Night of the Living Dead

Shot outside Pittsburgh for around 114,000 dollars, in black and white because that was what the budget allowed. The distributor changed the title and dropped the copyright notice from the prints, which under the law of the time pushed the film straight into the public domain. Romero never made real money from it, and it played on television constantly for decades as a result.

Almost everything people believe about zombies starts here, and the word is never used in the film.

Duane Jones was cast as Ben because he gave the best audition. Nothing in the script comments on his being Black, which in 1968 was close to unheard of. Then the film ends the way it ends, and the fact that nobody wrote it as a statement makes it considerably worse to sit through.