On this date in 1968 the cult horror movie Night of the Living Dead had its world première in Pittsburgh. 10 facts about it.
Writer/director George A. Romero, writer John A. Russo, and actor Rudy Ricci worked together at the Latent Image, their Pittsburgh-based commercial film company. In 1967 they decided to try their hands at a feature film. Originally, the film was going to be about adolescent aliens coming to Earth and causing mayhem; but this idea was shelved when the trio realised there wasn’t enough money in their budget to create a convincing space ship. Aliens eating corpses was another idea, and it was this, and Richard Matheson’s apocalyptic horror novel I Am Legend, that Romero used to create the first few pages of the script.
This film is known as the first zombie film as we know them. Until this point, the word “zombie” referred to a concept from Haitian folklore, a reanimated slave. A 1932 film called White Zombie was about such slaves, with a racial and post-colonial tension theme. Zombies eating flesh, preying on the living and only killed by shooting in the head are tropes introduced by Night of the Living Dead. That said, the word “zombie” was never used in the film. The dead are referred to either as “ghouls”, "flesh eaters” or "those things."
Evans City Cemetery was chosen as a location because it was remote and surrounded by woods, so it was less likely that members of the public or the police would come along asking questions. The farmhouse was a house soon to be demolished and loaned by the owner. George A. Romero joked that his crew would demolish the house for him, but first they had to clean it up to make it look lived in.
Spoiler alert. It would be another month before the US movie rating system was instituted on 1 November 1968. Hence Night of the Living Dead is one of the last films in America to be released without a rating. This meant children were free to buy tickets and go and see it unaccompanied. Film critic Roger Ebert was critical of parents who allowed their children to see it, because, not only was it gory and scary, the hero dies in the end, unlike the Saturday morning pictures they were used to, in which the hero would always triumph.
It was a rare thing in the 1960s for a black actor to be cast in a leading role when the rest of the cast was mostly white. Unknown Duane Jones got the part because his audition was best. The character of Ben was even changed from the original concept of an angry, foul-mouthed truck driver to a character that suited Jones better. Jones himself helped re-work his lines to fit.
Chocolate syrup or red ink was used as Blood, depending on the effect required. The gore eaten by the ghouls was leftovers from lunch – roast ham, burgers, meatball Sandwiches – smeared in chocolate syrup.
Because it was likely some re-animated corpses would have been naked in the morgue, it was decided at least one of the ghoul extras should be nude. An artist’s model was recruited to be the naked ghoul. Then word got out there was going to be a naked person on set which attracted an audience of locals who set up their lawn chairs around the edge of the set so they could watch. Judith Ridley, who played Judy, said. “It was funny to see the rest of the zombies trying to keep their eyes elsewhere instead of looking down at the obvious places on the nude one.”
The working title was "Monster Flick." A considered title was "Night of Anubis," Anubis being the god of mummification in ancient Egypt, but that was rejected as most film-goers were unlikely to get the reference. The title decided upon was actually Night of the Flesh Eaters, but lawyers representing the makers of a 1964 film called The Flesh Eaters threatened to sue, so the title was changed to Night of the Living Dead. The last minute title changed resulted in the copyright notices being left off the credits, which meant the film was assumed from the start to be in the public domain. The ruling that copyright goes without saying and a notice isn’t necessary was some years away. Hence, in spite of efforts to get copyright retroactively in federal court, Night of the Living Dead remains in the public domain.
George A. Romero and John Russo make cameo appearances, Romero as a reporter in Washington DC and Russo as a ghoul who makes it into the farmhouse only to be struck with a tyre iron.
The budget was $114,000 (equivalent to $977,841 in 2024) and the film grossed approximately $30 million (equivalent to $257,326,430 in 2024). It made over 263 times its budget and so is one of the most profitable films ever.
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