Before “Night of the Living Dead” was made, zombie movies were almost always set on Haiti or somewhere else in the Caribbean. The zombies were mindless slaves controlled by a “zombie master,” and they didn't eat people. The real terror was the possibility of being turned into a zombie, not being torn apart by one.

As racist and anachronistic as those movies often were, that is much closer to the folklore of the Haitian “zombi” than what we now think of as a zombie, and it's all because of this movie. George Romero literally invented the genre of hordes of flesh-eating zombies destroying civilization. This is the very first movie of its type.

Romero's not actually responsible for the misuse of the term “zombie,” though, because he never uses the word. His cannibalistic undead monsters are referred to as “ghouls.” For some reason people started calling them zombies, and the name stuck. Romero's movies have been a bit hit-or-miss, but the original “Night of the Living Dead” ( and its sequel, the original “Dawn of the Dead”) are real horror-movie classics, with actual character-driven conflicts, plots and even a bit of social commentary. The movie might look a little dated if you're used to slick Hollywood zombie movies featuring Woody Harrelson, but if you want a good old-fashioned ghoul-siege, you can't go wrong with this one. Plus, the obligatory flesh-feast scene- also the first of its kind- is still as disgustingly horrifying as ever.