ManiakJiggy This is How Movies Should Be Made

GurlyIamBeach Instant Favorite.

Myron Clemons A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

Aneesa Wardle The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Joe Kucharski (joker-4) Like it or not, George A. Romero truly is the father of today's horror cinema. The original "Dead" trilogy – NIGHT, DAWN, and DAY – accomplish that simple truth in unveiling a very human metaphor wrapped in the grisly package of blood-letting entertainment. And why not celebrate the man and his accomplishments? Perhaps dig deep into the motives and industry tales of movie-making. Perhaps that is what Rob Kuhns set out to do with his BIRTH OF THE LIVING DEAD documentary. Unfortunately, the data unearthed in BIRTH OF THE LIVING DEAD could have been a solid DVD featurette. Instead, an additional 40 minutes of repetitiveness was added, dragging the film down as a lumbering, undead walker.To its credit, BIRTH sets the stage of 1968 America, when NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD was released, quite well providing key insights to the civil rights movement as well as to the fact that NIGHT stars an African American. Likewise, the documentary gets right into how – and why – the film was made and some of the issues and trickery Romero and his crew employed during production and editing; Romero himself is presented as both jolly and candid.Then the film rinses and repeats. And repeats. And, oh, did you forget that NIGHT starred an African American? Well hold on tight, you'll be reminded in just a few short minutes as horror film director Larry Fessenden will tell you how great the original film is and repeat the lines verbatim for the camera. Granted, the docu's subject is NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, but that topic alone screams out for accompaniment. There was absolutely no mention of the 1990 remake, nor the 2004 remake of DAWN. And obviously the most apparent of Romero's offspring – THE WALKING DEAD – is only shown as a background image. Kuhns showed the historical relevance of NIGHT, but only provided the merest taste of its social impact, a taste that was sorely missed.

SnoopyStyle It's 1968. Pittsburgh filmmaker George Romero introduces the world to the flesh eating zombie. He started working for Fred Rogers on Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. Then Romero recounts how he gathered a group of people to develop and film the classic horror. It's a real indie at a time when indies had no money.It's a documentary and it's nice to have Romero tell his story. None of it is too surprising. It's like Romero doing the commentary for his movie. It's also a great underdog story of independent filmmaking. I could do without the modern influences and less of the talking heads dissecting the movie moves. I rather have more stories about the making of and the stories of the people around the movie. The social commentaries are fine but it's rehashing old territories. It takes up a lot of movie. I like the part after they finished the movie and I love the stories of the little kids watching the movie.

Michael_Elliott Birth of the Living Dead (2013) *** 1/2 (out of 4) Did we really need yet another documentary about NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD? Probably not but this one here is so entertaining and gives us some fresh looks on the subject that fans of the George Romero classic will certainly want to check it out. Director Rob Kuhns interviews Romero who touches on familiar subjects like his early career, how the story came up and the impact the film had once it was released. Where the documentary sets itself apart is that it focuses in on some of the more political moments in the film including what was going on in the world at the time. Vietnam and the Civil Rights are certainly discussed here. You might be saying that we've heard these stories before and that's true but this documentary manages to throw out some good information and even better is that we get some professional critics who discuss the impact of the film and their memories of seeing it as children. Elvis Mitchell has some great stories about the first time he watched the film and there's some great stuff dealing with how the distributor pretty much threw this film into kid matinées. There's even a great sequence where people discuss how everything zombie wise pretty much goes back to this film and Romero. Even more interesting is the talk of the lead black actor and the type of movies Sidney Poitier was doing at this thing. I really wish Romero would have commented on this part of the subject but he doesn't. With that said, this is certainly a highly entertaining documentary, although it does run a bit short at just 75-minutes.

envisiondentallab If you read the "storyline" description of this Documentary you would assume it's about the production of the film "Night of the living dead", and yes we get maybe 15 minutes of some interesting tidbits on the investors and players involved BUT the remaining 60 minutes is pure drivel. I give it 3 stars for the 15 minutes of somewhat entertaining stories. It loses 7 stars from the somewhat laughable metaphoric connections to the late 60s in terms of racial violence and the Vietnam war. They could have spent 5 minutes on how it was somewhat unusual to cast an African American in the lead at the time and how some of the shooting visuals looked a little like riot and war footage. Instead we get an hour of Vietnam and race riot footage and trying to connect it to different scenes in the movie. The taglines and plot descriptions on various websites like IMDb and vudu look like it's targeted to 'Romero' fans but should only be shown in a political science class and that's a stretch.