Night Of The Living Dead - Criterion Collection

Night of the Living Dead

Shot outside Pittsburgh on a shoestring budget, by a band of filmmakers determined to make their mark, Night of the Living Dead, directed by horror master George A. Romero, is a great story of independent cinema: a midnight hit turned box-office smash that became one of the most influential films of all time. A deceptively simple tale of a group of strangers trapped in a farmhouse who find themselves fending off a horde of recently dead, flesh-eating ghouls, Romero’s claustrophobic vision of a late-1960s America literally tearing itself apart rewrote the rules of the horror genre, combined gruesome gore with acute social commentary, and quietly broke ground by casting a black actor (Duane Jones) in its lead role. Stark, haunting, and more relevant than ever, Night of the Living Dead is back.


Night of the Living Dead was restored by the Museum of Modern Art and The Film Foundation, with funding provided by the George Lucas Family Foundation and the Celeste Bartos Preservation Fund.



SPECIAL FEATURES


New 4K digital restoration, supervised by director George A. Romero, coscreenwriter John A. Russo, sound engineer Gary R. Streiner, and producer Russell W. Streiner

New restoration of the monaural soundtrack, supervised by Romero and Gary Streiner and presented uncompressed on the Blu-ray

Night of Anubis, a never-before-presented work-print edit of the film

New program featuring filmmakers Frank Darabont, Guillermo del Toro, and Robert Rodriguez

Never-before-seen 16 mm dailies reel

New program featuring Russo on the commercial and industrial-film production company where key Night of the Living Dead filmmakers got their start

Two audio commentaries from 1994 featuring Romero, Russo, producer Karl Hardman, actor Judith O’Dea, and others

Archival interviews with Romero and actors Duane Jones and Judith Ridley

New programs about the film’s style and score

New interview program about the direction of ghouls, featuring members of the cast and crew

New interviews with Gary Streiner and Russell Streiner

Newsreels from 1967

Trailer, radio spots, and TV spots

English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing

PLUS: An essay by critic Stuart Klawans