George Romero's NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD
is a low-budget, homegrown classic that had great difficulty finding a distributor
at the time of its 1968 release, and has since become one of the most influential
horror films of all time. Aside from its visceral impact years before realistic
gore became the fashion, the film is also important for its portrayal of a black
man as the protagonist during a time when race relations were an extremely sensitive
issue in the United States.
Seven people secluded in a Pennsylvania
farmhouse face relentless attacks by reanimated corpses seeking to eat their
flesh. The group, which includes a married couple and their daughter, a pair
of young lovers, and an African-American man, try to keep their sanity as the
living dead try endlessly to enter the house. The only way to stop the zombies
is to burn them or issue a severe blow to their heads. Radio news reports tell
of the plague taking over the eastern United States, while the ever-decreasing
band of survivors rapidly loses ground in the battle to both keep peace with
one another and stay alive.
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