ShareThisThe ad in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette carried this pledge: "If 'Night of the Living Dead' frightens you to death, you are covered for ... $50,000."In smaller type below was this caveat: "Insurance coverage valid in event of heart attack only during performances October 2 thru 8, 1968. Insurance company reserves the right to request any patron to submit to medical examination prior to viewing 'Night of the Living Dead.' "Brilliant gimmick, especially since this was before a movie could be sold on the power of George A. Romero's name. In the intervening 40 years, he has become the godfather of ghouls (as the zombies were originally called), the director-writer who put Pittsburgh on the cinematic map and a filmmaker who spawned countless imitators, parodists and acolytes.In honor of the 40th anniversary of the release of "Night of the Living Dead," the movie will be shown Halloween night in Evans City, Pa., at a park less than a mile from the cemetery famously featured in the movie.A 15- by-20-foot screen will be erected in EDCO Park and the movie will be digitally projected. "It will be theater quality, not just a sheet on the front of the building," although that carries its own cachet, organizer Gary Streiner joked this week.Admission is $8. Costumes are welcome, and DVDs and photos will be available for sale, but moviegoers can bring items for autographs.Romero is busy making a sequel to "Diary of the Dead" and cannot attend. But expected are: producer Russ Streiner, who also played Johnny and uttered the famous line, "They're coming to get you, Barbara"; Gary Streiner, his brother, a sound engineer on the '68 movie whose later credits included producing "Comedian," the Jerry Seinfeld documentary; John Russo, the co-writer who took a tire iron to the head onscreen; S. William Hinzman, the first ghoul to appear; George Kosana, who played the sheriff; and Ella Mae Smith, a zombie who hailed from Evans City.The movie will be the centerpiece of a fledgling event, The Living Dead Festival 2008, which organizers hope will become a regular tourist draw, an economic booster and a must-see stop for zombie zealots. See www.thelivingdeadfest.com for details."I'm looking toward the 45th, and my mission, by the 50th, is to cause the most major traffic jam in Evans City," Gary Streiner joked.The festival had its roots in the sort of small-town encounter that seems straight out of Mayberry. Rick Reifenstein Sr., who was a film editor at WRS Motion Picture Lab in Crafton, Pa., when the movie was being shot, recognized Gary Streiner at a barbershop in Evans City where both men now live.Reifenstein recalls of the late 1960s, "Every day they would come in (to WRS) and view the dailies, and I would see the scenes as they were shot." A knot of people would gather to watch the farmhouse under siege from folks who were dead and all messed up.Reifenstein is on the board of the Evans City Historical Society, and he suggested to Streiner that they commemorate the 40th anniversary of the release. Now retired from Marburger Dairy, Reifenstein regularly squires around strangers, from Pennsylvania or Canada or even England, looking for locations from the film.Like Streiner, he envisions this first fest being the start of something bigger and beneficial to Evans City residents and merchants. They hope, for instance, that it can lead to repairing and restoring the chapel at Evans City Cemetery, which can be seen when Johnny and Barbara arrive to lay a wreath at their father's grave.An event in Evans City or Pittsburgh is a natural, considering that the principals involved in "Night of the Living Dead" have been making appearances around the world. Earlier this month, at the International Film Festival of Catalonia in Sitges, Spain, hundreds of people dressed as zombies celebrated the big 4-0 of the "Dead."The Web site www.cinemasitges.com reported that Hinzman walked the streets "impeccably made up, with blackened teeth, a gray face and a black suit" that appeared new but boasted spider webs, rips and split seams.It's impossible to underestimate the appeal of the movie or of Romero, who signed the arm of a fan who then planned to turn that into a tattoo. Another "Dead" devotee has the poster tattooed on his arm, Gary Streiner said.The Guardian in London included "Night of the Living Dead" on its 2007 list of "1,000 films to see before you die." It asked experts to weigh the million-plus movies ever made and pick "those that best sum up the dazzling achievement and variety of the movies."Of the monster masterpiece it wrote: "The civil-rights movement, McCarthyism, Vietnam: the first zombie film, as we've come to recognize them, bends to any and all of these interpretations thanks to single-minded execution. Skipping the garish satire of the sequels, it corrals the principals (i.e. the meat) in a Pennsylvania farmhouse: a brilliant distillation of a society under attack from without and within."Not bad for a movie made for $114,000, with never more than $35,000 in hard cash."For its time, it showed a shocking reality," Gary Streiner says. He suggests if it had been shot in color, rather than black-and-white, or done as a Hollywood-style production, it wouldn't have had the same cult standing.Its homespun, grass-roots energy translated on screen although an article in Reader's Digest asking, "Are these the kinds of films our children should be watching?," unwittingly boosted it.As Streiner says, "All hell broke loose." And it hasn't stopped since.(Pittsburgh Post-Gazette movie editor Barbara Vancheri can be reached at bvancheri(at)post-gazette.com.)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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