Night of the living dead - Joe Kane

‘They’re coming for you, Barbara…’With these five words, first heard at a handful of drive-in cinemas in 1968, a terrifying movie classic was born.‘Yeah, they’re dead, they’re all messed up.’George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, filmed at nights and weekends on a shoe-string budget of just $114,000, was the original indie hit. With its graphic, taboo-busting scenes of the living dead feasting on human flesh – including a six-year-old zombie child chowing down on her daddy’s severed arm – it broke all the rules, stunning unsuspecting audiences into horrified silence.‘Beat ’em or burn ’em, they go up pretty easy.’Despite visual effects which substituted chocolate syrup for blood, roast ham for flesh and relied on entrails from a butcher’s shop owned by one of the cast, the movie kick-started the midnight gore-fest phenomenon, earned hundreds of millions of dollars worldwide and spawned an entire zombie industry. Yet a quirk of copyright law meant the filmmakers never saw a dime. Now, for the first time, Joe Kane presents the story of the ultimate zombie movie’s creation and five-decade legacy, one that, via countless remakes, sequels, knock-offs, tributes and spoofs, will haunt cinemagoers for as long as the celluloid undead walk the earth.