Happy Trailers - Zombie-A-Thon Edition - Night Of The Living Dead (1968)

I love trailers. I have entire disks I've made of film trailers. Whenever I do a movie night, I subject my guests to as many of them as I think they will stand before they start throwing beer bottles at me. So, I'm going to start a new feature on the site, Happy Trailers. Not only will I post the trailer, I'll give a little review of it. Creating a good trailer is an art form in its own right. You want to entice the audience without giving too much of the story away or showing too much of the money scenes. On the other hand, if you have a bad movie, you have 90 seconds to try to make it look good.

The trailer for Night of the Living Dead does a good job of letting you know what you're going to see. There's some violence, lot's of screaming, some gore (the head, stripped of flesh is prominent in the trailer even though it is on-screen in the film for a about two seconds) and enough voice-over exposition to let you know what the film is about. There are no character scenes, no in-film dialogue, nothing to indicate that the movie will ever slow down. And, for the most part, that's true. Romero keeps his movie moving at a nice pace, something the trailer accurately reflects. And, of course, there is no hint of the ending. Since the ending is still disturbing almost 50 years after the film was released, not hinting at it was a good call. Based on this trailer, I'd want to see the movie.