Night Of The Living Dead (Millennium Edition) DVD

• Newly approved THX transfer
• Trailers/TV spots
• Dual commentary tracks featuring creator/director George A. Romero and the entire cast
• Film parody "Night of the Living Bread"
• Original mono soundtrack
• Dolby Digital 5.1 remix
• Still photo gallery, featuring rare color photos
• The history of Romero's company: The Latent Image
• Scenes from the "lost" Romero film "There's Always Vanilla"
• Video interview with "Night of the Living Dead's" Judy Ridley
• Final interview by Star Duane Jones
• Foreign and domestic posters and collectibles
• Original props
• The entire original shooting script
• Cast members' personal scrapbooks
• THX Optimizer to assure proper TV/monitor calibration
• Romero-directed TV spots and short films
• Full-color insert featuring liner notes by Stephen King

Director: George A. Romero
Judith O'Dea, Russ Streiner, Duane Jones, Karl Hardman, Keith Wayne

When unexpected radiation raises the dead, a microcosm of Average America has to battle flesh-eating zombies in George A. Romero's landmark cheapie horror film. Siblings Johnny (Russell Streiner) and Barbara (Judith O'Dea) whine and pout their way through a visit to their father's grave in a small Pennsylvania town, but it all takes a turn for the worse when a zombie kills Johnny. Barbara flees to an isolated farmhouse where a family, a teen couple, and a lone man named Ben (Duane Jones) are already holed up. Bickering and panic ensue as the group tries to figure out how best to escape, while hoards of undead converge on the house; news reports reveal that fire wards them off, while a local sheriff-led posse discovers that if you "kill the brain, you kill the ghoul." After a night of immolation and parricide, one survivor is left in the house ... . Romero's grainy black-and-white cinematography and casting of locals emphasize the terror lurking in ordinary life; as in Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds (1963), Romero's victims are not attacked because they did anything wrong, and the randomness makes the attacks all the more horrifying. Nothing holds the key to salvation, either, whether it's family, love, or Law. Topping off the existential dread is Romero's then-extreme use of gore, as zombies nibble on limbs and viscera. Initially distributed by a Manhattan theater chain owner, Night, made for about $100,000, was dismissed as exploitation, but after a 1969 re-release, it began to attract favorable attention for scarily tapping into Vietnam-era uncertainty and nihilistic anxiety. By 1979, it had grossed over $12 million, inspired a cycle of apocalyptic splatter films like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), and set the standard for finding horror in the mundane. However cheesy the film may look, few horror movies reach a conclusion as desolately unsettling.