George A. Romero's ultra-low-budget horror landmark traps a group of strangers in a rural Pennsylvania farmhouse as an army of reanimated corpses lays siege outside, with Duane Jones's Ben emerging as an unusually forceful Black lead for 1968 American cinema. Shot in stark black-and-white on a shoestring budget, the film effectively invented the modern zombie genre and its rules — headshots, flesh-eating, relentless swarms — that horror has recycled ever since. Its bleak, nihilistic ending was as shocking then as its influence remains foundational now.