Night of the Living Dead (1968): Duane Jones, Judith O'Dea, Karl Hardman, and Marilyn Eastman. Directed by George A. Romero, Screenplay by John A. Russo and George A. Romero.

Not the first zombie movie ever made, but the first to introduce the undead as a worldwide plague, making Romero the father of the modern zombie.

"Night of the Living Dead" is a perfect example of how much can be done with very little. Made pretty much on a whim by Romero and his business partners (John Russo, Russell Streiner, Karl Hardman and Marilyn Eastman) at Latent Image in between corporate videos and commercials. The crew doubled-up on tasks and pitched in where they could. Hardman has said, since they couldn't afford to do a film where the characters went out and came across horror, "The best that we could do was to place our cast in a remote spot and then bring the horror to be visited on them in that spot".

The result is a film that represents a turning point in the American horror film where the monsters entered the realm of everyday America (on a budget). Like "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" which would follow, the very fact that the film is crudely shot only helps add to the terror of the situation. "Night of the Living Dead" hit at the right point in history, when Americans were looking at similar horror on the nightly news (shot similarly in black and white) from Vietnam. Quite a few high brow film critics over the years have drawn a direct correlation between the film and what was going on in America in the late 60's. All-in-all, a bit of a stretch. Trie, the filmmakers were of a certain age and sentiment, but it's probably due more to the fact that the film found life on the midnight movie circuit, frequented by trendy intellectuals and radicals alike who may have thought they needed a reason to be watching a horror film, other than the sheer thrill of it.

"Night of the Living Dead" spawned sequels that are still being produced today, as well as numerous imitators (not to mention remakes as well). There are more than a couple of stand-out scenes and quotable lines in the film ("They're coming to get you Barbara") but what makes "Night of the Living Dead" for me is the ending - no spoilers - which instantly elevates it above any other quickie horror film that was being made at the time to the level of "film" (rather than movie). It's one of the few horror films in the last 100 years that can even claim this I think.

Due to a last minute title change by the distributor, the film fell into public domain immediately upon it's release. Subsequent to this, you can legally download it for free off the Internet from archive.org, which has a mind-numbing array of other public domain feature films available for immediate (legal) download.