Night of the Living Dead

Audio problem: In the scene where Ben nails the door to the wall to keep the zombies out, the sound of the hammer hitting the nail is inconsistent with the pacing Ben actually hits the nail.

Continuity mistake: Just after Mrs Cooper has come up from the cellar for the first time, Tom says to her "I gotta go help Ben with the television." Her arms are lowered by her side, but when the next shot cuts in, where Mr Cooper is in the foreground, her arms are now raised up to her chest.

Will

Other mistake: A few minutes after Tom and Judy have been killed in the truck and their bodies burned by the fire, the zombies begin to eat some of the body parts. One of the zombies can be seen with a human hand that appears to be neatly severed and unaffected by the fire, surely the hand would have been so badly burned by the fire beyond all recognition.

Will

Continuity mistake: Throughout the night scenes outside, patches of the terrain out in the middle of nowhere are mysteriously illuminated so we can see the zombies. Where is this light coming from? There are no street lights, no nearby houses, no car headlights, and the moon would not cast light in the shape of conveniently located spot light patterns where the zombies just happen to be walking or laying dead.

Continuity mistake: As Barbara enters one of the rooms in the house, she is carrying a knife with her arms raised at a 90 degree angle, but when she sees the three animal heads on the wall, the next shot cuts in with her arms lowered, with not enough time for them to move.

Will

Continuity mistake: While Ben is watching television with the rifle resting on his lap, watch how the position of the rifle changes position between shots.

Will

Revealing mistake: Early in the opening scene, Barbara and her brother Johnny are going to put flowers on their father's grave. As the two of them approach the gravesite, with Barbara leading the way around a low cut bush (centre screen), the camera angle changes and suddenly their positions in their walk have unrealistically changed. After Barbara says, "There it is," the camera angle changes and we now see Johnny walking behind the bush in a spot he had already walked (so he walks a small patch of lawn twice). Barbara instantaneously changes from walking full stride with her hands in her coat pocket to a momentary standing position with legs apart and the beginning of an initial step. Her hands are now no longer in her pockets but swinging at her side.

Deliberate mistake: When Ben is discussing boarding up the windows to Tom, he says he still needs to get a few spots upstairs. Why would he need to board up the upstairs windows when the zombies have no way of reaching them?

Visible crew/equipment: When Barbara is running around the house to find a way in, someone backs up (possibly with a camera in hand) behind a tree.

Factual error: The truck's gas tank is said to be empty, but is able to explode spectacularly later on. An empty gas tank may spout a jet of flame, but will not have enough force to rupture and damage the truck, a full tank of liquid gas will not burn unless vaporized. Simply put the truck would not explode in that Michael Bay fashion.

Other mistake: When the cemetery ghoul loses his grip on Barbra's rolling vehicle a parked car can be seen in the rear passenger window that wasn't there before. Ten seconds later a van or truck can be seen from Barbra's driver side window.

c00ld00d

Continuity mistake: During Barbra's speech after Ben removes the legs from the dining table, he moves the table top and rests it against a window. When he tells Barbra to "keep calm" the table top disappears. After getting the hammer and telling her to "calm down" the table top reappears.

c00ld00d

Continuity mistake: When Ben tells Barbara to look for wood, she heads to the fireplace, which, in the scene where she first enters the house, is covered with a cast iron screen with a slit in it. It is completely open, with no screen to be seen anywhere, when she gets the wood from it.

Continuity mistake: When they are throwing the molotov cocktails out the window to let them get to the car, they throw one in front of both sides of the vehicle. However when the 3rd and 4th cocktails land, the first two which were just burning are now gone and there's no burn marks on the ground.

jerimiah

Continuity mistake: When they are driving the pickup truck to the pumps, the sky is pitch black. However when they get on the dirt path - for one scene the sky is lighter as if it was dusk in the early eve, only to go back to pitch black when they reach the pump.

jerimiah

Continuity mistake: When Ben is squatting in front of the TV and they are watching the broadcast, he has a gun laying in his lap with his hand not holding it. In the next shot, he's now instantly holding the gun and it's no longer laying in his lap.

jerimiah

Visible crew/equipment: In the beginning when Johnny gets out of the car and we have a bit of a wide shot, before he closes the car door, you can see the top of the camera reflected in the window.

Clerk13

Ben: Now get the hell down in the cellar. You can be the boss down there, but I'm boss up here.

More quotes from Night of the Living Dead

Trivia: Duane Jones was the first African American to play a lead in a horror film. He also taught at and became the head of the Theatre Department at Old Westbury college in Long Island, New York. He remained there until he unfortunately passed away in 1988.

More trivia for Night of the Living Dead

Answer: No. Each is a progression of several weeks or years.

Captain Defenestrator

More questions & answers from Night of the Living Dead

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