For nearly 200 issues, ‘The Walking Dead’ has been delivering the “don’t say the z-word” thrills, not only making for some excellent stories but for at least two television spin-offs and a few legendary comic book moments. Most impressively, it only rarely appears in color (notably a non-canon anniversary story a several years ago), preferring to use gray tones to deliver its horror. In fact, I’d argue that a not-insignificant part of its appeal is that black-and-white imagery, driving home the grounded and even dirty nature of life after the apocalypse, and leading to today’s blood-red-if-you-imagine-really-hard query…
The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) will always argue that ‘Night of the Living Dead’ and any sequels, prequels or remakes should be in monochrome, asking: What story, show or film is so good in black-and-white that it doesn’t need full-color?
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Everything directed by Lubitsch, Billy Wilder, Jean Renoir… etc.
Umbrella Academy looks incredibly stupid in color. As in, I would be embarrassed to watch.
The renewed trend of colorizing of B&W photos still looks like bad. As in, when men over 50 dye their hair a mono-color kinda bad.
Color shows surfaces. B&W shows texture…
Everything Kurosawa directed early in his career, Chaplin, The Phantom comics, most of samurai mangas ever created, list goes on and on.
I can’t think of anything in black and white that needs to be made color. I’ve seen some documentaries on b&w shows and they had to go way over the top to get it to look right without color, so no, I don’t need to see all that. Leaving it black and white leaves it timeless. I think of Hitchcock movies (namely my Favorite, “Rebecca”) and think that the black and white is what added to the suspense and drama. Even I Love Lucy should stay black and white…who knows what hideous colors some of the clothing was!