The Cat's Meow: Women in the Horror Genre

The Cat’s Meow:
The Evolution of the Woman in the Horror Film

The female role is an ever changing archetype in the horror genre. The early days of the horror film portrayed women as merely in the victim’s role succumbing to the wills of the monster/villain. The female victim did not put up much of a struggle against the male villain. Females usually were usually portrayed with a certain sex appeal as the male lurked in the dark with a voyeuristic and sadistic mindset. Over the years, the female’s role in the horror film would evolve from the victim into the hero. This evolution would also be a result from the changes in attitude toward women over the years.
Tod Browning’s Dracula (1931) would be an early film to depict the female as the victim. Dracula is the story of Count Dracula, played by Bela Lugosi, and his obsession over the virginal Mina Harker, played by Helen Chandler, in his attempt at transforming her into a vampire allowing having a companion for all eternity. The film would soon be followed by other horror
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films that portrayed the damsel in distress where the female is viewed as a more subservient character to the male villain.
A more modern film would also incorporate the female victim. In 2000, Mary Harron released, American Psycho, a film set in the world of the Wall Street Yuppie, misogyny, and the culture of excess of the eighties. The women portrayed in the film come across with a kind of naivety and are viewed as sexual objects. The main character in the film: Patrick Bateman, portrayed by Christian Bale, fantasizes about and murders women. The women in his eyes are just objects to him along with everything else in his life. The Bateman character is a good example of the misogynist. He displays a hostile sexist viewpoint of women which is, “dominance-oriented paternalism, derogatory beliefs about women, and heterosexual hostility.” (Lips 18) A perfect scene to reinforce this notion is when Bateman lures two women back to his apartment to engage in a ménage a trois. During the threesome, Bateman does not pay any attention to the women instead looks directly into a mirror beside the bed and flexes his muscles in a clear display of male dominance. He soon gets underneath the covers, not for any tenderness, but starts to kill the women. One woman escapes, briefly, reinforcing the woman victim running from the male killer. Bateman, like in so many horror films before, eventually catches up to her by dropping a running chainsaw on top of her. The scene teased the idea of the female getting away from the misogynist signaling that the era of the male dominated world would soon be coming to an end.

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The role of the woman victim into hero actually started to change back in the seventies and eighties with the advent of the “final girl” or the “last girl alive to confront the killer.” (Clover 260) These girls were usually the characters that did not partake in any of the sex, drugs, and are viewed as the virginal girl. The final girl is present in such iconic horror films as: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th, Halloween, and A Nightmare on Elm Street. She is usually the one that’s left to tell the tale. The final girl, in a social economic context, is the female rising up against the male furthering the feminist movement.
The situation that the final girl finds herself in toward the end of each respective film reinforces that, “many of the women’s and men’s habits of thought and behavior act to perpetuate the power difference between them.” (Lips 486) In Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), the character Nancy, played by Heather Langenkamp, gets the idea of outsmarting Freddy Krueger, played by Robert Englund, by pulling him out from the nightmare world he created to the world that Nancy lives in. Nancy is the last of her friends to survive and she knows that she must face Freddy in his world and defeat him in hers much like the mindset of the modern woman: going into the male arena only to defeat him on her terms. Freddy’s behavior enhances his power over all of the kids, especially the girls, in the film. One of the earliest scenes in the film shows Tina, portrayed by Amanda Wyss, being slowly stalked by Freddy only to wake up before he can get to her. A good deal of time is spent in the beginning of the film focused on Tina demonstrating the power difference between the male killer’s dominance over his female victim.
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Clive Barker offered a different viewpoint for how, “women’s and men’s habits of thought and behavior act to perpetuate the power difference between them” (Lips 486) with 1987’s Hellraiser which told the story of a mysterious box that took anyone who opened it into a world of pain and suffering at the hands of the Pinhead, his Cenobites, and their sado-masochistic world. Barker’s viewpoint was that women could use their sexuality in an evil way and use the sexual behavior of men against them. The story centers on a not so typical family: Larry and Kirsty along with Kirsty’s step mom Julia. Julia, in the midst of moving into their new home, accidentally cuts herself on a nail. The blood drips down through the floorboards onto the skeletal remains of Frank, a former lover of Julia, and who was running away from Pinhead and the Cenobites. Julia finds out that Frank needs more blood to fully regenerate into his former self and the only way that it could happen is that Julia lures strange men to their death.
Hellraiser could be construed as an extension of the kind of sexual liberation of the sixties and seventies along with the sexual freedom that was happening in the eighties. The Cenobites lead by Pinhead also represent a sort of alternative lifestyle that was starting to pick up in the eighties in the form of sado-masochism (sado referring to the Marquis de Sade who used to inflict pain upon his women claiming his dominance of the submissive women in a pseudo-sexual release). The character Kirsty, played by Ashley Laurance, stumbles upon Julia played by Clare Higgins, and Frank’s, played by Dean Chapman, plan. Kirsty not only has to deal with Julia and Frank, but with the leader of the Cenobites: Pinhead, played by Doug Bradley, who is dressed in leather, equates pain and suffering with pleasure. Pinhead is the
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modern Marquis de Sade. Kirsty also becomes the hero in the film by stopping, not only Frank and Julia, but Pinhead and the Cenobites. She continues to be the hero in some of the subsequent sequels that are released in the next several years.
A controversial issue in the U.S. is whether or not females should be able to fight alongside males in the military. The arguments ranged from females not being strong enough to they would be a distraction sexually. Paul W. S. Anderson’s Resident Evil (2002) brought into light those questions. The film was not only a film about the evils of conglomerates, but also delved into females in high position in the military. The film centered on the Umbrella Corporation and Alice, played by Mia Jovovich, a paramilitary guard of the corporation. We are introduced to Alice after some sort of biological attack on the corporation ends with the killing of all the employees by the company’s defense mechanism. Alice is also caught up and is gassed by the defense mechanism. After waking up, Alice comes in contact with a rescue team which is sent to take restart the defense mechanism, but soon is battling the undead employees. Alice soon regains memory of who she really is and what her station within the company. We then learn that Alice was working with a mole within the company to bring into light the evils of the corporation.
Beside the military aspect of the film has to do with one of the other plot points which have to do with the character: Spence played by James Purefoy. Spence and Alice are the main guards of the Umbrella Corporation. They are also in a sham marriage to cover their true role in the corporation. This plot point conveys a level of change within society that saw a shift in
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the conventional wisdom within the construct of marriage and the notion that whether or not marriage is still the institution that it was once viewed as. It also comes into question whether or not that the modern woman views marriage in the same light as women forty or fifty years ago. Both characters suffer amnesia from being attacked by the corporation’s defense mechanism and as the film moved forward they started having flashbacks with one being the day of their marriage. The blurred image shows the “happy” couple, but the irony of the scene is that the audience knows that this is a sham marriage.
As the film goes on, Alice becomes aware of who she really is and becomes the hero. Alice turns back into the paramilitary soldier leading the survivors on an escape from the hell they are living. She is seen as an equal in the eyes of her military brethren when the leader of the rescue team asks her, “I need your report soldier.”
Another small aspect of Resident Evil is in the collective of some of the minor characters in the film that shows a pro-woman aspect. In the beginning of the film, an array of positions are filled by women. One of the executives, a leader of the science division, and a couple of the military personnel are played by women. They are viewed as strong independent women with the example of the female scientist. She is being asked out on a date by one of her male co-workers, but tells him she is busy rejecting the female stereotype in the horror film that would suggest she would accept the male’s advances.
The female hero would take an interesting turn showing ambivalence in whether or not a female could be considered a hero by also being the killer. Mitchell Lichtenstein’s Teeth
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(2007) took on a new subject in the horror genre by portraying a virtuous teen as both heroine and killer. Teeth tells the story of Dawn O’Keefe, played by Jess Wexler, as a teen as the head of an abstinence movement at her high school and the surrounding area where she lives. She preaches purity. She is a role model to all the young girls who idolize her. She also meets a boy: Tobey played by Hale Appleman who falls in love with Dawn. She considers Tobey as her soul mate and views him as her prince coming in on his white horse. Her views soon change as they are at a secluded area when Tobey forces himself onto Dawn when Tobey is killed by an unlikely killer: Dawn’s vagina. Dawn turns out, to have a condition known as Vagina Dentata or vagina with teeth. Teeth is essentially a rape-survival film. All the victims in the film view Dawn as just a sexual object and are killed by because of their sexual pressure on Dawn. She learns that the only way she can control the “teeth” is if she feels that it’s the right time and believe that the boy truly loves her.
“Because stereotypic views of females and males are dynamic and depend on social context, sex stereotypes, and ideals of femininity and masculinity vary somewhat across social/cultural groups and historical periods.” (Lips 5) These stereotypes are on display here because Dawn is portrayed as a virtuous woman and the males are portrayed as sex hungry. There are a few scenes in the film that displays Dawn’s needing to know the truth about her “condition.” One scene involves her holding her sex-ed book underwater to remove a sticker covering a picture of the vagina starting to bring down the wall of her naivety when it comes to sex. She then starts to do some research into her vagina dentata and learns that she is not the
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first person that has the “condition.” She learns that her vaginal dentate is a cultural phenomena and that the stories about her “condition” have been passed down generation by generation by different cultures.
The scene with the gynecologist portrays a laissez faire take on rape. The dialogue toward the end of the scene reflect the mindset of the rapist. The gynecologist who is now using his hand to rape Dawn is calmly saying, “Relax” to Dawn. Rapists were known for telling their rape victims to relax. Again, Dawn uses her “condition” to attack the gynecologist.
Dawn’s vagina dentata could be viewed as the chaste women. The last scene in the film shows Dawn being picked up by a much older man. There are two different looks on both of their faces. The older man has a look of the typical dirty old man knowing what he wants to do with her, but Dawn looks back at him with a look signaling what she is going to do to him. This scene portrays the kind of new woman defeating the old male way of thinking.
The evolution of the female role in the horror films has grown over the last 70 years. Women aren’t viewed as the “damsel in distress” anymore and the female is now viewed as equal as the male in the hero role. The formula in the horror film portrays the dominance of the killer over the submissive female victim, but as women struggled and achieved equality this formula changed also. The horror film no longer could continue using women only as victims for the killer’s sadism. The “final girl” has changed over the years also. She is not just the “final girl” as the byproduct of a thinned out cast anymore. The “final girl” ends up being the strongest character of the horror film.

Horror on the Run: The Devil's Rejects

A film that I had the joy of revisiting is Rob Zombie's brilliant The Devil's Rejects (2005). The film has not disappointed me one bit, instead, has gotten better with each viewing over the last four years. Zombie, in my opinion, is the best director to come along in the horror/suspense genre in the last twenty years. I will not shy away from putting him up there with the likes of Romero, Raimi, Roth, Barker, and Cronenberg. TDR, for me, is the perfect blend of story telling with the suspense, horror, and terror. The film, visually, has an uniquely beautiful aspect without turning into a caricature.
The Devil's Rejects is Rob Zombie's follow-up to his brilliant 2003 House of a 1000 Corpses which cemented his place as the next best thing in horror. TDR built on the cult success of House and took us to an even higher place in Zombie's sadistic director's mind. What makes the film a unique experience is the dialogue that has such a biting vitriolic overtone, but given the characters of the film makes perfect sense. Mind you, these are not your parent's sociopathic clan.
The first half-hour of the film is one of the most intense that I have ever experience in a film. Most films that I have seen over the last few years has lacked this in the entire duration of the respected films. TDR opens up, timewise, where House left off. We get an open narrative, similiar to Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), about the discovery of the Firefly family's deeds. The film then moves to the police pulling up to the house where they hope to catch the Firefly family offguard. The two central characters escape and that's where the story takes off from there. We get a beautiful montage set to The Allman Brothers Midnight Rider.
We then get introduced by some secondary characters and a familiar character in Captain Spaulding played by Sid Haig. The secondary characters are played by a who's who in B-movies which is ironic considering that Zombie admits that he did not cast the film with these actors pedigree. Some of the actors appearing are: Ken Foree, Michael Berryman, Geoffery Lewis, Kate Norby, and P.J. Soles to name a few.
What made this TDR special was that Zombie turned the Firefly clan from antagonists in House to protagonist in TDR. In fact, the Fireflys start the film as antagonist, but we get a sense of empathy for the Firefly clan toward the end of the film. The audience has some sympathy and we even root for these people to overcome their "situation." As in the beginning of the film, we are given a great end set to the song Free Bird by Lynyrd Skynyrd. The Devil's Rejects is a film that I will watch over and over for a very long time and think about for a very long time.

Are Remakes Out of Control? Part One

After watching the trailer for Lussier's My Bloody Valentine, I am convinced that there are just too many remakes of horror films coming out. It's not the fact that I have only found a few horror remakes that have worked in the last few years i.e. Nispel's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Aja's The Hills Have Eyes, or Zombie's Halloween, but it's the fact that studios are trying to remake anything that had any significance in original.
I'm holding out hope that Nispel's Friday the 13th remake is going to blow my mind, but after seeing such guilty classics of mine such as, April Fool's Day, Hellraiser, The Brood, and yes, Evil Dead being remade or soon to be released, I'm not holding my breath. What does it take for studios to pull out of the remake sect of the genre? Have they lost all sense of creativity or are they completely out of ideas.
One director, Rob Zombie, has at least done something that has moved away from the predictable horror film, but at the same time, has kept sacred why people love horror films. Zombie's films have a throwback ilk to them reminding audiences of horror directing icons such as Craven, Cronenberg, Carpenter, and Romero. His first two films: House of a 1000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects were successful, in part to a sort of homage to horror films of the seventies and eighties like Craven's The Last House on the Left and Cunningham's Friday the 13th.
One film, in particular, has changed my mind over the last few years and should be considered separate from the original and that is Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead. The only aspect that is tied to the original is that most of the film takes place in a shopping mall. Romero's film was a social commentary on materialism where as Snyder's film was a social commentary on human interaction. I was completely disappointed in the film because I was such a huge fan of the original, but I felt there was a lack of substance to the film. I have changed my mind on both fronts. I'll also add that Snyder's film isn't the first remake that has gone in a completely different direction than the original: Carpenter's The Thing. Carpenter took the short story the orginal and his film was adapted from and made it his own. Another film worth mentioning is the countless remakes of Invasion of the Body Snatchers which is not very hard to adapt to the times it's filmed in.
Coming Soon: Part Two

Teeth

I'm not sure why I've decided to do my first entry on Teeth after this long layoff, but it's a film that is not too popular where I work whether with coworkers or customers. I will admit that I was hesitant when I heard about the premise of the film, but the film also intrigued me and I have had luck in the past with going out on a limb with a few films i.e. Jonathan's Black Sheep, Andrew Currie's Fido, and Stephen Bradley's Boy Eats Girl. There's something about parody and the horror genre that is a seemingly great fit. Sure, there's always going to be the serious horror film like Moreau/Palaud's Ils a.k.a. Them, but after years of watching a maniac in a hockey mask or rotting corpses feed on a living person there seem to be a demand for a new type of horror film. Some can say that the horror parody can be traced to the late seventies with John De Bello's auteur Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. Hell, the sequel starred of all people, George Clooney.
Today, parody can be attributed to Edgar Wright's masterpiece, Shaun of the Dead. It was not only a parody on the zombie genre that Romero started, but also a parody on the British reserve. Shaun was an instant cult classic and a retail phenomena. The film ushered in a new subgenre of horror film: the horror parody. The great thing about this new type of genre was that filmakers had loads of material to work from. Another film that shall not be overlooked is Scott Glosserman's Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon which was a genius film that drew on the slasher films of the eighties. BtM answered those questions we asked ourselves about Friday the 13th.
There are so many aspects about Mitchell Lichtenstein's Teeth that is so brilliant. One, the film, plays on such teen dramas like The Hills, Laguna Beach, and DeGrassi Junior High. Here's a brief synopsis of Teeth: Dawn is a teenager preaching teen chaste and is a rock star to young girls who believe in saving themselves until marriage. Dawn falls for the new boy in town who happens to seduce Dawn, but Dawn fights back in an unusual way. It's this defense mechanism that one has not seen in the horror genre. The film does draw a little bit of inspiration from Michael Lehmann's Heathers. Teeth does satire peer pressure in the teen genre much like the afternoon specials used to do in the eighties (by the way, I'm still waiting for a new afternoon special to come out on ABC).
The film does have a sense of irony that the film plays out like an afternoon school special. There is not a lull in the film at all. After the first "shocking" scene, then the film does take a dark turn and all bets are off. What is great about the character, Dawn, is that the actress: Jess Weixler has the "girl next door" kind of innocence to her. Her naivity showed in her performance as the audience lives through her. We don't know what is exactly going on as her character doesn't know what is exactly wrong with her. It's this kind of symbiotic character/audience relationship that made this film such a treat to watch.
The last scene shall remain a secret for those who have not had a pleasure of watching this film, but I will say that it was one of the most shocking and hysterical endings I had ever witnessed in a film. I'm including the ending to Neil Jordan's The Crying Game. I'm hoping that some of you who has scene this film before will watch it again with a different set of eyes or those who has not scene the film will take a chance on the film. I think Teeth is definitely in my top ten of 08'.

The Blog is Back!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hello everyone!!!!!!!!!! I'm sorry about the lag in my film blog. It won't happen again. I am going to try something different. I'm hoping to generate some interaction with the few readers I have on here. I'm going to post a link to this blog on my facebook and hopefully attract some new readers. I'm hoping that a few will read. What is the interaction you talk about Tobias? I want to know what you would like to read about filmwise. Don't get me wrong, I'm still going to write about certain films I view, but I'd like to know what sort of topics you'd like me covering. I'm going to let you decide what you'd like to read in the next blog. Just send me an email to: tobias_lane@hotmail.com. I'm looking forward in hearing back from all of you.
Sincerely,
Tobias

Living in a World of Excess: The Living Dead Quadrology of George A. Romero

Part Two: Dawn of the Dead

Dawn of the Dead, which was made in 1978, picked up where Night left off: a world thrown into chaos at the hands of the living dead. Instead of dealing with issues such as racism and a crumbling family unit, Romero has, instead, used gentrification, consumerism with a hint of morality as his main subtext. Consumerism has a more prominent role in this film, but Romero used gentrification as his set up of the film.

Dawn follows the plight of four people on the run from the carnivorous horde plaguing the city of Philadelphia. There are two couples here: Stephen, a helicopter pilot for WGON, and Fran, a producer for WGON. They are lovers who were planning to start a life together. The other two are Peter and Roger who worked as SWAT for the city. Dawn opens with a television studio, you guessed it, as chaotic as what is going on outside of the studio. They are filming a “talk show” trying to figure out what is happening and how to stop it. What is interesting is that morality of the situation seemed to be the hot button issue and why the disaster had spun out of control. One can parallel this to modern day media where morality seems to be the justification to why the world is where it is today. Another aspect in the opening scene that also parallels today’s media is confusion that arises over a catastrophic event. One example of confusion in today’s media is 9/11 and the events following. It’s not to say that Romero was foreshadowing how today’s media handles situations in the world and it’s events. Like Night and Dawn who tries to explain the phenomena with explanations of voodoo to an outer space virus whereas today’s media tries to put into context of world conflicts as everything from opposition to western freedom to the gay lifestyle. One fine example of this choice in morality comes from the station manager who has kept up an old list of stations that serve people trying to seek shelter from the living dead even though some of the stations have closed for whatever reason. Fran tells the board operator to put up an updated list.

Here is the dialogue between the two:
Fran: Are you willing to murder people by sending them to places that have closed down.
Mr. Berman: Every minute that list isn’t up, people won’t watch us, they’ll tune out.
Mr. Berman has the mindset that the station is still going for ratings and not that it is just an emergency broadcast station. This isn’t too far from today’s media which has the mindset that they are all about the ratings and not what they are there for.
We then go into the second scene where the SWAT is stationed around a public housing high-rise waiting out a standoff between leaders of the housing high-rise and the negotiators. The whole scene in the apartment building is a metaphor for gentrification at that time. The military acting as the housing authority pushing its residence into central areas of the city much like it was back in the late seventies and early eighties. In one scene, there was an explanation for why the tenants kept its dead in the basement.

“They still believe there’s a respect in dying,” says Peter. The dying could be construed as the gentrification of all major U.S. cities at the time where the lower income families were being forced into the cities while the upper class were moving away from the cities.
After awhile, the four land on the roof of an indoor mall. It was the late seventies and the indoor mall was a new concept in the lives of consumers. The mall would be a key character in DOTD. For the rest of the film, all characters would represent an aspect of the consumer culture of America.

“What are they doing? Why do they come here?” Fran asks Steven.
“Some kind of instinct, a memory. What they used to do. This was an important place in their lives.”

Steven’s line invokes a subtext that is prevalent in the rest of the film; that the zombies are representatives of the consumer collective. Romero says on the commentary found on the theatrical cut of the film that, “It is a satire on consumerism. We want all this stuff. It isn’t enough and somebody wants it too.”

Tom Savini, who was the head make-up artist, stuntman, and plays Blades at the end, reinforces Romero’s comment about the consumers and how the commentary still holds up to the present, “go to a shopping mall today and there are zombies walking around lulled by the muzak into shopping.”

Even of the close-ups on the zombies, you see their wide-eyes staring ahead turning slowly trudgingly toward the hall of shops ahead. There is even a hare chrisna zombie that subconsciously reflect a sort of religious rite of being in the mall.

Living in a World of Excess: The Living Dead Quadrology of George A. Romero

George A. Romero’s most identifiable work came during a time when America was being reshaped. Romero’s four films showed an underlying subtext of: capitalism, economical, gentrification, and geopolitical points of view. Romero’s living dead was not only the medium for which he used to underscore this ideal, but his living dead was also his metaphor for explaining his rational in each of his four films.

Night of the Living Dead, which came out in 1968, was the first film in which Romero showed a world thrown into chaos. This point never more clear from the first scenes of the film in which we see a car driving up on a gravel road heading toward a cemetery. We are introduced to Johnny and Barbara, brother and sister, who have come to lay flowers at their father’s grave. As Barbara prays, Johnny begins to tell a story about the times that they used to come up here when they were children. Johnny goes on to tell Barbara how he used to scare her. It is the classic story of an older sibling scaring his younger sibling.

"They are coming to get you Barbara," Johnny says to Barbara, who is soon attacked by a zombie. Johnny tries to stop the zombie only to come up short in that fight. Barbara runs away as fast as she can. Romero once said of his quadrology that the zombies represent, "the new society eating the old society." Barbara's running represents her running away from her old world. Barbara, herself, represented the classic 50's woman.

Barbara finds a farmhouse, a symbol of rural America and a part of the American dream, and barricades herself inside. Later, she runs into Ben. At this point, Barbara is catatonic; a sort of silence that represents a segue into what the world is slowly evolving into. Ben, an African-American, soon takes over and boards up the house. Night represented something that was unheard of in the film industry at the time and that was having an African-American actor playing the lead in a film. Night was released after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The fact that an African-American played the lead also reinforces Romero’s ideology of the “new society eating the old society.”

As the film goes on, we are introduced to five new characters: Tom and Judy, a young twenty-some couple, and Harry, Helen Cooper and their daughter Karen, who has been bitten by a zombie. Harry does represent the “old society” in being a racist. Harry wants to do things his way and sees Ben as a threat. Harry and Helen Cooper represents the ideal of a nuclear family, but as the film goes on, we are made aware that their marriage has already fallen apart. “We may not like living together, but dying together isn’t going to help things,” says Helen Cooper. We are made aware that they may have only stayed married for the sake of their daughter, which was common among couples back in those days.

The characters: Tom and Judy represent another kind of couple and that is the young unmarried lovers. They act as a kind of moderator between Ben and Harry who engage in a struggle for control of the house and the fate of the people inside. Tom is the voice of reason between the two. Night, among other things, is a study of human relationships. We are given three sets of couples who represent the spectrum of human dependency. I mentioned that Harry and Helen depend on each other to raise their daughter. Tom and Judy, the young lovers who depend on each other for support. Barbara who relies on Ben for protection and Ben relies on Barbara for having someone to protect.

The fighting inside represent a microcosm of what was going on in the United States at the time. Like I mentioned before, the zombies represent a sort of change in the social structure of America, while inside Ben and Harry fight to establish their own identity of how things should be run.

The people inside eventually come to the agreement of getting out of the farmhouse. The plan fails when Tom and Judy are killed. We are shown a shot of the zombies, one by one, feeding on a little bit of the young couple. A countenance of the old taking back some of the new society.

Ben staggers back to the house weaving through a hoard of zombies. The conflict between him and Harry escalates into Ben shooting Harry which is his own way of bringing in a new society. The zombies at this point have started to overrun this new society that the people inside turning into. Harry manages to find his way into the cellar where he wanted to be in the first place and collapses on the floor. Helen finds her way down to the cellar only to find her daughter feasting on daddy. Helen soon falls victim to her daughter as well. The killing of the parents at the hands of their daughter represents the beginning of a time where kids were becoming more independent and less reliant on their parents.

The zombies have now gotten inside. Barbara, breaking out of her state, tries to hold back the group. She, in turn, breaking out of her 50’s role and asserting herself. We now have Johnny coming back to get her sister. The zombies run off with Barbara essentially destroying the ideal women of the 50’s.

At the end of the film, we are shown images of a posse that is formed for hunting down the zombies. We are shown bloodhounds and their handlers hunting down these zombies. It is an image that was too often shown during the civil rights movement. Romero said that he did not intend for this analogy. The final shot we are given is Ben coming out from the cellar and being shot right in the head mistakenly for a zombie. We are then shown a number of stills depicting the posse posing with the bodies of the dead.

Night is a film that delves into issues that were prevalent when the film came out. The film holds up today as a masterpiece and the issues of that time still hold water to this day.
Next: Dawn of the Dead: A film that deals with issues of gentrification, and consumerism.