![]() Like a nightmare, it seemed to take shreds of contemporary reality – Civil Rights protests, the increasingly ugly Vietnam war – and turned them into something new. Romero’s film was, however, more than just a splatter movie. The New Yorker‘s Pauline Kael called it “one of the most gruesomely terrifying movies ever made.” ![]() Night of the Living Dead eventually made its debut in the autumn of 1968, and reactions were as visceral as the movie itself: some railed against its graphic violence the late Roger Ebert wrote a lengthy piece detailing the shocked response from its young audience. ![]() ![]() Eventually, the Walter Reade Organization, which owned a chain of cinemas around the state, finally gave Romero’s movie a home. Indeed, Night of the Living Dead‘s gore, violence and apocalyptic tone were such that Romero’s initial attempts to sell the film to distributors in New York ended in failure. The copious gouts of blood splashed around were actually generous helpings of chocolate syrup. Shot on a budget of just $114,000, Night of the Living Dead (as it was later renamed) was aggressively lo-fi: its producer, Russell Streiner, also played one of the film’s first victims – he gets the immortal line, “They’re coming to get you, Barbara” before he’s attacked by a shambling zombie. ![]()
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