Movies… For Free! Night of the Living Dead (1968)

Welcome to the first of a regular column showcasing classic movies that have fallen out of copyright and are available freely from the public domain (with streaming video!). Read the full article and watch the movie here!


Night of the Living Dead (1968).

Directed by George A. Romero.
Starring Duane Jones and Judith O’Dea.

First up is George A. Romero’s black and white indie classic, Night of the Living Dead – the film that revolutionised horror and launched the archetypal zombie into popular culture. Made on a budget of $114,000, the movie went on to gross over $30 million world-wide and spawned five sequels, including the masterful Dawn of the Dead (1978).

When the recently deceased begin to rise from the grave, a young woman, Barbra, narrowly escapes an attack and seeks refuge in an old farmhouse. There she discovers the film's hero, a black man named Ben (in a controversial casting decision for the time), a young couple and a family with a sick daughter. Together they must try to fend off the increasing hoard of flesh-eating monsters if they are to have any hope of surviving the night.


Embed courtesy of Internet Archive.

Click here to view all previous entries in our Movies... For Free! collection.

It's a Wrap - Oscars and Superheroes

It's a Wrap - a round up of recent happenings including Academy Awards, Watchmen, Marvel Entertainment, and potential Nolan replacements for Batman 3?

Britain had a glorious night at 81st Academy Awards as Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire brought home eight statuettes including the coveted Best Picture and Best Director awards. Kate Winslet was named Best Actress for The Reader while Sean Penn snatched the Best Actor gong from hot favourite Mickey Rourke for his performance in Milk.

Heath Ledger became only the second person ever to receive a posthumous award, being recognised in the Best Supporting Actor category for his unsettling portrayal of the psychotic Joker in The Dark Knight. Penelope Cruz was named Best Supporting Actress, and four films were the recipients of multiple Oscars – Slumdog Millionaire (8), The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (3), Milk (2), and The Dark Knight (2).

Do you agree with this year’s Best Picture winner? Why not vote in our poll?

Post-Oscars, this week’s online chatter has mainly geared towards the impending adaptation of Alan Moore’s seminal graphic novel, Watchmen, directed by Zack Snyder. With hype reaching boiling point on Watchmen and the success of his last effort, 300, Snyder is gaining a bit of a reputation as the go-to man for Hollywood takes on the comic-book genre, if rumours are to be believed. Batman-on-Film suggest that Warner Bros. will cast their eye his way should Christopher Nolan pass on a follow-up to the billion-dollar grossing Dark Knight. Warner have also announced a December 2010 release for Batman’s DC colleague, Green Lantern, with two-time Bond helmer Martin Campbell taking on directing duties.

On the subject of Watchmen, Joblo.com has a 3 minute preview available online.

In other costumed-crusader news, despite announcing $63 million profits in their latest quarterly reports, Marvel Entertainment’s casting difficulties continue as Jon Favreau confirms that Emily Blunt is out of Iron Man 2. It was thought that Blunt would be appearing as Black Widow in the sequel to last summer’s blockbuster hit. This snag comes on the back of Marvel’s on-off-on-off negotiations with Mickey Rourke to star as the villain, Crimson Dynamo.

One positive note for Marvel - Variety reports that Samuel L. Jackson will return as Nick Fury, signing a deal with an option on nine (!) future films, including The Avengers, Captain America, and Thor. Does this man ever sleep?

Finally, word that our friends across the Atlantic may have trouble catching Terry Gilliam’s latest, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, featuring Heath Ledger’s final performance. The film is yet to secure a distributor in the United States, but surely it’s only a matter of time before the movie gets picked up. A deal is already in place with Mandate International/Lionsgate for a U.K. release this summer.

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Classic Movies - Easy Rider (1969)

Easy Rider, 1969.

Directed by Dennis Hopper.
Starring Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Jack Nicholson.

SYNOPSIS:

Two young bikers complete a drug deal and use their earnings to finance a trip from Los Angeles to New Orleans in search of the American Dream. This epic journey takes them deep into the heart of the United States; a nation wrought with violence and prejudice during the collapse of the free-spirited society that was the 1960’s.

“A man went looking for America and couldn’t find it anywhere…” reads the tagline of Easy Rider, a low-budget production from two aspiring young film-makers in Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda, which managed to capture the culture and society of the late 60’s and served to define the genre of the ‘road movie’. Even now, almost forty years after it’s release, the film stands as a classic that successfully encapsulates the attitudes and ideals of a generation.

Despite the simple nature of the plot many themes run beneath the surface of the film, most notably the search for oneself and the ‘sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll’ attitude of the hippie movement. It also touches on the meaning of life – focussing on God, death, and spirituality – and the clash between society and youth culture, all projected through an image of a motorbike emblazoned with the Stars and Stripes. The dark and downbeat tone of the film helps to illustrate the underlying social tension of the decade and the collapse of the idealistic 60’s.

Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Terry Southern wrote the film, with 31-year old Hopper making his directorial debut for which he received the Best Film by a New Director award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1969. Fonda (also producing) stars with Hopper as the two anti-heroes of the piece, Billy and Wyatt. The film is also notable for a breakthrough performance by Jack Nicholson as lawyer George Hanson, a role which earned him the first of many Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations.

The film was produced for under $400,000 and was extremely successful at the box-office, breaking in a fresh wave of independent films known as ‘New Hollywood’, much like Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs would do 25 years later. It struck a chord with the alternative youth culture market on which the movie was based, with a pulsating rock ‘n’ roll soundtrack the likes of which had never been attached to film. Easy Rider would also break with many other Hollywood traditions, employing jump-cuts and flash forward transitions, uneven pacing and an improvisational style of acting and dialogue that includes in particular some of Jack Nicholson’s most memorable work.

Viewing the film it is not difficult to see why the audience took to it so well. At the height of the Vietnam War, and with a new decade about to begin, the film epitomises youth culture with many viewers relating to the characters and their development through-out the movie. The sight of Peter Fonda as Captain America sitting on his gleaming motorcycle with the Stars & Stripes petrol tank as he throws his watch to the dirt – symbolising his freedom and rejection of modern social constraints – to the sound of Steppenwolf’s Born To Be Wild, is a scenario with which many of the audience could emphasise.

To this day, Easy Rider remains a landmark film in cinema history. It opened the door to Hollywood for many young filmmakers tired of the formulistic approach of Hollywood towards film production, and helped to create the wide-open approach that would lead to the production of many classic works during the 1970’s. It is a beautifully shot piece of cinema and, although much of the credit is given to Dennis Hopper, it is impossible to ignore the input of Fonda, Nicholson, Terry Southern and Director of Photography Laszlo Kovacs, who all contribute immensely to the piece. I would thoroughly recommend this to any fan of cinema, and the documentary that accompanies the movie on DVD, Shaking the Cage, highlights a ‘making-of’ story that may just match the drama of the film’s closing moments.

Gary Collinson

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Last updated 3rd March 2011.