 and suggested the alternative title ""Night of the Living Dead"".Yet Robert Hatch in "The Nation" thought it as "excellent a filming of the play as one can expect" and Vincent Canby in "The New York Times" called it "an exalting "Lear", full of exquisite terror".The film drew heavily on the ideas of Jan Kott, in particular his observation that "King Lear" was the precursor of absurdist theatre