10 Things Didn't Know About Night Of The Living Dead

8. Financial Success

Night of the Living Dead
Continental Distributing

Due to the budget falling somewhere between $114,000 and $125,000, the crew had to be resourceful on the set of Night of the Living Dead. This included using chocolate sauce for blood and real entrails from a slaughterhouse for the gore.

Other corners were cut, such as renting a real farmhouse that was set for demolition as the movie's primary filming location. The humble picture ended up making approximately $30million at the box office. Despite the phenomenal financial success of the endeavour, Romero saw almost nothing of the profit.

It comes down to a small and avoidable mistake, as when changing the film's name from Night of the Flesh-Eaters to Night of the Living Dead, somebody neglected to put the copyright notice on the new title screen. Because of this error, the movie was not copyright protected and the theatrical distributors hoovered up almost all of the film’s profits. A harsh lesson for such a young filmmaker and his relatively inexperienced crew and cast of unknowns. Luckily it did not put Romero off from making future zombie flicks.

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Cat Gentleman and bookworm. Huge fan of martial arts action movies, sci-fi and especially horror, from Bela Lugosi to the Walking Dead. Love heavy music, retro gaming and pro wrestling.