I’ve always loved the interview with the chief of police in the original Night of the Living Dead. I love the delivery of that classic line. “….they’re all messed up.” Yes, they are. The chief doesn’t seem to be particularly perturbed by the fact that the dead are coming back to life. Instead, his attitude is very straight-forward. To quote Tommy Lee Jones in Rolling Thunder, “Let’s go clean ’em up.”
When we first see this interview, it’s easy to laugh at the sight of the chief’s posse and everyone’s odd confidence that the dead will somehow just go away. (Death, after all, is the one thing that is guaranteed to happen to everyone eventually.) Once you know how the story’s going to end, though, this scene becomes much more ominous.
