My love letter to Night of The Living Dead for the BFI.

'Premiering 50 years ago, on 1 October 1968, George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead is often spoken of as a manifesto for the modern horror film. 

Taking its inspiration from the racial and political strife of late-60s America, it created, as a BFI programme booklet put it in 2004, "a verite nightmare which overturned the conventions of fantastical horror".

Romero took the genre out of its gothic castles and swept away the cobwebs. Night of the Living Dead marked a transition in horror cinema: from the classic to the modern. Less remarked upon, though, is how Romero effects this transition within the film itself, it its opening scenes.'

To read the rest of my BFI article on Night of the Living Dead, go here