"Night of the Living Dead" is an American independent horror and cult film directed by George A. Romero and starring Duane Jones, Judith O'Dea and Karl Hardman. It premiered on October 1, 1968, and was completed on a US$114,000 budget. After decades of cinematic re-releases, the film ultimately became a financial success, grossing $12 million domestically and $18 million internationally. Night of the Living Dead was heavily criticized at its release owing to explicit content, but eventually garnered critical acclaim and has been selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry as a film deemed "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.

In addition to the obvious issue of graphic depictions of cannibalism, many other features of the film would have been very disorienting to 1968 audiences. Unlike other horror movies, the Black guy doesn't get killed first -- in fact, he assumes the role of leader of the group of characters and is clearly the most competent to do so. The white middle class family man, on the other hand, is a craven coward. The taboo against committing murder is worn down by the need to fight the human-appearing living dead; eventually characters become willing to kill each other to survive. Characters we come to care about are burned alive, dismembered, and devoured. Technology like motor vehicles, telephones, and electricity fail when they are needed, and the whole debacle is blamed on a space probe gone awry and the invisible, inescapable poison, radiation. The US military reflexively tries to keep secrets from the American people, even when it has no actual information to guard. The police are so flippant doing their job killing zombies that they lose sight of the humanity of the living citizens they are supposedly protecting. Members of the press are happy to become chummy with the cops and don't even think to ask them hard questions. The scientists are cold and rational, advising the immediate cremation of the dead, who are "just dead flesh." For a country struggling with the issues of rapid technological changes, the Cold War, the civil rights movement, the Vietnam war and protests, religious cults, the sexual revolution, feminism, and McCarthyism, these themes probably further magnified the discomfort the cannibalism alone would have caused.