“They’re coming to get you, Barbara.”
Probably the most famous quote from the film, it is also an excellent example of the ironic humor of the film. Johnny says this line in a creepy sort of voice in an attempt to scare his sister the way he used to when they were kids. Of course, the ironic revelation will be that they really ARE coming to get Barbara as well as every other living human being.
“The murders are taking place in villages, cities, rural homes and suburbs with no apparent pattern or reason for the slayings. It seems to be a sudden, general explosion of mass homicide.”
By this point in the film, all that is really known is that a weirdo in a cemetery killed Johnny and tried to attack to his sister. And when she made her way into the seemingly abandoned house and was joined by Ben, other slow-moving attackers apparently unrelated to him and joined him. The film is precise and deliberate in building the suspense of what is actually going on.
“There wasn't a sign of life left, except...by now, there were no more screams. I realized that I was alone, with fifty or sixty of those things just...standing there, staring at me. I started to drive, I...I just plowed right through them! They didn't move. They didn't run, or...they just stood there, staring at me!”
These lines are the culmination of a long monologue by Ben. He is trying to coerce Barbara out of her fear-induced state of near-catatonia, but the monologue also fits into the film’s orderly structure of providing information about what’s happening. This monologue occurs before the radio report so it is an example of passing along information orally from person to person. The radio newscast takes things to the next level with an old-fashioned medium for spreading news.
"All law enforcement agencies and the military have been organized to search out and destroy the marauding ghouls. The survival command center at the Pentagon has disclosed that a ghoul can be killed by a shot in the head or a heavy blow to the skull. Officials are quoted as explaining that since the brain of a ghoul has been activated by the radiation, the plan is, kill the brain and you kill the ghoul."
The progression of information continues to the next level with a TV broadcast finally being the medium which supplies the final, gruesome answer to the question of what, exactly, is going on here: the dead are coming back to life as a result of radiation from space and the only way to stop them is to kill the brain. What is most pertinent about this particular newscast quote—which is just one of many—is that the living dead are termed “ghouls.” Although the film would go on to become the movie which revolutionized and transformed forever the zombie genre, the word “zombie” is never used. The horrific creatures who would set the template for zombies to come are, in fact, really “ghouls” which is actually a very old word used to describe exactly what is portrayed here.
“Good shot! OK, he's dead; let's go get 'em. That's another one for the fire.”
The last of the film’s many ironies is directed toward the death of the film’s hero, Ben. After spending the entire movie fighting not just the ghouls, but the actions of the other humans holed up in the home in an effort to protect everyone’s humanity (and from becoming a snack for corpses) Ben is mistaken for a ghoul and shot dead by the zombie posse in a climax that is almost ironically anti-climactic.
