Night of the Living Dead

Shot outside Pittsburgh on a shoestring budget, by a band of filmmakers determined to make their mark, Night of the Living Dead, directed by horror master George A. Romero, is a great story of independent cinema: a midnight hit turned box-office smash that became one of the most influential films of all time. A deceptively simple tale of a group of strangers trapped in a farmhouse who find themselves fending off a horde of recently dead, flesh-eating ghouls, Romero’s claustrophobic vision of a late-1960s America literally tearing itself apart rewrote the rules of the horror genre, combining gruesome gore with acute social commentary and quietly breaking ground by casting a Black actor (Duane Jones) in its lead role.

4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• New 4K digital restoration, supervised by director George A. Romero, coscreenwriter John A. Russo, sound engineer Gary R. Streiner, and producer Russell W. Streiner

• New restoration of the monaural soundtrack, supervised by Romero and Gary Streiner and presented uncompressed

• One 4K UHD disc of the film and two Blu-rays with the film and special features

• Night of Anubis, a work-print edit of the film

• Program featuring filmmakers Frank Darabont, Guillermo del Toro, and Robert Rodriguez

• Sixteen-millimeter dailies reel

• Program featuring Russo on the commercial and industrial film production company where key Night of the Living Dead participants got their starts

• Two audio commentaries from 1994 featuring Romero, Russo, producer Karl Hardman, actor Judith O’Dea, and others

• Archival interviews with Romero and actors Duane Jones and Judith Ridley

• Programs about the film’s style and score

• Interview program about the direction of ghouls, featuring members of the cast and crew

• Interviews with Gary Streiner and Russell Streiner

• Newsreels from 1967

• Trailer, radio spots, and TV spots

• PLUS: An essay by critic Stuart Klawans
  
  Illustration by Sean Phillips