Film Forum

(1968, George Romero) In broad daylight, siblings visiting their father’s grave chortle along with the audience as a looming figure lumbers toward them in laughably clumsy fashion...but then he keeps coming...and coming...and coming... The terror never lets up as flesh-eating zombies (“one of our backers was a meat-packing company” – Romero) besiege a lonely farmhouse. Infusions of bizarre black humor (“we had a lot of fun with those news bulletins” – Romero) and torching of such ironclad conventions as “the black guy goes first” and “she’ll snap out of it in time” help make this one of the classics of the genre and one of the all-time white knuckle fights. Approx. 96 min.​ New 4K DCP restoration.

A JANUS FILMS RELEASE

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD was restored by The Museum of Modern Art and The Film Foundation. Funding provided by the George Lucas Family Foundation and the Celeste Bartos Fund for Film Preservation.

The restoration was overseen by George A. Romero and Image Ten—most especially, Gary Streiner, Russ Streiner, and John Russo—with restoration work done by Cineric Inc, NYC, and Audio Mechanics, Burbank, CA.

Reviews

“THE FIRST-EVER SUBVERSIVE HORROR MOVIE!”
– Elliot Stein

“Violates so many strong taboos — cannibalism, incest, necrophilia — that it leaves audiences giddy and hysterical!”
– Dave Kehr

“It would be fun to be able to dismiss this as undoubtedly the best movie ever made in Pittsburgh, but it also happens to be one of the most gruesomely terrifying movies ever made — and when you leave the theatre you may wish you could forget the whole horrible experience... The film’s grainy, banal seriousness works for it — gives it a crude realism; even the flatness of the amateurish acting and the unfunny attempts at campy comedy add, somehow, to the horror — there’s no art to transmute the ghoulishness.”
– Pauline Kael

“A remarkable vision of the late sixties — offering the most literal possible depiction of America devouring itself.”
– J. Hoberman and Jonathan Rosenbaum, Midnight Movies

“Night of the Living Dead came out of nowhere, or to be more precise, Pittsburgh, and turned into the most influential horror film since Psycho... This was not Transylvania, but Pennsylvania – this was Middle America at war, and the zombie carnage seemed a grotesque echo of the conflict then raging in Vietnam...disillusionment with government and patriarchal nuclear family is total.”
– Elliot Stein, Village Voice

“Shattered the conventions of horror and paved the way for the subversive visions of directors like David Cronenberg, Tobe Hooper and Sam Raimi... Chuckle, if you can, during the first few minutes; because after that laughter catches in the throat as the clammy hand of terror tightens its grip.”
– Nigel Floyd, Time Out (London)

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