Night of the Living Dead (1968)

Happy Earth Day!  Here's a completely unrelated movie!  The Movie Club pick for this week was Eyes Without a Face but I just watched that a couple of years ago and I already re-posted They Live this week, so I thought I'd swap out one highly regarded black-and-white 60s horror for another.  

A handful of survivors hole up in a farmhouse as they are beset from without by the undead, risen as a result of cosmic radiation from Venus, and from within by paranoia and selfishness.  Ben (Duane Jones) is trying to keep them all together and uneaten but is hampered by Barbra (Judith O'Dea) being completely useless as anything but a doorstop and Harry Cooper's (Karl Hardman) sweaty cowardice.

This is the OG of zombie movies, the innovator that spawned an entire sub-genre, the undead Coke Classic, if you will.  It remains a gold standard despite being made for approximately $42, adjusted for inflation, because it doesn't try and get cute or over-explain.  We know precisely as much about the characters as we need to for this moment and any information we get otherwise is the same as what they get.  That keeps us the audience rooted in the moment, which keeps the whole film feeling fresh as a deodorant commercial.  

The 2016 restored version is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel.  Plus, you might get lucky and catch it the way God intended, streaming at 2 a.m. on their new Criterion 24/7 feature.  Give it a shot.