The “relentless” 1968 movie that terrified John Carpenter: “It’s just tremendous”
“What scares me is what scares you. We’re all afraid of the same things,” John Carpenter once mused, and never a truer word was said.
In this sense, he must be terrified of a lot of things. Violence, threats, impending disasters… essentially anything that constitutes the state of the world right now. That’s a rather bleak way of looking at it, but it’s also true. Sometimes the biggest horror is not what can be cultivated on a screen, but what lurks around the corner in real life.
With all that being said, though, it admittedly perhaps isn’t the most realistic day-to-day activity when your brother is killed by a random man in a suit, and you’re left to your own devices, fighting off ghouls using Molotov cocktails. The saving grace of today’s world is that, thankfully, isn’t part of the equation. Or, at least, it isn’t yet.
That still obviously doesn’t take away from the sheer terror that can be felt when a horror film, however fictional, graces the screen. Of course, Carpenter knows that better than most, and it was in this vein that he was permanently scarred by the memory of one giant of the genre from 1968, which has evidently never left his psyche.
For that, George A Romero deserved every possible plaudit for Night of the Living Dead, with the film searing itself into the soul of every innocent being who ever took it in. “I saw this back in 1968,” Carpenter later explained. “Back in the day, it was a pretty terrifying movie. It’s not so much anymore, but that’s a groundbreaking movie. I went to see it with my girlfriend at the time, who was so freaked out at it.”
Indeed, he is right in the sense that horror effects from almost 60 years ago may not exactly pull the same punch anymore, but that doesn’t mean the feat of what they achieved at the time should be ignored. “I think it may have affected how I saw the film; maybe I’m a little biased. But it’s the idea of this relentless, relentless horde of things coming after you… The fact that a loved one can be turned into a zombie. It’s just tremendous,” Carpenter added.
And as much as the overall visual effect of the film may have been a little diminished by the modern day, its legacy never will be. You only have to look at the latest insertions into the horror canon to find that, as Carpenter knows himself all too well.
“I mean, look at the movies that have ripped it off,” he said. “Look at Walking Dead. I mean, come on.”
Becoming more animated by the second, you don’t need a rocket scientist to tell you just how much the fabric of Night of the Living Dead means to the director. Not only is it a massive influence on the genre as we know it today, but Carpenter perhaps wouldn’t have created his greatest, most terrifying masterpieces without it, either.
Ultimately, Night of the Living Dead may be the furthest thing imaginable from real life. But it was exhilarating. Pounding. Screeching. Pulsating. “Relentless,” as Carpenter wisely put it. Sometimes things don’t have to be realistic to be terrifying, because as soon as that fear has overwhelmed your whole body, it’s never letting go of that ever-tightening grip.
