Every zombie you have ever seen on a screen, from The Walking Dead to 28 Days Later, owes something to a black-and-white film shot by a group of friends from Pittsburgh in 1967. Night of the Living Dead was made for about the price of a nice house, and it rewrote the rules of horror. Thanks to a mistake on the original prints, it also belongs to everyone, which is why you can watch the full film right here.
Turn the lights down. Even after half a century, the last ten minutes still leave audiences quiet.
Watch Night of the Living Dead (1968) full movie
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Film facts
- Year: 1968
- Director: George A. Romero
- Stars: Duane Jones, Judith O'Dea, Karl Hardman, Marilyn Eastman, Keith Wayne
- Runtime: About 96 minutes
- Genre: Horror / Zombie
Cast
The story (no spoilers)
Barbra and her brother Johnny drive out to a rural cemetery to put flowers on their father's grave. Johnny teases her about being scared, until a pale stranger stumbling between the headstones attacks them. Barbra escapes, half in shock, and stumbles into an empty farmhouse.
She is soon joined by Ben, a calm and practical man who starts boarding up the windows as more of the strange figures gather outside. Then they discover they are not alone: hiding in the cellar are the Cooper family, whose daughter has been bitten, and a young couple, Tom and Judy. The radio and TV bring scraps of news. Across the region, the recently dead are getting up, and they are hungry.
The real tension is inside the house. Ben wants to defend the ground floor; Harry Cooper insists the cellar is the only safe place. The siege outside is frightening, but the shouting match inside is what decides who lives.
Ending explained (spoilers!)
Spoiler warning: the next section reveals the ending. Watch the film first if you'd rather be surprised.
A plan to refuel a truck and escape ends in fire, killing Tom and Judy. The ghouls break through, Helen Cooper is killed by her own reanimated daughter, and Barbra is dragged out by the undead Johnny. Ben, the last one left, retreats to the very cellar he had argued against and survives the night. At dawn a posse of armed men sweeps the fields, shooting the dead. Ben hears them and goes upstairs. One of the men sees a figure at the window and shoots him in the head. The credits play over still photos of his body being dragged out with meat hooks and burned with the rest. The bleak, unexplained irony of that ending, landing in 1968, is a big part of why the film still matters.
Why it still matters
Before Romero, movie monsters mostly came from far away: castles, labs, outer space. Here the threat is your neighbour, and the people who are supposed to rescue you might be just as dangerous. The film's grainy, newsreel look made it feel uncomfortably real, and its refusal to give anyone a happy ending broke with almost everything Hollywood horror had done before.
Behind the scenes
- Romero cast Duane Jones, a Black actor, as the lead, and deliberately did not rewrite the part to comment on it. The choice made the ending land even harder. Source
- The production company, Image Ten, was formed by its members only to make this film; they eventually raised roughly $114,000. It went on to earn many times that worldwide. Source
- Most of the shooting took place near Evans City, Pennsylvania, about 30 miles north of Pittsburgh, and the opening was filmed at the real Evans City Cemetery. Source
- The Library of Congress added the film to the National Film Registry in 1999 as culturally, historically or aesthetically significant. Source
- The movie was originally titled Night of the Flesh Eaters. When the distributor changed the title, the copyright notice that sat under the old title was removed too. Source
Why it's free to watch
In 1968, US law required a copyright notice on published copies of a work. When the distributor retitled the film, the notice on the title frames was removed, so Night of the Living Dead entered the public domain on release. This is documented on Wikipedia's list of films in the public domain in the United States (“Missing copyright notice due to an error from the distributor”). Note that the later Criterion restoration is a separate, copyrighted release; the copy here is an older Internet Archive upload that predates it.
Watch next
- Nosferatu (1922)
- Carnival of Souls (1962)
- The Little Shop of Horrors (1960)
Sources
- Wikipedia: Night of the Living Dead
- Wikipedia: List of films in the public domain in the United States
- Internet Archive: Night Of The Living Dead HD
- Wikipedia: National Film Registry
Images are public domain or Creative Commons and are credited above. No AI-generated images are used on this page.
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