In October of 1968, a low-budget horror film entitled Night of the Living Dead, directed and co-written by independent filmmaker George Romero, opened in Pittsburgh, far from Hollywood and the mainstream cinema. Shot in the Pennsylvania countryside using mostly amateur actors and boasting ludicrously low production values, Romero's short black-and-white film nevertheless managed to leave its first viewers disturbed, even traumatized, through its unflinching depiction of bloody violence and cannibalism. The film set a new standard for intense screen horror—a standard the Hollywood industry took notice of and appropriated for its own increasingly graphic product in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The story line of Night of the Living Dead, originally entitled at various development stages Night of Anubis or The Flesh Eaters, is deceptively simple and even derivative. George Romero has always admitted that his primary inspiration for...