Above: The Night of the Living Dead premiere at Pittsburgh’s Fulton Theater (now the Byham Theater) on October 1, 1968. The film was shot in rural Pittsburgh for a little over $100,000. It grossed $12 million domestically and $18 million internationally. The photo comes from The Complete Night of the Living Dead Filmbook (1985) by John Russo. I found it online at The Sweetest Psychopath.
Below: The Fulton again. According to Cinema Treasures, the photo is from 1981 or 1982, but Day of the Dead didn’t come out until 1985 (I was working in a video store at the time and remember eagerly awaiting the VHS release). You’ll see Sky Bandits on another marquee to the left. That movie came out on October 31, 1986.
The original Dead Trilogy in one sitting on Halloween in 1986? Mercy.
I remembering finding this old vhs as a small child, with a scratched off label and sharpee marker titling it “Night of the Living Dead.” My mother took it from me and told me never to watch it or it would give me nightmares. Eventually my curiosity got the best of me and I snatched the video up one night and watched it. And sure as she was, I had some messed up nightmares. It’s kinda comical in some ways to rewatch it, but this movie really did set the tone for zombie flicks to come, along with Romero’s Dawn of the Dead sequel. And the original still is eerie on some level.
I can’t remember when I saw it the first time, but I was really young, and it scared the shit out of me. I still love the movie, and wrote an article about it a few years ago for a 40th anniversary special.
One of Romero’s inspirations for NotLD was The Thing from Another World (1951). It’s a really fun double feature, if you ever get the chance…