all right kids: romero

My fa­vorite George Romero (1940–2017) anec­dote is about the OG re­lease of Night of the Liv­ing Dead in 1968. 

Back then movies didn’t just come out, run for a few weeks and close. There were re-re­leas­es, changes in the­aters, changes in pro­grams, the dri­ve-in cir­cuit etc. Long be­fore they would end up on TV. 

One of the ‘pro­grams’ (pro­gram­ming films of like in­ter­est and genre for rep hous­es, etc) was the Sat­ur­day kid­die matinee. 

Back in the day peo­ple would drop their kids off in the morn­ing and let the the­ater babysit them, more or less. They would pro­gram a slate of stuff geared to kids: Some car­toons, some youth-fo­cused news­reels, chil­dren’s movies, etc. This was still a year or two be­fore the ad­vent of the MPAA rat­ings sys­tem (G, PG, R etc) so film con­tents was still large­ly gov­erned by the chaste Hays Code and par­ents could trust their kids wouldn’t see ob­jec­tion­able content. 

In the late 60s, the hor­ror genre had been most­ly aban­doned to whole­some fare that catered to safe creepy. Goth­ic haunt­ed house movies, mon­sters, etc. It was a genre that was now con­sid­ered kids stuff, ow­ing no small fa­vor to the Hays Code’s san­i­tiz­ing ef­fect on film. 

Night of the Liv­ing Dead ex­ist­ed out­side of all that. It was a small in­die flick that had come out and sunk with­out much no­tice. No­body re­al­ly saw the thing. And that is how it end­ed up slot­ted into a mati­nee for very young children. 

The kids were straight up *trau­ma­tized* by what they saw onscreen. 

And a young Roger Ebert was there.

 
 

—ja­son malmberg

Flom­mist Ja­son Malm­berg is a sim­ple man who be­lieves in brown liquor and small dogs. He also makes art some­times. Copy­right © 2017 Ja­son Malm­berg. Cin­e­mas found via Pleas­ant Val­ley Shop­ping.

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