Night of the Living Dead
Night of the Living Dead is a 1968 film from the USA, directed by George A. Romero, running 96 minutes. reelscum files it under zombie.
- Year
- 1968 · 1960s films
- Country
- USA
- Runtime
- 96 min
- Director
- George A. Romero
- Updated
- 10 Aug 2026
- Obscurity
- canon (0/100)
- Also known as
- Night of Anubis · Monster Flick · Night of the Flesh Eaters · Night of the Living Dead: 30th Anniversary Edition
- Banned in
- UK
Defined in the glossary: Zombie
Placed on the Section 3 seizure list during the video nasties panic, well over a decade after release.
Made for $114,000 in Pittsburgh. Invented the entire modern genre.
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.
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The cycle in depth
- Gut-munchers: the Italian zombie boom, 1979 to 1983
There was no first one. Argento recut Romero, Fulci forged the sequel, and Italy spent four years feeding the British censors.
Filed alongside
Dawn of the Dead
A shopping mall, four survivors, and Savini's finest hour.
Day of the Dead
The bleakest Romero. Bub is the only sympathetic character in it.
Zombi 2
A zombie fights a shark. Fulci's splinter shot is still the worst thing here.
White Zombie
Lugosi, Haitian folklore, and the first zombie film. No eating involved.
The Return of the Living Dead
Punk soundtrack, running zombies, and the film that invented 'BRAINS'.
The Beyond
Makes no sense whatsoever and is Fulci's best film. Dream logic, fully committed.
I Walked with a Zombie
Val Lewton doing Jane Eyre in the Caribbean. Beautiful and barely horror.
City of the Living Dead
The drill scene. Otherwise thin, but the atmosphere is thick.
The Crazies
A military bioweapon drives a town homicidally insane. Romero on institutional failure, again.
Cemetery Man
A cemetery caretaker shoots the returning dead and falls in love repeatedly. Beautiful and deranged.
Let Sleeping Corpses Lie
Spanish-Italian, shot in England, and much smarter than its stablemates.
Tombs of the Blind Dead
Eyeless Templars on skeletal horses in slow motion. Best monster design of the 70s.