“Together with Psycho, this is the movie that extracted horror cinema from its mortal embrace with Gothic romanticism.” - John Carpenter

Inspired by Richard Matheson's classic novel I Am Legend, shot in harsh, fearless black and white by the director himself, Romero's stunning debut feature set the paradigm for a whole new wave of horror to come. Released in the year of Robert Kennedy's and Martin Luther King's assassinations, in the midst of the civil rights struggle and in the heat of the Vietnam War, it is also a shocking portrait of the USA at the time - a concept that would be further explored in Romero's subsequent zombie movies; or, as he affectionately calls them, “my own personal franchise”.