Night of the Living Dead

Name: Night of the Living Dead
Genre: Horror, Thriller, Science Fiction
Released: 1968-10-04
Duration: 1 h 36 min
Rating: 7.7
Cast: Judith O'Dea, Duane Jones, Marilyn Eastman, Karl Hardman, Judith Ridley

If it doesn't scare you, you're already dead!

Night of the Living Dead (1968)

1:36 (96 min)

Horror, Thriller, Science Fiction

United States

7.7/10
181 515

—
no scores

7.6/10
2848

7.8/10
151846

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All about film

Video 13

Photo 217

Actors and characters

Watch film Night of the Living Dead — NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD Trailer

1:14

Photo 217

Production

Image Ten

Release date

4 October 1968

Budget

$114 000

Revenue

$89 029

Director

George A. Romero

Scenario

George A. Romero

Producer

Russell Streiner

All team (17)

Short description

Night of the Living Dead begins as Barbara and her brother Johnny visit their father's grave in a rural Pennsylvania cemetery. A man attacks them there, and Barbara flees to a nearby farmhouse, where she is joined by Ben and several other people seeking shelter. Reports reaching the house describe the dead rising and attacking the living across the region. The survivors barricade themselves inside and spend the night holding off the attackers, whose numbers keep growing with every victim.

George A. Romero directed the film, his first of 14 features in chronological order, and wrote the screenplay with John A. Russo. It was produced by Russell Streiner and Karl Hardman for Image Ten. The cast includes Judith O'Dea as Barbra, Duane Jones as Ben, Marilyn Eastman as Helen Cooper, Karl Hardman as Harry Cooper, Judith Ridley as Judy and Keith Wayne as Tom, among 40 credited performers.

Released in October 1968, the film became a durable commercial success, with a worldwide box office of roughly 30 million USD on a modest production. On IMDb it holds 7.8/10 from about 152,000 votes, and on TMDB 7.6/10 from far fewer. A critics' rating of 9.2/10 across 82 reviews places it well above both audience scores.

What's left behind the scenes

In the second version of the script, the protagonist of "Night of Anubis” (the film’s title at that point) ran away from home and discovered a mountain of decaying corpses, which served as food for humanoids.
In the third script variation, the plot already resembled a familiar one – the film was about zombies and was titled "Night of the Flesh Eaters".
Since the film's budget was quite modest, the actors had to be recruited from local theaters. The main role went to Duane Jones – an actor from a Pittsburgh theater – which was very unusual at the time: heroic roles were not typically given to Black actors, but the financially constrained director had to choose the best of those who auditioned.
Duane Jones refused to read the lines of the main character written in the script and rewrote all his words himself. Marilyn Eastman did the same – she reworked the entire scene in the basement.
Chocolate syrup was used as blood in the film, worn-out clothes from thrift stores served as costumes, and wax from a funeral home was used instead of zombie makeup. All of this looked quite good in the film's black and white palette.
None of the Hollywood studios wanted to distribute such a brutal and hopeless production. The filmmakers were repeatedly asked to soften some scenes and change the ending, but they stood firm.
Columbia Pictures was interested in distributing the film, but due to the authors' unwillingness to change certain details, this studio also refused.
Filming of the short scene at the cemetery took two days.
The only distributor who showed interest in the film was Columbia, but they soon abandoned the project as well, because the film was in black and white, while everyone else was shooting in color. Ironically, in 1990, Columbia initiated a remake.
The film's investors were S. William Hainzman and Carl Hardman, who each contributed $30,000 in exchange for small roles. Another investor was a local butcher who provided a large amount of real blood and animal entrails for the filming, free of charge.
The word "zombie" is never uttered in the film.
The cemetery where the filming took place is Evans City Cemetery (Pennsylvania). In the 1990s, a tornado passed through it, which even "opened" several graves.
Christian fundamentalists declared the filmmakers to be devil worshippers.
The film was originally intended to be shot in color, but due to the small budget, it was filmed in black and white on 35mm film.
In 1999, the film was included in the U.S. National Film Registry.
In the scene where zombies devour bodies in a burnt-out car, fried ham with chocolate sauce was actually filmed. The filmmakers joked that such a combination could not fail to cause a gag reflex, so the actors playing zombies didn't even need to be made up.
Evans City Cemetery was chosen mainly for its seclusion and emptiness. It was located in a grove on a hill, and there were practically no visitors there. The filmmakers did not want to be the center of attention for onlookers or the police. Ironically, after the film's release, the cemetery became a place of pilgrimage for tourists and fans of the franchise.
The house chosen for filming did not have a basement as such, and therefore there was no staircase leading to it. All relevant scenes were filmed in the basement of a film studio in Pittsburgh.
The zombie's hand, which Tom, played by Keith Wayne, chopped off with a kitchen knife, was sculpted from clay and filled with chocolate syrup.
In the scene of the murder of Kira Shon’s mother (she played Karen Cooper), she struck a pillow located off-screen several times with a shovel, while someone from the crew threw handfuls of chocolate syrup at the wall (it was used instead of fake blood in the black-and-white film). The scene was dubbed with the screams of Marilyn Eastman, the actress playing Helen Cooper (the mother). Many years later, the shovel was acquired for a private collection at an online auction.
Initially, the film could have been a comedy: the first version of the script was called "Monster Flick" and told the story of teenage aliens arriving on Earth and befriending local peers.
According to the film's director, George A. Romero, he was inspired to create such a plot by Richard Matheson’s novel "I Am Legend," in which the entire population of Earth turned into vampires and besieged the home of the last survivor at night.
The title "Night of the Living Dead" was a condition for the Walter Reade Organization to distribute the film. "Night of the Flesh Eaters" was dropped to avoid confusion with the 1964 film "The Flesh Eaters."
Extras portraying zombies were paid $1 and given a t-shirt that read “I was a zombie in "Night of the Living Dead."
According to Romero, the original version of the film was ten minutes longer, but distributors forced him to "cut" it.
The "corpse" lying on the second floor of the house was crafted by George A. Romero himself. He used ping-pong balls for the eyes.
Barbara's (Judith O’Dea) and Johnny’s car belonged to the mother of the producer and the actor who played Johnny, Russell Streiner. Filming at the cemetery took two days. During a break, a car accidentally collided with it, leaving a dent. Screenwriter George A. Romero rewrote the scene so that the car stopped after crashing into a tree.