Night of the Living Dead

Romero and a group of Pittsburgh commercial filmmakers put in $600 each, shot at weekends in a farmhouse due for demolition, and accidentally rebuilt horror from scratch.

The dead are anonymous, they arrive in numbers, and they eat people. None of that existed before this. Neither did the siege structure, the arguments about the basement, or the rule that the living are the real problem.

The distributor forgot to put a copyright notice on the prints, so it fell into the public domain immediately and Romero never saw most of the money. That is also why it is on every budget DVD compilation on earth.

Duane Jones was cast as Ben because he gave the best audition, and the script was not rewritten for a Black lead. The ending arrives in 1968 and lands exactly as hard as you would expect.