Over the years, George Romero's "Night of the Living Dead" has been the subject of countless homages, full-on remakes, and critical analyses. In October 2021, a new animated version of it came to home media, and that's just one example of how it's the gift that keeps on shambling. Because its distributor forgot to add a copyright notice to it, Romero's original 1968 film is now in the public domain. It's also in the National Film Registry and has its place in history as well. "Night of the Living Dead" wasn't the first of its kind , but it was instrumental in jump-starting a new sub-genre of horror: the zombie movie. Romero looked to Richard Matheson's 1954 novel "I Am Legend" for inspiration, long before Will Smith ever fought Darkseekers in the loose film adaptation of the same book. Matheson's post-apocalyptic vampires became Romero's world-ending zombies, so you could almost say zombies are vampire offshoots -- th