Birth Of The Zombie

Fifty years after its premiere, Night of the Living Dead is still terrifying audiences and influencing culture

- Andrew Whalen ​​​​​​​

Thunder rolls over The cemetery. As Johnny and his sister walk through a graveyard, he taunts her with the now-famous line: “They’re coming to get you, Barbra!” A strange man in a tattered suit is walking toward them. He comes awkwardly close, his expression vacant. Barbra bows her head and starts to walk away—and then he grabs her.

Who is this man? What is the nature of this attack? In 2018, the answers are obvious: He is the undead, and he craves the flesh of the living. But when Night of the Living Dead premiered at the Fulton Theater in Pittsburgh on October 1, 1968, there was no precedent. Zombies, at least as we know them today, had yet to be invented.

That task fell to George Romero, a 27-year-old film buff from the Bronx, and his college friend Russell Streiner. In the early 1960s, they started a commercial production firm, Latent Image, to do local beer commercials in Pittsburgh but soon landed big corporate clients; they shot “Mr. Rogers Gets a Tonsillectomy” and other segments for Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. What they really wanted to do, though, was make a movie.