About the Film
Night of the Living Dead is a 1968 American independent horror film directed by George A. Romero and written by Romero and John A. Russo. Shot for roughly $114,000 by a group of Pittsburgh ad- and industrial-film makers calling themselves Image Ten, it became one of the most influential motion pictures ever made.
The picture was filmed in and around Evans City, Pennsylvania, much of it in a rented farmhouse that was slated for demolition. The cast and crew were mostly local — friends, investors and first-time actors — and many pitched in behind the camera between scenes. The chocolate syrup standing in for blood and the cast-mannequin gore were shocking for 1968 and helped earn the film its fearsome reputation.
Originally titled Night of the Flesh Eaters, the film was renamed before release. When the new title card was added, the distributor failed to carry over the copyright notice — the mistake that sent the movie into the public domain.
- It invented the modern zombie. Romero’s flesh-eating, reanimated dead — slow, relentless, and multiplying — became the template for virtually every zombie story since.
- A Black leading man in 1968. Duane Jones played the capable, level-headed hero Ben — rare and groundbreaking casting for the era, and the film’s ending lands with devastating resonance because of it.
- Independent film proof-of-concept. Made far from Hollywood on a shoestring, it showed that a regional crew could create a national phenomenon.
- National Film Registry. The Library of Congress added it in 1999 as “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”