Then things got scarier

Then things got really scary at a drive-in in Newark NJ in 1968. Lurid fires - industrial or arson - ringed the entire horizon and frogs screamed in the swamps. I was there with my parents, alone in the back seat. This is odd behavior for a 14 year old and I don't remember how it came about. We saw a boring feature called "Slaves".

We were getting ready to leave when something about the opening frames of the second feature caught my father's attention. He put the speaker back in the car window and announced that were staying to watch it.

Grainy black and white and a car on a lonely road. After the glossy and over-produced mainstream movie we had just seen, this was intriguing. The people looked weird, not like movie stars at all.

Then all hell broke loose. I screamed, pulled my jacket over my head, and peered out reluctantly from behind its curtain. "Maybe we should go," I said. My mother in the front seat said "Bernie, this is terrible. Let's go".

I don't think of my father as a movie lover, much less a horror fan. But he insisted and we stayed, terrified and amazed. The zombies eating guts, the trowel in the cellar. The ending - how could a movie end that way?

And everything changed. Imagine seeing "Night of the Living Dead" at midnight without any preparation whatsoever. No reviews, no trailer, no reports from friends. And watching that movie break every convention of the films I loved on Chiller Theatre.

I remembered that sensation when my fourteen year old cousin Cody and I settled in for video night a few weeks ago. Fourteen year old boys are the perfect companions for all horror movies. Cody is a unusually fine specimen with a keen interest in zombies. He had said to me, "You know, there is this guy named George Romero..." and I knew I had found a friend. I'm trying to take advantage of his enthusiasm - any day now he will be too busy or too cool to watch movies with me.

He had seen most of the Living Dead series, but not the original and not Diary. We watched them back to back - an experience I recommend. And in both movies I waited attentively for my favorite movie phrase - partially devoured.

What a good name for a blog.

And now Survival is here and I am trying to figure out how to access "video on demand". I might have to call Cody for help, And it won't be like that night long ago in New Jersey.