As an ebook junkie and rabid cheapskate, I monitor the RSS feed of new books posted at Project Gutenberg, and it tickled me in that special way to see George Romero’s 1968 zombie classic Night of the Living Dead posted as a 875-megabyte MPEG. As you may or may not know, the ’68 version of the film lapsed into the public domain in the United States because the theatrical distributor failed to place a copyright label on the prints. (This weirdness in copyright law has since been altered). Night has long been available online and in a couple of dozen commercial DVD editions. The film was remade in 1990 and 2006.
This is the first time I’ve seen a film on Gutenberg, which I use religiously and yet which, quite frankly, I didn’t realize until now even had films. But it does, though I gotta say it does its best to disguise that fact. An advanced search on file type, however, nets some dopeass shizzit: NASA images of Comet Wild 2 and the Apollo 11 landing in Quicktime, the Trinity atomic detonation, the Bikini Atoll ABLE and BAKER blasts, other A-bomb tests, not to mention “Motion Picture of Rotating Earth by United States,” which I’m sure is just fascinating.
All of this, assuredly, could be found elsewhere, but it gives me a strange sense of satisfaction to watch it without having to type the word “tube.”
Author’s note: Yes, horror nerds, I’m aware Romero’s zombies don’t eat brains, and by the way your Hot Pockets are stinking up the microwave.
Link.
Image via Wikipedia.
