Night of the living dead (1968)

A group of escapees from a growing army of flesh-eating zombies spreading across the countryside takes refuge in a house. With EC horror comics of the fifties as an acknowledged influence, this film, at times technically rough, was produced independently on a low budget. It has become a horror/science fiction classic, which, like “The Birds”, can be placed in the Armageddon sub-genre: the world threatened with extinction. It is also one of the earliest horror films in which nihilistic black humour is used to systematically destroy the underpinnings of an ordered society as generic conventions, and the expectations that they arouse, are undercut. This film offered terror to audiences, without the assurance that it was an otherworldly threat - in Romero’s classic the danger lay from within bland suburban confines. The casting of an African-American man as the hero, and the unforgettable ending, is a reflection of the incendiary politics of the times. Cast includes Duane Jones, Judith O’Dea, Karl Hardman, Marilyn Eastman.