Wooster's own Charles Craig had role in iconic 1968 horror film
Either way, the undead have risen again, most recently in the television series “The Walking Dead” and in movies like “World War Z” and “Zombieland”. But before all of those, there was a time when a bunch of friends, co-workers and assorted volunteers got together in a small town in western Pennsylvania to make a little independent film, mostly just for fun.
What started as a semi-serious effort turned into “Night of the Living Dead,” the granddaddy of all zombie films.
Released Oct. 1, 1968, it opened to so-so reviews, but somewhere along the way it took on iconic status, so much so that it was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry.
And even though he never saw a dime from it, Charles Craig of Wooster has nothing but fond memories of the year or so he spent as The Announcer in the film, not to mention the after-work hours he spent as a ghoul extra, complete with make-up and the stumbling gait of the undead.
“They did it out of fun,” he said of the directors, cast and crew. “It was a bunch of creative people just wanting to branch out.”
Craig himself was looking to branch out when he left a career in radio in Ohio to accept a job offer from Hardman and Associates in Pittsburgh. Owner Karl Hardman had a successful career in radio before launching his own sound and production company. At that time, Craig said, Hardman hired him to be a performer and staff writer for an in-house troupe that often would travel to trade and industrial shows to provide a little comic relief. “I had to learn how to tap dance,” he said. “I am wondering, ‘What am I doing here. How goofy do I look?’”
At the same time, 28-year-old George Romero and partners John Russo and Russell Streiner started The Latent Image, a television and video production company also located in Pittsburgh. Craig recalled the company creating commercials for beer and chewing gum.
At some point, he said, “Everyone got bored and decided to make a horror movie.”
What started as a horror comedy turned into something more serious and at times controversial. Initially derided by critics for its sometimes violent content, the movie turned heads for other reasons, Craig said. Its star was Duane Jones, an African-American actor who Romero later said he hired simply because he had the best audition. In the movie, Jones’s character slaps a woman who escaped but saw the ghouls kill her brother and goes into shock. This was unusual in 1968, Craig said, “to see an African American man slap a blond white girl.”
Hardman acted in the movie, as did his wife, Marilyn, and their 9-year-old daughter, Kyra. Most of the extras were just business people hoping to have a little fun. “Once the word got around Pittsburgh (about the movie), every advertising agency account executive wanted to be a part of it,” Craig said.
Filming was done after regular work hours and whenever it could be fit into the schedule. The graveyard in the opening scene and the farm where most of the action takes place were located in Evans City, a rural location outside Pittsburgh.
Craig wrote most of his lines himself since he had a career in broadcasting, and to this day remembers the filming being nothing but fun. Most extras did their own ghoul makeup, and in one flesh-eating scene, he recalled the “flesh” was nothing more than hog entrails and some raw beef sent to the set “from a butcher who had been prevailed upon to invest in the movie.”
The film was shot in black and white, not only for effect, but also because of some practical considerations. The farmhouse had extremely old wiring which would not support the lighting needed for filming in color. And although major scenes took place in the house’s cellar, this house did not have one. Those scenes were shot back at Romero’s studio in Pittsburgh.
“Romero did a great job of editing,” Craig said. “He did it the old-fashioned way, cranking … frame by frame by frame.”
The film opened in Pittsburgh, complete with a red carpet and searchlights, which Craig said “was Hardman’s touch. He was all for the dramatic.” But by then, Craig had returned to Ohio to take a job as sales manager with WNCO radio in Ashland. He chalked the whole escapade up to “good film making, good storytelling, an accident of timing and a little serendipity.”
But the movie was still entertaining audiences a few years later, when Craig moved to Wooster to work for the former WWST (now WQKT/ WKVX). He had left work one day and drove past the old Skyline Drive-In on Lincoln Way East, only to find the marquee proclaiming “Night of the Living Dead, with WWST’s own Chuck Craig.” As a sales manager, he said he had been working hard to cultivate a serious image. But Craig said he took one look at the marquee and thought, “there goes the image, right down the tubes.”
For years, his role in the movie--which was made for less than $150,000 and has since grossed $30 million--faded to black. It was not until a few years ago, when Craig was contacted by “superfan” Jim Cirronella of New Jersey, that he reconnected with a number of his former co-stars and hit the fan circuit. At one convention, he said, he surprised Romero, who was signing autographs, by walking up behind him and whispering in his ear, “I’m keeping my eye on you, Romero. I am back from the dead.”
Although the work was done gratis and copyright battles have dogged the film’s distributor for years, Craig is proud to have been a part of a low-budget, independent film that spawned a genre and made a little cinematic history. “We had a tiger by the tail and we just didn’t realize it,” he said. “But the film is just like our ghouls. We refuse to die.”