Night of the Living Dead is known as the first modern horror movie ever filmed and produced. Night of the Living Dead was released in October 1968 and first premiered in Pittsburgh. The famous director that was responsible for this masterpiece was George A. Romero. It was produced by Russel W. Streiner, and the screenplay was done by John Russo.

Night of the Living Dead was a low budget movie; Romero was only able to work with 114,000 dollars for filming, editing and special effects. The good news is that it grossed 30 million dollars at the box office. The United States during the late 60s was going through cultural change, and the lead role was an African actor named Duane L. Jones. Because of this role most theaters around the United States boycotted Night of the Living Dead because he was the main role in the movie.

It’s been said that if theaters were not to boycott the movie Night of the Living Dead, it would have doubled at the box office. Due to the lack of a significant budget, George Romero had to write the script himself with the support of John Russo; in fact throughout the production of the rest of his movies, he wrote all of his scripts. The script for Night of the Living Dead was mostly based around the book I am Legend by Richard Matheson. The first version of the script consisted of aliens from outer space visiting earth and befriending a group of teenagers. The second version of the script consisted of a young man who runs away from home and discovers rotting corpses that the aliens use for food and are scattered across the meadow. Romero and Russo tossed around the idea of them being flesh eaters and then implemented the idea of dying corpses reanimating and being flesh eaters. This was what the final draft of the script consisted of and later got refined into the movie.

Since most of the budget went to the writing and production, there was not a lot of money left for the actual filming. The solution the team came up with was to have the actors stay at a central location and bring the horror movie to them. Since the release of Night of the Living Dead, it spawned a bunch of different sequels directed by Romero and changed the horror genre for the better and also changed the perspective of the “zombie” and that was the inspiration for hundreds of other movies, shows and video games.