The writer king of the horror genre is also a passionate film buff.
He is the writer most prolific of the genre of terror and surely also of the rest of literary themes, since since he began his career in the 70s, Stephen King He has published more than 60 novels and 200 short stories. But his work, as film buffs know, has not remained immobile on paper, but from all that imaginative garden some 50 audiovisual pieces have been nourished, including cinema, miniseries and films for television. Therefore, his opinion on the terrain of horror is taken as a serious prescription to which special attention is always paid. King has favorite feature films and of course, he is regularly up to date with the main developments in the film field. However, the author of ‘It’ He now wanted to point out what for him is the most terrifying scene of the history of cinema.
As a good viewer, Stephen King has been changing his mind, launching several headlines about his tastes, including those stories that he has not been able to finish. However, the Portland writer seems to be quite clear about which film he is referring to. future generations of filmmakers They should go if they want to grow as true storytellers of the genre.
Stephen King and his terrifying scene
The sequence in question is not that of any film. We are talking about the mother film of a whole trend that would arrive years later and that would have its own exploitation cinema: The night of the Living Dead. Directed by George A. Romero, the filmmaking career of this father of zombie cinema It began in the late 60s, very close in time to Stephen King’s debut as an author with lThe publication of ‘Carrie’ in 1974. Romero’s story impacted the public in many ways, from his messages about racism to the anxiety suggested in the North American population with The vietnam war. But above all, The night of the Living Dead would earn the title of cult film in its own right, thanks to the unique way in which it makes more than 50 years frightened thousands of spectators for the first time.
Going deeper into the story, King stated that the sequence in question is precisely the opening one. The moment in which Johnny (Russell Streiner) and his sister Barbara (Judith O’Dea) go to the cemetery to visit their dead mother’s grave. She is scared by the place and does not want to be there, while her inconsiderate brother mocks her by saying the now iconic phrase ““They’re coming to look for you, Barbara!”. Instantly, a man starts stumbling towards them as he continues to joke, “Look, now there’s one of them.” Embarrassed, Barbara goes to the man to apologize, but then he attacks them, causing the birth of the modern zombie at the cinema.
Johnny is violently murdered and Barbara runs for her life by reaching her brother’s car and locking herself in it. That relief soon fades when she realizes that the keys are in her brother’s pocket. The zombie break the glass window with a stone and our protagonist then chooses to release the handbrake so that the car goes down the hill where it crashes into a tree. The danger remains but she has bought enough time to run towards an old farmhouse that can be seen in the distance. When Stephen King saw it for the first time, he was still in college and the age rating system had not been invented, so he found a room full of a truly inconvenient audience: “Never in my life, since I was a child Until now, I have been in a room where the children were so quiet. They were with their mouths open; They were simply stunned. Total silence.”
The factor of not using well-known actors
Stephen King believes that part of this achievement has to do with the fact that the actors in the story were not known and that having a current star as Scarlett Johannson on the billboard, we would immediately emerge from that particular horror, reminding ourselves that we are facing a Hollywood production. A circumstance that coincides with the fact that since it is a small budget, the visual invoice is closer to reality than to the Hollywood of the big sets.
With just over an hour and a half in length, Night of the Living Dead is available on a good number of streaming platforms: Prime Video, SkyShowtime, Movistar +, MUBI, FlixOlé and Filmin.
