Birth of the Living Dead

Welcome to a night

of total terror.

In 1967, a 27 year old

college drop out from the Bronx

named George A. Romero directed

a low budget horror film.

Night of the Living Dead!

The film introduced the world

to a new kind of monster...

Persons who have recently died

have been returning to life

and committing acts of murder.

...the flesh eating zombie.

This spawned an entire genre

of TV shows and movies, novels,

comic books, video games

and zombie conventions,

thriving industries

to this day.

But at the time "Night of

the Living Dead" was made,

I don't think

audiences were ready

for "Night of the Living Dead."

It spoke to its audience

in ways few horror films

had ever done before.

And I think that's why

they were drawn to it.

The first time you

saw it you realized

it was making a place for itself

in a time capsule of some sort.

No movie had that kind

of impact at that time.

It was this tiny

little movie in Pittsburgh

that seemed to have no chance.

And it, you know,

changed the world.

It was no big thing, man.

Who knew that we were ever even

going to finish this movie.

It was just like a bunch

of people getting together

and we were going

to try to make a movie.

And none of us knew that it

was ever going to get finished.

Let alone become something

as well-known as it is.

George Romero started his first

film production company

in the city of Pittsburgh

in 1963.

He called it, the Latent Image.

It's a beautiful day

in this neighborhood

A beautiful day

for a neighbor

Would you be mine

Could you be mine

We all weaned into the business

on Fred Rogers,

"Mr. Rogers Neighborhood."

Almost everybody in Pittsburgh

who works in the biz now

worked for Fred for a while.

I have always wanted to have

a neighbor just like you

Romero and his partners

make several short films

for the children's

television series,

including

"Things that Feel Soft"

and "Mr. Rogers

Gets a Tonsillectomy."

Up in the ceiling were

some lights I could see.

And the kind eyes

of the people

in the operating room.

Even though they wore masks,

I could see their kind eyes.

Which remains one of the

scariest movies I've ever done.

The Latent Image also finds

opportunity in a new industry.

At the time, you know,

commercials were live.

The beer commercials used

to be the sportscaster.

Even when you were

able to drink.

You were actually able to drink

beer on camera in a commercial.

These guys, by the time,

if you went into extra innings,

it was like...

And all of a sudden,

we come along and say,

"You know, you can do

this sh*t on film, man."

When you hit a dry spell,

what's the natural way

to wet it down?

Hey honey! How about a beer?

With a tall, cold Duke.

Duquesne beer at the time,

which is no longer.

Great times, great beer,

they go together.

And there's no better beer

for great times than Iron City.

Iron's still there.

Iron! Gimme an Iron!

And how about that

Iron City flavor?

Rich. Robust.

Delicious.

I could shoot, I could record,

I was an editor.

You know, I wound

up doing it all.

So it was all learn by doing.

I shot more film

at the Latent Image

than I've shot over the course

of all the feature films

that I've made.

I mean, because we were

shooting all the time.

In those days, it was all film.

So, you had to wait for it

to come back from the lab.

There were local labs.

They were not that reliable.

You'd put your heart

into shooting this stuff

and the guy would

call up and say,

"You know what,

we f***ed it up."

But once the film came back,

as long as it looked okay man,

as soon as the film

walked in the door

I'd sit there

until it was edited.

I'd sit there sometimes

36, 48 hours, get it done.

You know I basically

lived there.

And I just lived, breathed

and drank the stuff.

No thought

for family or whatever;

I just was, making movies, man.

Preview films presents,

"The Calgon Story."

We did this thing called,

"The Calgon Story."

It was a knock off

of, "Fantastic Voyage."

Add the Calgon!

And it was the biggest

commercial that we've ever done.

It's working!

The grey is gone!

The fibers are clean!

Let's get out of here.

I think I'm in love with you.

And they wanted 35

so we sacrificed our profit

and went out

and bought a 35mm camera.

We started to think

that we could actually

make movies, you know.

When we finally

had the equipment

and we thought we could

make a movie, I wanted,

I had this really high minded

idea to this Bergmanesque

sort of "Virgin Spring"

kind of a movie.

And so I wrote this thing

about two teenagers

in the middle ages.

I mean, boy, talk about reaching

for the moon, right?

Romero's search

for investors for his first

feature-length screenplay,

"Whine of the Fawn,"

ultimately failed.

Eventually we abandoned

it and decided to do,

maybe we should do something

a little more commercial.

And, so we decided

to do a horror flick.

And I had read a novel

called, "I am Legend."

A Richard Matheson novel.

And it seemed to me that it

was about revolution underneath.

But we were also

very aware of the time,

you know, and the sort

of anger of the 60s.

The year was 1967.

The U.S. was fighting

an increasingly unpopular war

in Vietnam.

At home in the U.S.,

despite historic strides made

during the civil rights era,

rampant racism still ruled.

After suffering continued

unchecked discrimination,

African Americans

took to the streets.

Some called it rioting.

Others called it revolution.

We stand on the eve

of a black revolution, brothers.

Masses of our people

are in the streets.

They're fighting tit for tat,

two for two,

an eye for an eye

and a life for a life.

The summer of '67 was the summer

of riots in Newark and Detroit.

And the idea of

the "American Ghetto"

really started to take hold

in the public consciousness

as a kind of symptom

of the Civil Rights movement

whereas in the 50s

and early 60s

it would have been

lunch counters

and marches in southern

cities and busses.

Now, it was about anger.

There was a good deal

of sort of anger.

You know, I think mostly

that the 60s didn't work.

You know, we thought

we had changed the world

or were part of some

sort of a reform

that was going to make

things better.

And all of a sudden

it wasn't any better.

It wasn't any different.

Let's get off the street!

Get the lead out of your ass!

So I think there was a bit of

rage, a bit of disappointment.

So I invented these characters.

In my mind

they were just ghouls.

The dead are

coming back to life.

That's the revolution.

That's the big thing

that everybody's missing.

And we just wanted to make

as ballsy a horror film

as we could make.

Romero and nine

other investors --

including several partners

from the Latent Image --

form a new company

called, "Image 10."

They rent an abandoned farmhouse

for the film's primary location.

Initially, ten of us

kicked in 600 bucks,

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