Coming up on Saturday at the Described Movies: Night of the Living Dead, Halloween, and Pac’s Scary Halloween.

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From this Saturday at 12am Eastern, that’s 5pm Saturday in NZ, 3pm in Sydney and 5am in the UK, and repeated every four hours throughout the day, it’s
The described movies Night of the Living Dead from 1968, Halloween from 1978, and Pac’s Scary Halloween from 2016.
Night of the Living Dead is a 1968 American independent horror film directed, photographed, and edited by George A. Romero, with a screenplay by John Russo and Romero, and starring Duane Jones and Judith O'Dea.
The story follows seven people who are trapped in a rural farmhouse in western Pennsylvania, which is under assault by an enlarging group of flesh-eating, undead ghouls.
Having gained experience through directing television commercials and industrial films for their Pittsburgh -based production company The Latent Image, Romero and his friends Russo and Russell Streiner decided to fulfil their ambitions to make a feature film.
Electing to make a horror film that would capitalize on contemporary commercial interest in the genre, they formed a partnership with Karl Hardman and Marilyn Eastman of Hardman Associates called Image Ten.
After evolving through multiple drafts, Russo and Romero's final script primarily drew influence from Richard Matheson's 1954 novel I Am Legend.
Principal photography took place between July 1967 and January 1968, mainly on location in Evans City ; aside from the Image Ten team themselves, the cast and crew consisted of their friends and relatives, local stage and amateur actors, and residents from the area.
Although the film was his directorial debut, Romero utilized many of the guerrilla filmmaking techniques he had homed in his commercial and industrial work to complete the film on a budget of approximately US$100,000.
Following its theatrical premiere in Pittsburgh on 1 October 1968, Night of the Living Dead eventually grossed US$12 million domestically and US$18 million internationally, earning more than 250 times its budget and making it one of the most profitable film productions ever made at the time.
Released shortly prior to the adoption of the Motion Picture Association of America rating system, the film's explicit violence and gore was considered ground-breaking and unprecedented for the time, leading to widespread controversy and negative reviews upon its initial release.
It eventually garnered a cult following and acclaim among critics and has appeared on lists of the greatest and most influential films ever made by such outlets as Empire, The New York Times, and Total Film.
Frequently identified as the first modern zombie film and a touchstone in the development of the horror genre, retrospective scholarly analysis has focused on its reflection of the social and cultural changes in the United States during the 1960s, with particular attention being directed towards the casting of Jones, an African American, in the leading role.
In 1999, the film was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.
Night of the Living Dead spawned a successful franchise that includes five official sequels released between 1978 and 2009, all of which were also directed by Romero.
The film has also inspired several remakes because of its public domain status. An official remake, written by Romero and directed by Tom Savini, was released in 1990 and has similarly gained a small cult following.
Directed by: George A. Romero.
Screenplay by: John Russo, and George A. Romero.
Produced by: Russell W. Streiner, and Karl Hardman.
Starring: Duane Jones, Judith O'Dea, Marilyn Eastman, Karl Hardman , Judith Ridley , and Keith Wayne.
Cinematography: George A. Romero.
Edited by: George A. Romero.
Production company: Image Ten.
Distributed by: Continental Distributing.
Release date: 1 October 1968.
File Length: 96 minutes.
Country: United States.
Language: English.
Budget: $114,000–$125,000.
Box office: $30 million.
Halloween is a 1978 American independent slasher film directed and scored by John Carpenter, co-written with producer Debra Hill, and starring Jamie Lee Curtis (in her film debut) and Donald Pleasence, with P. J. Soles and Nancy Kyes in supporting roles.
The plot centres on a mental patient, Michael Myers, who was committed to a sanatorium for murdering his babysitting teenage sister on Halloween night when he was six years old.
Fifteen years later, he escapes and returns to his hometown, where he stalks a female babysitter and her friends while under pursuit by his psychiatrist.
Filming took place in Southern California in May 1978.
The film premiered in October, whereupon it grossed $70 million, becoming one of the most profitable independent films of all time.
Primarily praised for Carpenter's direction and score, many critics credit the film as the first in a long line of slasher films inspired by Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) and Bob Clark's Black Christmas (1974).
It is considered one of the greatest and most influential horror films ever made.
In 2006, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Halloween spawned a film franchise comprising thirteen films which helped construct an extensive backstory for its antagonist Michael Myers, sometimes narratively diverging entirely from previous instalments.
A direct sequel of the film was released in 1981.
A remake was released in 2007, which was followed by a sequel in 2009.
An eleventh instalment, which serves as a direct sequel to the original film that retcons all previous sequels, was released in 2018; this was followed by two direct sequels: Halloween Kills (2021) and Halloween Ends (2022).
Additionally, a novelization, a video game and comic book series have been based on the film.
Directed by: John Carpenter.
Screenplay by: John Carpenter , and Debra Hill.
Produced by: Debra Hill.
Starring: Donald Pleasence, Jamie Lee Curtis, P. J. Soles, and Nancy Kyes.
Cinematography: Dean Cundey.
Edited by: Tommy Wallace, and Charles Bornstein.
Music by: John Carpenter.
Production companies: Compass International Pictures , and Falcon International Productions.
Distributed by: Compass International Pictures , and Aquarius Releasing.
Release date: 25 October 1978.
File Length: 91 minutes.
Country: United States.
Language: English.
Budget: $300,000–325,000.
Box office: $70 million.
Pac’s Scary Halloween is a 2016 TV short.
When sinister Dr. Pacenstein schemes to swap bodies with Pac during a Halloween party, Spiral, Cyli and Count Pacula scramble to save their pal.
File Length: 44 minutes.
Any questions, comments, or ideas for future described movies: e-mail me: anthony at mushroomfm dot com (e-mail address written that way to cut down on
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Enjoy the movies,