Night Of The Living Dead Turns 50 This Month

George Romero's "Night of The Living Dead", one of my favorite horror movies (actually, one of my favorite movies PERIOD), turned half a century old on October 1st.

According to Wikipedia, the film is about a group of seven strangers trapped in a farmhouse in rural Pennsylvania during a zombie apocalypse brought on by a radiation cloud.

This classic, low-budget, movie set up the rules for all the modern zombie movies that would follow.  Rules like: the zombie "virus" is transmitted through bites and/or scratches, the only way to kill them is to destroy the brain, and that they are mindless people eating machines.

Filmed outside Pittsburgh, it only cost $114,000 to make, but brought in $12 million domestically and $18 million internationally.

Due to the fact it was shown as a matinee in most theaters, common for horror and scifi movies of the 1960s, it sparked controversy.  In many showings, the audience consisted primarily of pre-teen and teenage boys.  And, as the MPAA rating system did not go into effect until later that year, there was no way for parents to know exactly how violent the movie was.

If you've never seen this classic, you need to, and even though there is a colorized version available, it really should be experienced in original black and white.

After that, watch the first two sequels: "Dawn of The Dead" (1978, then the 2004 remake) and "Dawn of The Dead" (1985).