10 Movies That Ripped Up The Rule Book

Low-budget independent horror films are nothing new today, nor were they back in 1968. However, first-time feature director George A Romero took the format to another level entirely with Night of the Living Dead, and in so doing paved the way for a new wave of extreme, intelligent horror that would follow in the 1970s.

Night of the Living Dead is rightly remembered as the birthplace of the zombie genre as we know it, although it's notable that the word is never used in the film. Originally entitled Night of the Flesh Eaters, it borrows liberally from Richard Matheson's apocalyptic vampire novel I Am Legend, showing a small number of humans struggling to stay alive as a monstrous pandemic infects those around them.

However, while the film's semi-realist approach and unusually graphic violence were new to most audiences, the real break from the norm was the casting of African-American actor Duane Jones in the lead.

While black leading men were not unheard of at the time - Sidney Poitier had won the Best Actor Oscar for Lilies of the Field a few years earlier - never before had such a heroic role in a drive-in friendly genre film gone to an actor of colour, without his race ever being addressed.