The 9 Minutes Of Night Of The Living Dead You Never Got To See
In October of 1968, George A. Romero's "Night of the Living Dead" was first released, and it has since been wowing horror fans of all generations. The film has taken its place high up on the horror must-watch list and serves as a beautifully artistic visual creation, as well as a jumping-off point for what millions of people today know as the modern zombie flick.
While what many recall as Romero's zombies were actually referred to as ghouls in "Night of the Living Dead," the film has profoundly impacted the movie and storytelling industry as far as the rules of a zombie uprising go. Romero himself is credited with creating the zombie we now know today (via Carnegie Mellon University). "Night of the Living Dead" brought us reanimated corpses that had one thing on their minds — brains. (Eating brains, that is.) Romero's movie also brought forth the rule that just about every zombie tale follows to this day — to kill a zombie, you've got to destroy its brain.
"Night of the Living Dead" is such a legendary piece of movie history that there are those who most likely have every scene and line memorized. So when Romero said that he recovered more footage that added nine minutes of never-before-seen action from the movie, fans were curious and ecstatic to know what ghoulish glory they hadn't seen.
The additional footage takes place during the largest zombie sequence
In 2015, when George A. Romero told the audience at the Monster Mania convention that he'd found a scene not included in the original "Night of the Living Dead" film, fans couldn't contain their excitement. According to Romero, the extra footage would add nine whole minutes to the original movie. The scene in question takes place during the jump-cut scene in the basement, which is the largest zombie sequence in the entire film, according to forum poster SpawningBlue on Blu-ray.com.
At that time, Martin Scorsese, with Romero's help, was working on a restoration of "Night of the Living Dead" from the original negatives. Scorsese, through his Film Foundation nonprofit, eventually released this 4K restoration in February 2018, according to The New York Times. However, it seems that the footage was never used on the restored version's Criterion Blu-ray release, nor was it found in the "Night of the Anubis" workprint that came with the U.K. release.
A movie so crucial to the history of cinema that from it spawned thousands of zombie movies and legendary horror films is impossible to beat, and the only thing that could make it better is more of it. Romero hinted at the additional footage possible being included in a future release of the film, but that remains to be seen. However, its inclusion would make millions of devoted zombie and ghoul fans very happy.