Night of the Living Dead

Barbara and her brother Johnny are visiting their father's grave in a rural Pennsylvania cemetery when the dead begin to move. Johnny is killed. Barbara flees to a nearby farmhouse in a state of shock so complete she is barely functional. Ben arrives — a Black man who fights his way in from outside — and begins methodically boarding up the windows and doors, taking charge with the focused competence of someone who refuses to stop moving.

They discover a family hiding in the basement: Harry and Helen Cooper, their daughter Karen who has been bitten and is gravely ill, and a young couple. Harry and Ben clash over strategy immediately and persistently — Harry wants to seal the basement and wait, Ben insists on fortifying the main floor and planning an exit. Radio and television broadcasts piece together the situation: reanimated dead are attacking across the country. A rescue station is nearby. A truck outside could get them there.

Ben and a young man named Tom attempt to fuel the truck in the yard using Molotov cocktails to hold back the dead. The truck ignites. Tom and his girlfriend are killed. The dead consume them in the yard. Ben fights back inside, alone now on the main floor while Harry watches from the basement door.

Karen dies from her bite wound in the basement. She reanimates and feeds on her father, then kills her mother with a trowel. Harry reanimates. Ben shoots them both and retreats to the basement alone, barricading himself in for the rest of the night.

Dawn comes. A posse of men moves through the area, shooting the dead from trucks, matter-of-fact and organised. One man spots movement in the farmhouse window. He raises his rifle. Ben, the last survivor, is shot through the head. His body is dragged out on meat hooks and thrown on a bonfire with the others. The posse moves on.