The American Nightmare

The movie The American Nightmare interviews famous writers of horror films in the 1960’s and 70’s to get an inside look of their thoughts on their own movies. George Romero, the creator of the Night of the Living Dead horror films, is one of the film makers interviewed. He arguably made the modern zombie film what is today with these works. The film focuses on his own thoughts of the movie and the figure of the zombie. George Romero says that the zombie is the blue collar kind of monster because it is essentially us. The zombie is basically us undead with no emotion or thought process. His film Night of the Living Dead brought the modern zombie into popular media. He was the first to make the zombie into what we think of it today. Romero talks about how this movie was torn to shreds by critics when it was first seen, but now it is considered a classic American film. The critics also talk about how the movie was real to people back then due to its medium of black and white. Romero talks about his idea of a new society taking over the old society in a revolution that changes everything. This thought made the zombie the perfect monster in his film. The fear of our society getting taken over is a fear many had especially during those times. His film perfectly used zombies in replacement of Vietnam or white bigots of the era.
Critics also talk about how the struggles of the time are really captured in the movie. The images of the movie showed truth of the struggles that many films were not able to do. George Romero was really ahead of his time in a creating a powerful film that made a horror genre so popular even today. The American Nightmare discusses the assassinations of the time along with all of the other hardships and relates it into the horror film. The sense of fragility of the time was shown in horror films created in the 60’s and 70’s. Also the war in Vietnam was a very big part of the makers of the film. The inhuman things that happened in the war were portrayed in the horror films. These gruesome things seen in the war were recreated in their own films. In a way these movies were made to forget or transfer these horrible images of the time into a film that could be related to. Everything that was being seen in these horror films was actually going on in the world in a sense. The inhumane acts in the war were seen in the films that came out of this period. The zombie was an important figure in films because it put the blame on a non human being. This instead of what was going on in real life with people killing other people. The American Nightmare gives a good parallel between the time period and the films that come out of it.