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A Night to Remember:

What the Living Dead Means to Me

by Wes Craven

Seeing George’s masterpiece for the first time is a vivid memory for me. I was just newly in New York, working at some lowly position, not yet having directed, when a friend of mine asked if I’d like to go see this film called Night of the Living Dead. “Sounds dumb,” I said, not knowing anything about it, and having never seen a horror film in my life. “But it’s supposed to be fun,” my friend said. “A happening.” So I said okay, and off we went to the Waverly in Greenwich Village. The theater was packed, even though the film had been out a long while already. Everybody was buzzing with excitement, running up and down the aisles for final Cokes and popcorn, leaning over the seats talking to each other. Then the lights went down. And that brother-sister duo started their scene, arguing over their dad’s grave, or whatever it was. So what’s the big deal, I thought. And then I saw that strange, lurching figure in the deep background appear. Coming toward these two rather annoying people, the first yells started—and then screams and nervous laughter. I realized I was scared already—something about that guy is not right!

Well, you know the rest. He attacks, the annoying guy is toast, and as all hell breaks loose, the screaming girl begins running for her life. An hour and a half or so later, after countless yells, screams, and hoots—plus huge laughter—there comes the moment of realization that, hey, this movie is about something as well. And beyond all of that, there’s the fact that I’d never, ever been in a theater where that kind of energy, delight, and raw fear took over 300 people and welded them all into one big quaking blob of humanity in extremis and loving it.

That movie, more than anything else I can think of, liberated me to make Last House on the Left, because I knew that after that there was a whole new kind of film blossoming in American cinema. It was something hybrid that mixed terror and laughter and social comment into one heady, totally unpredictable witches’ brew of entertainment unlike anything I’d ever experienced before.

Unlike anything I’d ever experienced before.

I was hooked, and it’s George’s fault.