Good Morning Gentle Readers,
George Romero's Night of the Living Dead was released on October 1, 1968. Pretty sure that every celluloid zombie in America is directly descended from these guys. Although the film has been a cult classic for forty years or better, at 17 years old, it was just a mediocre, mildly frightening movie.
A few years before the Broadway Theater in Santa Ana became a porn palace, I saw the film there with the girl who coined the term murdercycle™. Afterward I dropped her at home, which was more than an hour's ride out into the mountains of eastern Orange County.
Like many theaters a century ago, The Broadway had once been a picture palace with a beautiful edifice. Then there was a fire and it was reconstructed in what some of us called bomb shelter sixties moderne™. A lifeless box, with no facade and no soul. The reconstructed building wasn't even done well enough to be considered a part of the brutalist style of the modernist era.
Driving east on Santiago Canyon Road is how one got to Evelyn's house in Silverado Canyon. The road could have easily been a stand-in for the road pictured in the movie's promotional photo. It was a lonely,
winding, rural road and from her house, it was a
hella™ long way back to civilization. I hung around with her for a bit, chit-chatting and absorbing warmth from the natural stone fireplace. By the time I shoved off for home it was long past the witching hour. The moon was nearly full and it cast distorted shadows everywhere. To my utter dismay,
mildly frightening had ramped up a couple of notches. It didn't help that the road was deserted. Well, it was deserted all right, except for the living-dead zombies lurking behind every rock outcropping, around every curve, and behind each tree. It wasn't just Barbara they were coming for, neither.
Boy Howdy!™ I was damn lucky to make it home that night.
Photo Credit Unknown
As Always,