31 Days of Horror Movies: Night of the Living Dead

We arrive at day 4 of our horror film fest with the original....

Night of the Living Dead

There have been remakes, and a plethora of similar films that have followed, but the grand-daddy of zombie movies is without equal. Not even the current AMC television series The Walking Dead, with its often-rambling plot line, comes close. The 1968 classic seems a tad quaint by today's gory standards, but it still holds-up well.

Barbra (played with doe-eyed charm by Judith O'Dea) is visiting a cemetery with her brother, when a man shuffles into the frame. Barbra is kind of freaked-out by the odd man, and her brother turns her fear into a joke. Until the man kills him. And starts eating him. Barbra runs away in terror, finding a farmhouse and hiding there along with a father, mother and daughter, a young couple, and a man named Ben (played believably by Duane Jones). Here our protagonists make their stand.

The tension throughout Night of the Living Dead is palpable. This is no doubt helped by the direction of George Romero, the acting from most involved and, probably, the film's low-budget, as it adds a certain sense of gritty realism to the proceedings. It all works to make an effective, nerve-wracking time. I remember watching it as a teenager one night, the lights off, when suddenly there was a knock at the front door.

I screamed like a girl.

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Yesterday's Restaurants

The local newspaper has a feature from one of Champaign-Urbana's most legendary restaurateur's, John Katsinas, on what his favorite area restaurants were that have now since closed (or will soon be closing). It's a nice little read, and has made me stop and think about the restaurants that have come and gone that have left an indelible (and edible) impression on me throughout the years. Here we go....

To the beat of his own Drum

Tonight I learned that Kevin Drum has died. He passed away on Friday, March 7th, from Multiple Myeloma (the same illness that took my uncle Paul several years ago). Drum's diagnosis came in 2014, and he talked about it openly on his blog , up to and including just a few days before his death. I knew of Kevin Drum through his blogging. During the early aughts, when I started to become more politically aware and involved, I began reading certain online musings by folks -- Andrew Sullivan and, on a local level, IlliniPundit, to name a couple. Drum's blog at that time was Calpundit . Eventually, he began blogging at Mother Jones . When they parted ways, he started what would be his final online venture. So, yeah, I've been reading Kevin's musings for over twenty years.

Watching The Hours

A Twitter friend named Paula has asked for folks to submit ideas for a blog-a-thon about what we think will be the classic films of the future. In other words, what relatively recent movies (namely, from the 21st century), do we think will be considered classics in the decades to come, possibly airing on such venerable stations as Turner Classic Movies ? While a number of films come to mind for such a category, one in particular stood out from the rest, and thus is my entry for Paula's blog-a-thon.

Left to my own devices

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