When the dead start returning to life with a hunger for human flesh, a disparate band of survivors hole up in a Pittsburgh farmhouse, bicker amongst themselves, and try to stop themselves from winding up on an undead menu as a unique three-course set meal. Coffee not included.

Far from it. The zombies in Night of the Living Dead, according to film historian Robin Wood, represent capitalists, feasting on the flesh of society's outsiders. But as would rapidly become the pattern in Romero's films, the zombies aren't really the villains. Instead humans are, with Harry Cooper (Karl Hardman) openly fighting with the film's black hero, Ben (Duane Jones), and even trying to kill him. At the end, Ben is the sole survivor, but is shot in the head by a patrol crew who 'mistake' him for a zombie. The subtle implication is that, had Ben been white, he would still have been alive.

The hero. By making his hero an African-American, particularly one who's reasoned and intelligent, Romero was overtly addressing the racial politics that were engulfing America at the time. It would become a trend in his movies.

Barbara, played by Judith O'Dea. A far cry from the ass-kickers of later Romero episodes, Barbara spends most of the movie in a catatonic trance, traumatised by the fate she's just seen befall her brother.

Minimal in this movie, although scenes of ghouls feasting on flesh and Karen Cooper trowelling her mom to death are dripping with black goo that, legend has it, was actually chocolate sauce. At this point in time, Romero hadn't yet met a young man named Tom Savini and the gore is surprisingly restrained.

It's hard to top "They're coming to get you, Barbara!", spoken by Barbara's brother, Johnny. Referenced in the likes of Shaun of the Dead, it's also a paranoid classic to rival Kevin McCarthy's "They're here!" in Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, itself a cracking political allegory.

The movie was originally called Night Of The Flesh Eaters.

"I was brought up on Tales Of Hoffman and movies like Othello and Macbeth. Those were the visual influences -- hard shadow, hard light, obvious sources. I tried to make it look like newsreel. I used a handheld Arriflex and I felt so free!"