Night

Civil rights

Shortly after Ben's first appearance
we see a aiming zombie lying on the floor with its legs together and arms
apart, forming a burning cross which reminds us of the Ku KluxKlan. Race
is also behind Beverley's unspoken fear of her rescuer and later attempts
to relieve Ben of his command of the house. Most evocative though, is the
films jolting ending in which Ben,having survived the night is shot by police
who do not check if he is a zombie. This reminds us of the assassinations
of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King recent to the original release of the film.During the credits, Ben's body is dragged with meat hooks and burned,
evoking real lynching

Cold war
Variety, in its 1968 review, called it an "unrelieved orgy of sadism." Yet the timelinessof its themes enabled the film to survive the pornography of violence label and critics' initially dismissive reviews. Released at a time when disillusionment was running rampant in thecountry—spurred by the Vietnam War and the recent assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and John F. Kennedy—Americans identified with the film's most shocking suggestion: death is random and without purpose.No one dies for the greater good or to further the survival of others. Instead, people die to feed faceless, ordinary America. A metaphor for societal anxiety, the sight of America literallydevouring itself and the representation of the desecration of the wholesome American family were "reflections of social hysteria" (J. Hoberman) and served as a release for the country's repressed trauma.In the fear of the invasion, you can see as much communism as the hippie ideology, while featuring a couple composed of a black man and a typical blond woman is a clear nod to integration. Asfor the militia that comes to save — or not — the day at the end, they symbolize that American taste for vigilantism and military conquest, which from the Vietnam war finds echoes nowadays.