Ceris' 31 Days of Horror Challenge: Day 19 - Night of the Living Dead

So tonight’s film I’m going to guess is about Zombies? Let’s see if I’m right!

Art by Mat Peg

Two siblings are visiting their fathers grave in a very rural graveyard - graveyards are creepy normally let alone when they are rural! After paying their respects Johnny is killed and Barbara attacked by a strange man - told you they we weird! Barbra manages to escape and takes shelter in an abandoned farmhouse where she thinks she is safe - until she finds a dead and half eaten woman in there! She spots the strange man who killed her brother walking towards the house followed by zombies - could this be the end for Barbra? Never fear Ben - another strange man - appears and boards up the farmhouse before driving away the zombies with fire!

Barbara is paralysed with shock and is even more surprised when Harry & Helen Cooper emerge from the cellar with their daughter who has been bitten by the ghouls who attacked their car. Also in the cellar are Tom and Judy who hid in the house after hearing the emergency announcement about brutal killings taking place. Tom and Ben continue to secure the house with boards while Harry kicks off and goes back to the cellar where he thinks he will be safer - I think he is wrong!

The group listen to the radio and hear about the wave of mass murders by an army of reanimating corpses but a group of armed men are patrolling the area to kill the ghouls! They are told that the zombies can be killed by a bullet or a blow to the head or by being burned ..... Ben knows his shit! Scientists think it’s radiation caused by a space probe that crashed - hmm a likely story!

Ben comes up with a plan to get medical supplies for the injured Karen and to take everyone to the rescue centres that have been set up. So Ben, Tom and Judy go to a nearby gas station and throw Molotov cocktails to keep the zombies at bay. Gas from the station spills and causes an explosion killing Tom & Judy ..... maybe Harry was right and the cellar is safe!

Ben fights of the ghouls and runs back to the house and has to break down the door as Harry won’t let him in .... fair enough I think, they went as 3 and only 1 returned! The dead eat Tom and Judy before smashing into the house. This is when lots of shit happens! Harry gets shot by Ben, Karen dies from her previous injuries and come back to life (ish) and eats her father and stabs her mother. Barbara wakes up - she has missed all the best bits - and tries to help Ben but Johnny (remember him?) drags her away!

Ben hides in the cellar after shooting Harry and Helen who have become ghouls. The next morning he hears sirens and comes out from the cellar only to be shot by the armed posse who think he is a zombie and burned with the others!

This wasn’t a bad film and I’d happily watch it again, even if some bits are a bit gory! Didn't think a horror film would tackle the race issue as well as it did as well, that ending was just so brutal.

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