NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD

Night of the Living Dead is a 1968 American independent horror film written, directed, photographed and edited by George A. Romero, co-written by John Russo, and starring Duane Jones and Judith O'Dea. The story follows seven people who are trapped in a rural farmhouse in western Pennsylvania, which is besieged by a large and growing group of "living dead" monsters.

The film was completed on a $114,000 budget and shot outside Pittsburgh, where it had its theatrical premiere on October 1, 1968. The film grossed $12 million domestically and $18 million internationally, earning over 250 times its budget. Night of the Living Dead has been regarded as a cult classic by film scholars and critics, despite being heavily criticized upon its release for its explicit gore. It eventually garnered critical acclaim and has been selected in 1999 by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry, as a film deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

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Night Of The Living Dead (1968)

"When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth." George A. Romero

Barbra and Johnny drive to rural Pennsylvania to visit their father's grave. While in the cemetery, Barbra is attacked by a strange man. Johnny tries to rescue his sister, but the assailant strikes Johnny's head against a gravestone, killing him. After wrecking their car in a panic, Barbra escapes on foot, with the stranger in pursuit. She arrives at a farmhouse, where she discovers a woman's mangled corpse. Fleeing from the house, she is confronted by strange, menacing ghouls, including the man in the graveyard. A man named Ben arrives and takes her back to the house, driving the monsters away and barricading the doors and windows. While doing this, Ben finds a radio and a lever-action rifle. Throughout the night, Barbra slowly descends into a stupor of shock and insanity.

Ben discovers that the farmhouse has a cellar. The cellar houses an angry married couple, Harry and Helen Cooper, along with their daughter Karen. The Coopers sought refuge after a group of the same monsters overturned their car. Tom and Judy, a teenage couple, arrived after hearing an emergency broadcast about a series of brutal killings. Karen has fallen seriously ill after being bitten by one of the monsters. They venture upstairs when Ben turns the radio on, while Barbra awakens from her stupor. Harry demands that everyone hide in the cellar, but Ben deems it a "deathtrap" and continues to barricade the house upstairs with Tom's help. Radio reports explain that a wave of mass murder is sweeping across the East Coast of the United States. Ben finds a television, and he and other occupants of the house watch an emergency broadcaster report that the recently-deceased have become reanimated and are consuming the flesh of the living. Experts, scientists, and the military have failed to determine the cause of the reanimations, though one scientist suspects that they are due to radioactive contamination from a space probe that was blown up in Earth's atmosphere while returning from Venus.