Night of the Living Dead (1968 American Independent Horror film)

Night of the Living Dead is a 1968 American independent horror film directed, photographed, and edited by George A. Romero, with a screenplay by John Russo and Romero, 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 under assault by an enlarging group of flesh-eating, undead ghouls.

Having gained experience through directing television commercials and industrial films for their Pittsburgh-based production company The Latent Image, Romero and his friends Russo and Russell Streiner decided to fulfill their ambitions to make a feature film.

Electing to make a horror film that would capitalize on contemporary commercial interest in the genre, they formed a partnership with Karl Hardman and Marilyn Eastman of Hardman Associates called Image Ten. After evolving through multiple drafts, Russo and Romero's final script primarily drew influence from Richard Matheson's 1954 novel I Am Legend.

Principal photography took place between July 1967 and January 1968, mainly on location in Evans City; aside from the Image Ten team themselves, the cast and crew consisted of their friends and relatives, local stage and amateur actors, and residents from the area. Although the film was his directorial debut, Romero utilized many of the guerrilla filmmaking techniques he had homed in his commercial and industrial work to complete the film on a budget of approximately US$100,000.

Following its theatrical premiere in Pittsburgh on October 1, 1968, Night of the Living Dead eventually grossed US$12 million domestically and US$18 million internationally, earning more than 250 times its budget and making it one of the most profitable film productions ever made at the time.

Plot
Siblings Barbra and Johnny drive to a cemetery in rural Pennsylvania to visit their father's grave. Their car radio goes off the air due to technical difficulties. As they are leaving, a pale man wearing a tattered suit kills Johnny and attacks Barbra. She flees and takes shelter in a farmhouse, but finds the woman who lived there dead and half-eaten.

She sees a multiplying number of strange ghouls, led by the man from the cemetery, approaching the house. A man named Ben arrives, who secures the farmhouse by boarding the windows and doors and drives away the ghouls with a lever-action rifle.

Cast
Duane Jones as Ben
Judith O'Dea as Barbra
Karl Hardman as Harry Cooper
Marilyn Eastman as Helen Cooper
Keith Wayne as Tom. "Keith Wayne"
Judith Ridley as Judy. Ridley

Principal photography
Tombstone that the character Barbra (Judith O'Dea) clutches in the opening scene of the movie (Photo taken in 2017). According to the inscription on the tombstone itself, the tombstone marks the burial place of a man called "Nicholas Kramer" who lived from February 18, 1842, to March 17, 1917.
The small budget dictated much of the production process. According to Hardman, "We knew that we could not raise enough money to shoot a film on a par with the classic horror films with which we had all grown up. The best that we could do was to place our cast in a remote spot and then bring the horror to be visited on them in that spot". Scenes were filmed near Evans City, Pennsylvania, 30 miles (48 km) north of Pittsburgh in rural Butler County; the opening sequence was shot at the Evans City Cemetery on Franklin Road, south of the borough. The cemetery chapel was under warrant for demolition; however, Gary R. Steiner led a successful effort to raise $50,000 to restore the building, and the chapel is currently undergoing renovations.

The outdoor, indoor (downstairs), and basement scenes were filmed at a location northeast of Evans City, near a park. The basement door (external view) shown in the film was cut into a wall by the production team and led nowhere. As this house was scheduled for demolition, damage during filming was permitted. The site is now a turf farm.

Props and special effects were fairly simple and limited by the budget. The blood, for example, was Bosco Chocolate Syrup drizzled over cast members' bodies.[42] Consumed flesh consisted of roasted ham and entrails donated by one of the actors, who also owned a chain of butcher shops.