Last year, New York's Museum of Modern Art screened a new 4K restoration of George A. Romero's classic NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, the film that created a horror sub-genre and forever added a new definition to the word "zombie". At the time, Romero said that the restoration returned the film "to the quality we originally intended".
Now a wider audience is going to be getting a chance to see the 4K restoration on the big screen, courtesy of Janus Films. The first screening happens tonight at Beyond Fest in Los Angeles, and that will be followed by screenings in theatres all over the United States throughout the rest of the month. The full list of theatres and dates can be seen on the Janus Films website.
Any event like this needs a poster, and the poster for this series of screenings was officially unveiled by Rue Morgue and can now be seen below.
NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD is one of my favorite films of all time and is the movie I have watched more than any other. I'm glad it's going to be shown in a way that Romero intended it to be seen – and I'm really glad that he was able to supervise this restoration before he passed away.
It's not likely that anyone needs a synopsis to remind them what NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD is about, but here's one:
A disparate group of individuals takes refuge in an abandoned house when corpses begin to leave the graveyard in search of fresh human bodies to devour. The pragmatic Ben does his best to control the situation, but when the reanimated bodies surround the house the other survivors begin to panic. As any semblance of order within the group begins to dissipate, the zombies start to find ways inside — and one by one, the living humans become the prey of the deceased ones.
This past October 1st marked the 49th anniversary of the film's premiere.