10 Best Exploitation Films Of All Time

Night Of The Living Dead doesn’t sound, on paper at least, like the kind of film that would stretch the horror genre overmuch. The nominal plot was an excuse for lots of violence and gore, most memorably (and disturbingly) in a sequence where a young girl, transformed into some kind of ghoul by a virus, stabs her mother to death in a cellar.

Then again, not only was NOTLD well-made and full of seat-clutching suspense (how many Drive-in movies can you say that about?), but there was more going on here than met the eye. By no means a “mere” horror movie, this was an apocalyptic vision of a world gone insane, brought to you in grainy newsreel grey. Every modern zombie film either misses the point or amounts to little more than an nth generation copy of George Romero’s vision.

It was a movie that refused to play by the rules, a film with a hero whose race was not an issue, who proved smart and resourceful to no avail and who in the final scene was shot and killed by his own rescuers. You can see why George Romero’s movie caught on with academics, who were quick to point out the qualities that the critics had missed.