“Night of the Living Dead” stands as a genre-defining moment in film history, and Scott and Jenn dive deep into its fascinating backstory. They explore how this groundbreaking zombie movie not only changed the horror landscape but also reflected societal issues of its time. The hosts share their experiences visiting the iconic Evans City cemetery, where the film was shot, adding a personal touch to their discussion. With witty banter and engaging insights, they examine the film’s lasting impact on pop culture and the horror genre. Join them for a lively conversation that blends history, nostalgia, and a bit of humor, all centered around this cinematic classic.
🎥 Video from Evans City Cemetery
💀 Google Map to Evans City Cemetery
Transcript
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[00:00:00] Scott: Three years ago, Talk With History published its first ever Halloween specific episode. We had just visited Evans City Cemetery outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where we were exploring the real world history of the first filming location of the first ever zombie movie. We wanted to share that episode with you because that was 120 episodes ago.
[00:00:23] We hope you enjoy this episode on the history of the night of the living dead.
[00:00:44] Welcome to top of history. I’m your host, Scott here with my wife and historian, Jen.
[00:00:48] Jenn: On
[00:00:50] Scott: this podcast, we give you insights to our history and spirit. Fired World Travel’s YouTube channel journey, and examine history through deeper conversations with the curious the explorers and the history lovers out there.
[00:01:07] You may not know this movie we’re gonna talk about today, but you’ve probably seen many pictures of it. This was a groundbreaking film that defined and gave birth to a film genre that lives stronger today than ever. But did you know that it was produced on a shoestring budget at a no name cemetery outside of Pittsburgh by two filmmakers who had never made a motion picture.
[00:01:39] So Jen, what film are we talking about today?
[00:01:43] Jenn: Um, uh, Keeping in accordance to Halloween coming up in a couple weeks, we’re doing Night of the Living Dead.
[00:01:49] Scott: Night of the Living Dead. So if nobody’s ever seen Night of the Living Dead, tell us a little bit about that and then we’ll kind of talk about it. You mean
[00:01:57] Jenn: someone like you, Scott?
[00:01:59] Yeah, I
[00:01:59] Scott: had no clue.
[00:02:01] Jenn: So, you know, Scott and I have been married for, you know, 15 years. And one of the first things we did when our first dates was a haunted house. I don’t think Scott was excited about it. But since we’re newly dating, and I said, let’s go to a haunted house, he was he was all game for it.
[00:02:16] Little did I know he had really never seen a horror movie, let alone go to haunted houses. And as we’re standing in line for this haunted house, they’re playing scenes from horror movies. So Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th. And I’m naming off these movies as they just show in little scenes. I’m naming them off.
[00:02:37] And I’m like, Don’t you know this? He didn’t know any of
[00:02:40] Scott: them. I didn’t know a single one. It was just we didn’t watch those kind of movies. Yeah.
[00:02:45] Jenn: And I did. And needless to say, going through that haunted house was one of the experience I’ll never forget. Because I was pushed through at Mach speed, because Scott was right behind me.
[00:02:58] And as much as I enjoy a good haunted house and the thought that goes into making a room and making someone scared. I didn’t get a chance to really even see anything because I got just pushed through.
[00:03:12] Scott: And I’m so glad that Jen brought this up because I’ll probably edit out this entire bit.
[00:03:16] Jenn: Well, I think it’s great because so Night of the Living Dead, he had never seen it.
[00:03:22] And I was raised on it. So I was raised on it. Not only because my parents. movie buffs and enjoy all types of movies. But it was because it was filmed close to where my dad grew up, Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh. And so he always talked about it and he didn’t talk about it in the regards of this is a great horror movie.
[00:03:43] He talked about it in regards that this was just an amazing movie made by a great director. College kids on a shoestring budget that just changed horror movies in general was a huge influencer. And so he was, I think, always proud of that.
[00:03:59] Scott: And this now, no, not a living dead, just for anybody who has never seen it before, is not familiar with it.
[00:04:04] It was made in the 70s.
[00:04:06] Jenn: So it was filmed in 67. It was filmed from June to December of 67, released in 68.
[00:04:11] Scott: Okay. And there was nothing else that had been done like that before.
[00:04:15] Jenn: You know, so they’re very much influenced by I Am Legend, that book, I Am Legend, that comes out in the 50s. And that book influences their writing.
[00:04:25] Scott: Oh, yeah. Yeah. That’s the book that eventually Will Smith made the movie. Will Smith made the movie. Okay.
[00:04:29] Jenn: So nothing had really been made like this, but things had been written. Kind of like this, and if you’ve never seen Night of the Living Dead, we’re going to give some spoilers away, so just be ready.
[00:04:43] Scott: And it’s a, like a 60 year old movie, so, you know, it’s.
[00:04:47] It’s been out for a
[00:04:48] Jenn: while. It’s been out for a while. And it’s, it’s been done over and over and over again now. But it’s, it’s basic and that’s what’s so great about it. It’s black and white. It’s black and white. It’s, it leaves more to your imagination than actually shows you. It’s just these, the whole premise is they don’t really go into it, but something has happened in this area where people have been infected by this virus and this virus has reanimated, recently dead, and they went with recently dead, because they, they figured they couldn’t have the makeup budget to reanimate long term dead.
[00:05:28] So most everybody is I mean, their makeup. Process is just dark underlined makeup and white faces and boom. You’re a you’re a ghoul.
[00:05:37] Scott: Yeah, it was is not You know with the walking dead now, you know level of production
[00:05:43] Jenn: No, there’s like it’s not even like thriller with like arms falling off or anything and nothing like it’s
[00:05:48] Scott: literally just like hunch over a little bit walk slow Sort of that walking super slow wasn’t even really a thing yet.
[00:05:55] They kind of defined. Yeah with this movie. One thing that I learned with you, and we’ll get into the history aspect of of why of what we did filming the video. But they, they really kind of for film, they defined the genre.
[00:06:11] Jenn: They did. Because even if you’ve seen the movie, the very first ghoul because they use ghoul and they even adamantly say they never use the word zombie in the whole movie even though it’s the father of the zombie film and the zombie movement.
[00:06:24] They don’t use that word. I don’t think I realize that. And so ghoul is the word they use but the very first ghoul they’ll encounter just looks like a normal person. Yeah. Right? He’s like
[00:06:33] Scott: wearing a business suit.
[00:06:34] Jenn: So they just see him in the back of the cemetery going, who’s that guy? Walking around back there.
[00:06:38] So it’s not like they even see someone looking
[00:06:42] Scott: and there’s some there’s some Relatively famous lines that come out of this like they’re coming to get you Barbara Like you’ll probably see that on t shirts if you’re and I am NOT a horror movie fan or history fan So this was a very interesting one for me to make Once I started once I saw that the the clips right making the video I saw these and I was like some of these actually sound familiar to me and I am not a horror movie You know film guy at all.
[00:07:06] Jenn: No, and it was um Yeah, it was a lot of the script was ad libbed. A lot of it was written as they were doing it and like I said It was just, it was the basics, which sometimes the basics can be more scary. So when you think of things like Jaws and you don’t see the shark, but you can imagine the shark, it’s scarier for the viewer.
[00:07:33] And they, they kind of banked on that same thing. You don’t see everything. You don’t see what they’re doing to people. You’re being told they’re flesh eaters, but you don’t see it.
[00:07:43] Scott: Yeah. So they’re really, so really they’re film. Ted the technique they brought with that. That’s a technique.
[00:07:48] Jenn: Yes
[00:07:49] Scott: was was not as common then
[00:07:51] Jenn: Yeah, they’re keeping the big parts off screen for the viewer to imagine it and your imagination is Sometimes worse than what you could be shown on screen
[00:08:03] Scott: and the film kind of had like an extra kind of punch at the end
[00:08:06] Jenn: Yes And they fought for that.
[00:08:09] So the punch at the end is, um, they, their, their main character makes it through the night.
[00:08:15] Scott: He survives. He
[00:08:16] Jenn: survives the night.
[00:08:17] Scott: He survives. He does away with all the zombies, the ghouls or whatever.
[00:08:21] Jenn: And basically you learn like no one else survives. Who he was with, but he survives. And at the end there, there are people who are coming out helping because I guess
[00:08:32] Scott: the town sheriff.
[00:08:32] Jenn: Yeah. Because I guess it was, it was localized. Right. I didn’t go far.
[00:08:36] Scott: It wasn’t a worldwide.
[00:08:37] Jenn: Yeah. And so they’re rounding them up and burning them, the ghouls. And they see movement in the house and they think it’s a ghoul. And he’s coming out, his posse thinks it’s,
[00:08:49] Scott: thinks it’s a ghoul.
[00:08:50] Jenn: And he’s coming out going, I’ve survived.
[00:08:52] And as he comes out, they shoot him. And they fought for that ending because a lot of people said, Oh, they needs to be a happy ending. And they’re like, no, this is not a happy movie. This needs to have this ending. So in
[00:09:03] Scott: that, in that, when you were telling me about that, this was, there weren’t a lot of films that had done that.
[00:09:08] Now it was, I was kind of like the, really the kick in the stomach that everybody walked out of the theater was like. What just happened? Yeah, there’s no
[00:09:18] Jenn: like
[00:09:19] Scott: And even, you can, you can look it up on YouTube. You can, if anybody’s curious, you can Google Night of the Living Dead ending scene and you’ll find it.
[00:09:26] And I, and I watched it and I was like yeah, that’s not a movie you would walk away, like, feeling happy about. But, again, that’s kind of the genre.
[00:09:38] Jenn: And it didn’t work. Yeah. And it influences movies because now it’s more common to watch a movie that is realistic in the way that it’s not always happy in the end and you get to a real dose of you know what could be a real moment and some tragedy and so. That is more real nowadays in movies. And so they’re kind of in the first people to do that.
[00:10:04] And they influence. So there’s a couple things. Their main character is also African American.
[00:10:09] Scott: That’s right.
[00:10:10] Jenn: And so they did not set out for their main character to be African American, but the actor who, uh, auditioned was so good that they just said, yeah, make it him. And what was also interesting is their main character was supposed to be a truck driver and kind of, I wouldn’t say uneducated, but basic, basic dialogue.
[00:10:32] And this, this man who plays Ben, Ben is that lead character, is educated. And so he doesn’t, he, he doesn’t want his lines to be dumbed down. So he, he plays him as if he was him. And
[00:10:46] Scott: people have to remember the time, right? The 67, 68, like Martin Luther King
[00:10:51] Jenn: had not been assassinated.
[00:10:51] Scott: He had not been assassinated.
[00:10:52] But that like civil rights movement was in full swing. Right. So like the, the marches and the bus protests and all that stuff was going on. So
[00:11:02] Jenn: this is a big deal to have your main actor
[00:11:05] Scott: and, and the movie just exploded. It was made for what? A hundred thousand,
[00:11:10] Jenn: 114, 000. So they got six people together. And they each put in like a thousand and then that was like 6, 000.
[00:11:18] And then they got like 10 more people that put in a couple thousand more. And then they just kept like asking people for money. And that’s why it took so long for it to film. And one of the reasons why they use the Evan city cemetery, which where we filmed the YouTube video at and where
[00:11:32] Scott: it’s really well, like half an hour outside of Pittsburgh.
[00:11:34] Yeah.
[00:11:34] Jenn: And it’s, it’s a little cemetery, but they, chose it because it’s off the road and you can’t really see it. So they could film there without being bothered by people and they really didn’t have to ask permission to use it. Now you’ll see a lot of YouTube videos going to that cemetery and tons of people want to recreate the iconic scenes of they’re coming to get you Barbara and Barbara runs away and she leans on a tombstone.
[00:12:03] And at one point her brother. Um, fights, the ghoul, and he gets hit. Um, his head gets hit. And he dies. And he dies. Yeah. And he dies and he becomes a ghoul. Which is probably one of the scariest things. So it’s interesting. He puts on gloves at one point when he’s talking to her. And then when he becomes a ghoul, And he breaks into the farmhouse that they’re in, he puts his gloved hand up on the wall, just to make sure, you know, it’s him.
[00:12:29] And so, um, people love to recreate those scenes. But I wanted to do a video where I actually talked about who was buried in. Those graves that they use for the movie.
[00:12:41] Scott: Yeah. So you, so you researched the actual, like when she’s leaning against the headstone or the
[00:12:47] Jenn: Blair headstones there and, and who is Kramer?
[00:12:51] That’s the heads, other headstone she’s leaning on. So who are those people? So that’s, that’s interesting. That’s what I wanted to do because no one had done that and here are these graves like I tell people These are iconic graves, but who are the actual people that are in these graves? So, um, that’s what the that’s what I really wanted the youtube video to focus on As I talked about this history of the movie So if you’re interested in that the video really goes into the history of those people and um But yeah, the movie is just so influential.
[00:13:25] And I, nobody realized it was going to be that influential. So it, it, it breaks, I think it makes, from what I read, it’s 12 million domestically and an 18 million internationally. So again,
[00:13:41] Scott: this is the late 60s, late
[00:13:42] Jenn: 60s. So that’s what 000 budget. It premieres October 1st, 1968 in Pittsburgh, and that’s 53 years ago.
[00:13:55] So, and it was filmed, like I said, the year before. And yeah, they, they just really, they wanted. It went through some rewrites. So you have like Romero is who wrote and directed it. And he had gone to Carnegie Mellon. He had worked in Pittsburgh. He had actually filmed some stuff for Mr. Rogers Neighborhood.
[00:14:16] And then it’s co written by Russo who went to University of West Virginia or West Virginia University, but he had friends at Carnegie Mellon. So he went, he would visit Carnegie Mellon and we always talk about, you Pittsburgers call it Carnegie Mellon. It’s not Carnegie Mellon. It’s Carnegie.
[00:14:33] Scott: I remember the first time you ever started talking about Carnegie Mellon and you kept saying Carnegie.
[00:14:37] I was like, what are you talking about? I don’t like, why do you keep saying it that way? It’s Carnegie Mellon. I’ve heard it that way my entire life.
[00:14:45] Jenn: Pittsburghers say Carnegie. We put in the extra syllable. Um, and so Russo who was his friend had actually been in the army for two years. And so he had this idea of black and white documentary style.
[00:15:02] That’s right. Could make it cheaper, make it. feel realistic, make it feel like they’re actually filming a documentary about something that’s happening in this small town to these people. And you would feel like you are breaking that fourth wall with them, right? So that was his vision.
[00:15:28] Scott: Yeah. And it’s so funny. I start learning about this because of the video. You know, you think about the Blair Witch Project. That wasn’t the first movie of its kind to film this like realistic. documentary style, right? Night of the Living Dead. You think of, uh, all the pop, you know, the Walking Dead TV shows, like these were shows that were kind of raised and inspired by this movie.
[00:15:55] and spinoffs of this movie. It was once I started learning that I was like, Oh my gosh, like this, this movie is just like so seminal in this entire huge genre. I mean, scary movies have just grown and grown and grown and grown. I mean, they’re much more common and popular nowadays than they were when we even when I was growing up.
[00:16:14] Jenn: Sure. And they they wanted to capitalize on the contemporary commercial interest of that genre as well. So you have like Psycho coming out around that time. And Psycho is also shot in black and white. So they’re capitalizing on like, I wouldn’t say it’s a new genre because horror movies were kind of, you know, think of Dracula and Frankenstein and but something that was more contemporary, like you’re not telling us a story like this could happen.
[00:16:45] in your hometown. Right. And that’s kind of what horror is kind of reversing. When you think of Psycho, when you think of Night of the Living Dead, these stories are abusing real people and real scenarios that are undergoing something that’s not normal. Scary and um at first they kind of like had they wrote kind of like horror comedy like the these ghouls Hang out with teenagers and stuff.
[00:17:15] Oh, yeah Like and they so but then they had changed it to this and again it all really came down to what they could afford to film yeah, and They couldn’t afford ghouls Makeup, you know, they had to make it very basic.
[00:17:31] Scott: Yeah, and you talked about it being off the beaten path I mean we went there and there’s not a lot that’s changed in the past 53 years No, the graves look
[00:17:39] Jenn: the same.
[00:17:39] There’s no tree beside the first grave anymore.
[00:17:42] Scott: There’s no tree beside I think like the Entry sign to the cemetery is ever so slightly different, but we were able to match up shots
[00:17:49] Jenn: Yeah.
[00:17:50] Scott: The gravestones are obviously all still there. The headstones, like there is very little that has changed at this off the beaten path cemetery that was, you know, basically the home base for an incredibly famous movie.
[00:18:05] Jenn: Yeah. And so the farmhouse is no longer there. That’s been torn down. And I think at one point there over a covered bridge. The covered bridge is no longer there, but the bridge is still there. And then the, where they filmed the basement of the farmhouse, they actually filmed that in their like office basement.
[00:18:23] So like where they’re working, yeah, where they’re working from, they’re like, we’re just going to film it downstairs in the basement. So you can actually still go there. And I think that’s an Evan city as well. And, um, one of the things they had said, if you remember that scene, it’s the daughter had gotten bitten by one of the ghouls and her Uh, parents are sitting with her very concerned and worried.
[00:18:46] And then the father gets attacked by the daughter and then the daughter attacks the mother. And the, I don’t know if it was Russo or Romero who was like, that’s every girl’s dream to attack her mother.
[00:19:01] Scott: I don’t remember that. So
[00:19:02] Jenn: I thought that was so funny. I was like, Oh my gosh, so that’s why he wanted to keep that in there.
[00:19:07] And so that’s another realistic moment. That they really show because. neither the mother or the father fight back, right? Because that’s their child. And so this is something again, basic to film, but very strong on the psyche because you’re realizing that the ghoul has taken over the mind because the child is killing the person they love and the person they love can’t fight back because they love that person.
[00:19:36] So it’s one of those things that’s so hard to work around, um, but has such a lasting impact. That it did. And it’s, I mean, people still watch Night of the Living Dead. It birthed all these movies, all these sequels. And even today, I mean, Walking Dead and things like that. But Night of the Living Dead has been remade a couple times.
[00:19:57] And I even love the basicness of the title.
[00:20:00] Scott: Yep,
[00:20:01] Jenn: it’s just night of the living dead. So it’s nighttime dead Who are live which is completely polar opposite
[00:20:09] Scott: and I and even the the typography is very iconic Right. So so if you’re listening to this Google really quick night of the living dead Look at the typography and that’s been used and reused so many times in horror movies or at least used as, as inspiration for, you know, that kind of stuff.
[00:20:28] And again, this is 1967, 68 when they came out. So, again, it was a super fun one to make because it was just outside of Pittsburgh, easy to get to. If you ever want to visit it, you can just look up Evan City Cemetery. Zombie apocalypse, zombie movies, all that stuff came from Night of the Living Dead. So, scary movies and zombie storylines abound in today’s cinemascapes.
[00:20:51] All thanks to two film school graduates who dreamt big, asked big, and made something even bigger. Night of the Living Dead is the father of zombie, zombie film genre, and we were lucky enough to be able to visit the location where American cinema was changed forever.
[00:21:12] This has been a Walk With History production. Talk With History is created and hosted by me, Scott Benny. Episode researched by Jennifer Benny. Check out the show notes for links and references mentioned in this episode. Talk With History is supported by our fans at The history road trip dot com our eternal thanks to those providing funding to help keep us going Thank you to doug mcliberty mary myers and patrick benny Make sure you hit that follow button in your podcast player and we’ll talk to you next
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