off with their pieces of cooked human meat and the camera shows them in close-up as they chow down on barbecued body parts.

The film also shows a zombified little girl named Karen devouring her father and killing her mother with a trowel. This was decades before the “Karen” meme entwined the name in everyday racial microaggressions, though racial matters go to the heart of what made “Night of the Living Dead” so controversial.

Romero’s film put a Black man in a house with white people and made him the hero, blowing up the butler stereotype and the incipient cliché of a horror film where the expendable Black character dies first. It showed the forceful protagonist, Ben (played by Duane Jones), punching white men and killing white zombies. Yet the movie’s racial dynamics go unspoken in the script. It’s all in the subtext.