10 Genius Ways Zombie Movies Broke All The Rules

1. The One That Started It All - Night Of The Living Dead

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Whilst the first movie to feature the creatures is generally considered to be 1932's White Zombie, the one that set in motion so many of the tropes that are still popular today is George A. Romero's 1968 masterpiece, Night of the Living Dead.

White Zombie portrayed the creatures in the traditional Haitian manner, as products of voodoo magic. Romero was the first filmmaker to popularise them as reincarnated corpses, hungry for blood and brains as they walk the streets. 

Romero is also credited with being the first to set the action in America, bringing what had previously been a distant threat horribly close to home for many viewers. This time, there was no magical human in control of the minions; these were completely independent creatures that had to be taken out one by one, which only made them more of a menace. 

The most incredible thing of all is that Romero never once referred to his creations as "zombies" in the script, instead opting to call them "ghouls". He did this to differentiate them from the Haitian myths, but now, the word has come to define everything he presented in this ground-breaking piece of horror cinema. 

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Jacob Simmons has a great many passions, including rock music, giving acclaimed films three-and-a-half stars, watching random clips from The Simpsons on YouTube at 3am, and writing about himself in the third person.