User Reviews

A special Halloween presentation of 1968's "Night of the Living Dead," a reunion between Bill 'Chilly Billy' Cardille (as he was credited on screen) and director/editor/cowriter George A. Romero, who ended his career as he began, 2009's "Survival of the Dead" the last of six zombie epics in the series he completed before his 2017 death. Both men take center stage after the first commercial break, George boasting of his weekly addiction to watching Chilly Billy's Chiller Theater every Saturday night, how Richard Matheson's 1954 novel "I Am Legend" inspired him to coauthor with John Russo a scare comedy titled "Monster Flick," evolving into "Night of Anubis" aka "Night of the Flesh Eaters," and how Pittsburgh's channel 11 helped raise enough capitol to shoot a low budget horror film. Romero and Russo, plus fellow Latent Image filmmaker Russell Streiner, joined 7 other investors into a new company called Image Ten, each one putting in $600 apiece as a start toward an eventual budget of $114,000 (shooting from June through December 1967), the resulting picture making its worldwide premiere at the Fulton Theatre in downtown Pittsburgh on Oct. 1, 1968. Filming required 'people who were patient,' finally selecting a remote Evans City farmhouse scheduled for demolition as the perfect location to do any damage required by the plot, several crew members forced to live there without running water so they had to bathe in the creek out back, a couple weeks shooting the feature then heading back to Pittsburgh to do some commercials in order to pay employee salaries. Bill brings up the two sequels, "Dawn of the Dead" and "Day of the Dead" (starring daughter Lori Cardille), Romero applauding Monroeville Mall for the freedom they had for "Dawn," adding production value that made it look like a $2 million picture. When asked, the director confirmed that chocolate syrup was used for the gore because red stage blood still looked the same in black and white and tasted awful, and what the ghouls ate was provided by an investor who ran a meat packing company ("it wasn't those franks and beans!"), the zeal that actors displayed in doing whatever it took to be the grossest zombie was fine with them (quoting George Kosana's adlibbing sheriff: "they're dead, they're all messed up!"). The initial drive-in gross earned the original investors roughly 5 times its cost but not a penny more, learning after two years that it was as popular in France as Jerry Lewis, continuous midnight showings eventually earning its place in the Museum of Modern Art. The telecast concludes with Bill Cardille thanking the station for 'a fantastic run' of 42 years, signing on at its very start September 1, 1957: "I remember when I was a kid being brought up in Sharon PA, my four brothers and sisters, always wanted to be an announcer and a performer, and I got very, very lucky at a very early age, and you're part of that success, thank you all, good night, God bless, goodbye."