Night of the Living Dead (1968)

Night of the Living Dead is a 1968 horror film directed by George A. Romero, produced on a budget of around $114,000 and shot in black-and-white in and around Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It is widely credited with reinventing the zombie genre and remains one of the most influential horror films ever made.

Seven strangers take refuge in a rural farmhouse as reanimated human corpses begin attacking and devouring the living across the Pennsylvania countryside. The film's bleak, unflinching tone and its casting of Duane Jones — a Black man — as the capable, heroic lead was groundbreaking for its era and has been widely discussed in the context of the civil rights movement.

Watch

Video source: Internet Archive — night_of_the_living_dead · Public domain

Chapters

Click any timestamp to jump to that point in the film.

1. 00:00 Opening credits. A brother and sister, Johnny and Barbra, visit their father's grave in a rural Pennsylvania cemetery.
2. 03:00 Johnny is attacked and killed by a reanimated corpse. Barbra flees in a panic to a nearby farmhouse.
3. 10:00 Ben arrives at the farmhouse and takes charge, boarding up the windows and doors against the growing horde of undead outside.
4. 20:00 Survivors emerge from the cellar: Harry Cooper, his wife Helen, their injured daughter Karen, and a young couple, Tom and Judy. Ben and Harry clash bitterly over strategy.
5. 40:00 Ben and Tom attempt to fuel a truck to escape. The plan ends catastrophically, leaving the survivors trapped as the zombie siege intensifies.
6. 01:00:00 Karen reanimates and kills her parents in the cellar — a landmark moment of body horror.
7. 01:20:00 Ben survives the night alone, but at dawn is shot dead by a sheriff's posse who mistake him for a zombie.

Copyright status

Night of the Living Dead was released on 1 October 1968. The film entered the public domain immediately upon release because its distributor, the Walter Reade Organization, failed to include the required copyright notice on all prints. Under United States copyright law as it stood in 1968, omission of the copyright notice caused immediate forfeiture of copyright protection. This film may be freely watched, downloaded, copied, modified, and redistributed without restriction or payment.

References

1. Romero, George A. (dir.). Night of the Living Dead. Image Ten, 1968.
2. Williams, Tony (2003). Hearths of Darkness: The Family in the American Horror Film. University Press of Mississippi.
3. Hervey, Ben (2008). Night of the Living Dead. BFI Film Classics. British Film Institute.
4. Internet Archive. “Night of the Living Dead (1968)”. archive.org/details/night_of_the_living_dead.