10 Hidden Meanings Behind Famous Horror Movies

George A. Romero’s cult classic Night of the Living Dead is undoubtedly one of the most influential horrors of the mid-20th century. Not only did it spawn a further five Romero zombie films, it’s also generated countless remakes, spinoffs, unofficial sequels and homages. Its grainy, gritty and gory nature heralded a new era for horror that, in stark contrast to the somewhat camp horrors that came before it, was genuinely unsettling and bleak.

Though NOTLD may not be as overtly political as the Living Dead films that would follow and Romero has at times refuted any agenda with his first film, he’s also admitted that the turbulence and tensions of the late 1960s seeped into the movie: “It was 1968, man. Everybody had a ‘message’.” It isn’t too far a stretch of the imagination to draw comparisons with the gritty violence of the movie with the imagery of the Vietnam War that was bombarding American TV sets every evening.

Similarly, although Romero has steadfastly denied that casting African American actor Duane Jones in the lead role of Ben was never anything more than a case of him being the best man for the job, given that the film was made during the height of the civil rights movement it isn’t hard to see parallels with America’s homegrown tensions too.

The fact remains, sad as it may be, that casting a black actor in a role as the most resourceful and logical person in an ensemble of white faces was at the time controversial. A hero who regardless of his skin colour is the sole survivor of the film until its very end when a marauding, all-white posse not too dissimilar from a lynch mob shoots him dead is an all too befitting allegory for America’s racial tensions.