Part of Shocktober
“They’re coming to get you, Barbra!”
Shot outside of Pittsburgh at a fraction of the cost of a Hollywood feature by a band of filmmakers determined to make their mark, George A. Romero’s NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD is one of the great stories of independent cinema — a midnight hit turned box-office smash that became one of the most influential films of all time. A deceptively simple tale of a group of strangers trapped in a farmhouse who find themselves fending off a horde of flesh-eating ghouls newly arisen from their graves, Romero’s claustrophobic vision of a late-’60s America (literally) tearing itself apart rewrote the rules of the horror genre, combined gruesome gore with acute social commentary, and quietly broke ground by casting a black actor (Duane Jones) in the lead role.
4K restoration scanned from the original camera negative and supervised by George Romero.
“This is the granddaddy of modern flesh-eating zombie movies.” —Marjorie Baumgarten, Austin Chronicle
“If someone handed you $114,000 and said go to Pittsburgh and make the scariest movie you can in black-and-white with no sound effects or real actors, you probably couldn't top George Romero's NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. It's the funniest but most real-looking horror film ever made. —San Francisco Chronicle
“It changed the face of the horror film, setting a precedent for the work of directors like Tobe Hooper, Wes Craven, John Carpenter and David Cronenberg in the 1970s…. Part of its strength is that it’s not a glossy, predictable Hollywood horror and so it has a grainy, semi-amateur, black and white look which gives it a dread sense of conviction.” —Kim Newman, Empire Magazine