Evans City

In 1967, a group of Pittsburgh-based filmmakers led by George A. Romero decided to venture into the business of making feature-length motion pictures. Using their own money and equipment obtained as professionals in commercial film, television and radio production, the group came to Evans City and opened their lenses on a low-budget "Monster Flick".
night of the living dead
Though critically lambasted upon release in 1968, the resulting film, NIGHT of the LIVING DEAD, was an overwhelming success at the box office, not only becoming recognized as a venerable classic of the horror genre, but as one of the great American-made feature films of all time.

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Pictured: Acreess, Judith O'Dea Director, George A. Romero Sound Technician, Gary Streiner

Adding to NIGHT of the LIVING DEAD's "direct cinema" approach, the filmmakers cast their motion picture using family, friends and colleagues within the local community. Longtime Evans City residents Phillip and Ella Mae Smith, Randy Burr, and Dick Heckard were cast in feature roles, giving film its regional flavor. This tremendous community effort, which saw professional radio and television announcers portraying newscasters, Pittsburgh police officers comprising a ghoul-hunting posse and ordinary next-door neighbors stumbling through the darkness as the movie's iconic flesh eater, imparts NIGHT of the LIVING DEAD with a heightened sense of realism
night of the living dead
The Evil Dead, 28 Days Later, World War Z and The Walking Dead.

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Actors shamble through the local landscape in the classic scene. The portrayal of the ghouls would establish the iconic look as we know today.

NIGHT of the LIVING DEAD was inducted into the National Film Registry in 1999 for being a "culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant" part of American cinema. It was due to budgetary limitations that its makers eschewed the use of exotic locations and color photography. Instead, they depicted the rural Pennsylvania countryside in stark black & white imagery effectively bringing the movie's nightmarish premise into the audiences' own backyard, and thus, the modern horror film was born.
night of the living dead
The determination of Romero and his colleagues to locally produce a feature-length picture ultimately led the way for Pittsburgh to become one of the major film production hot spots in the United States.

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In the Evans City Cemetery filming the opening scenes. The chapel is the last remaining structure and a restoration was completed in 2014.

Five years after filming Night of the Living Dead George A. Romero returned to Evans City to produce his fourth feature film. Released in 1973, THE CRAZIES (a.k.a Code Name: Trixie) depicts the military takeover of a small American town in an effort to quarantine its citizens after a biological weapon causing madness and death is accidently released into the town's water supply. Shot entirely on location, the film features most of Evans City's major landmarks as well as many of its local residents as extras, portraying the "crazies". Though not a box office success upon its initial release, THE CRAZIES helped solidify Evans City's place as a filming location in popular cinema and was remade in 2010 as a big-budget Hollywood feature film.
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