Night of the Living Dead (1968) on Netflix
NR19681h 36mHorrorSci-FiThriller
Barbra and Johnny Blair visit their father's grave in rural Pennsylvania, where a pale man attacks them. She flees to a farmhouse, finds a corpse inside, and is joined by Ben.
- Netflix4.3/5
- IMDb7.8/10152,505 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes95%
Trailer
Plot summary
A pale attacker in a rural Pennsylvania cemetery sends Barbra running to a nearby farmhouse, where the resident's half-eaten corpse lies on the stairs. Ben arrives, takes her for the homeowner, drives off the ghouls gathering outside and boards the windows and doors. Barbra is nearly catatonic, so he looks after her. Others were already hiding in the cellar: Harry Cooper and Helen, his wife, with their daughter Karen, bitten on the arm after ghouls overturned their car. Tom and Judy, a teenage couple, took cover there after hearing an emergency broadcast.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Night of the Living Dead mistakenly entered the public domain because its original distributor failed to replace the copyright notice when the title changed: the Walter Reade Organization removed the notice while retitling it from Night of the Flesh Eaters.
- The lead role was originally written for a white actor, but George A. Romero cast black actor Duane Jones and deliberately left the script unchanged, at a time when very few black actors played leading roles.
- George A. Romero never used the word "zombie" in the 1968 film or its script, calling the flesh-eaters "ghouls" because he felt they were something new; the term "zombie" was applied to the film retroactively afterwards.
- The film's gore was cheaply made: the blood was Bosco Chocolate Syrup drizzled over the cast, and the flesh the ghouls ate was meat and offal donated by an investor's butcher shop.
- Lacking the money to build or buy a house for the main set, the filmmakers rented a farmhouse that was scheduled for demolition; some crew members slept there during the shoot and bathed in a nearby creek.
- In February 2020, Netflix took Night of the Living Dead off its streaming service in Germany following a 2017 legal request, because a version of the film is banned in that country.
- Because it is in the public domain, Night of the Living Dead has been remade by many independent producers; it has been remade more than any other movie.
- Night of the Living Dead grossed $12 million domestically and $18 million internationally, more than 250 times its budget, making it one of the most profitable film productions of all time.
