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Night Of The Living Dead [1968] |
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Horror
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Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Night of the Living Dead is a seminal 1968 black-and-white independent horror film directed by George A. Romero. Early drafts of the script were titled Monster Flick, but it was known as Night of Anubis and Night of the Flesh Eaters during production. The film stars Duane Jones as Ben and Judith O'Dea as Barbra. The plot revolves around the mysterious reanimation of the dead and the efforts of Ben, Barbra and five others to survive the night while trapped in a rural Pennsylvania farmhouse.
Romero produced the film on the small budget of $114,000, but after a decade of theatrical re-releases it had grossed an estimated $12 million in the United States and $30 million internationally. Night of the Living Dead was strongly criticized at the time of its release for its graphic content, but three decades later the Library of Congress entered it into the United States National Film Registry with other films deemed "historically, culturally or aesthetically important."
The culture of Vietnam-era America had a tremendous impact on the film. It is so thoroughly laden with critiques of late-1960s American society that one historian described the film as "subversive on many levels." While not the first zombie film made, Night of the Living Dead influenced countless films and is perhaps the defining influence on the modern pop-culture zombie archetype. The film is the first of five Dead films (completed or pending) directed by Romero. It has been remade twice, in 1990 and in 2006.
Night of the Living Dead lapsed into the public domain because the original theatrical distributor, the Walter Reade Organization, neglected to place a copyright notice on the prints. In 1968, United States copyright law required a proper notice for a work to maintain a copyright. Image Ten displayed such a notice on the title frames of the film beneath the original title, Night of the Flesh Eaters. The distributor removed the statement when it changed the title. According to George Romero, Walter Reade "ripped us off."
Because of the public domain status, the film is sold on home video by several distributors. As of 2006, the Internet Movie Database lists 23 copies of Night of the Living Dead retailing on DVD and nineteen on VHS. The original film is available for download at no cost on Internet sites such as Google Video and Internet Archive. As of January 3, 2007, it was the Internet Archive's most downloaded film. Elite Entertainment released a director-approved and fully-restored version of the film. The first Elite release was a laserdisc in which Romero participated in the supplements. The first Elite DVD was released as a single-layer DVD and some of the extras from the laserdisc were dropped due to space limitations but they were included in Elite's current Millennium Edition. Wikipedia
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