films deemed "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant". In 2001, the film was ranked No. 93 by the American Film Institute on their AFI's 100 Years ... 100 Thrills list, a list of America's most heart-pounding movies. The zombies in the picture were also a candidate for AFI's AFI's 100 Years ... 100 Heroes & Villains, in the villains category, but failed to make the official list. The Chicago Film Critics Association named it the 5th scariest film ever made. The film also ranked No. 9 on Bravo's The 100 Scariest Movie Moments. Pauline Kael called the film "one of the most gruesomely terrifying movies ever made – and when you leave the theatre you may wish you could forget the whole horrible experience. . . . The film's grainy, banal seriousness works for it – gives it a crude realism". A Film Daily critic commented, "This is a pearl of a horror picture that exhibits all the earmarks of a sleeper." While Roger Ebert criticized the matinée screening, he admitted that he "admires the movie itself". Critic Rex Reed wrote, "If you want to see what turns a B movie into a classic ... don't miss Night of the Living Dead. It is unthinkable for anyone seriously interested in horror movies not to see it." Copyright status and home media Night of the Living Dead entered the public domain in the United States because the original theatrical distributor, the Walter Reade Organization, failed to place a copyright indication on the prints, and at that time, United States copyright law held that public dissemination required copyright notice to maintain a copyright. Image Ten displayed such a notice on the title frames of the film beneath the original title, Night of the Flesh Eaters, but the distributor erroneously removed the statement when it changed the title. Because Night of the Living Dead was not copyrighted, it has received numerous home video releases on VHS, DVD, and Blu-ray. , Amazon.com lists editions of Night of the Living Dead numbering 13 on VHS, 130 on DVD, 12 on Blu-ray, 1 on Blu-ray 3D and 56 on Amazon Video. The original film is available to view or download for free on various websites, such as the Internet Archive and YouTube. , it is the Internet Archive's second most-downloaded film, with over 3.3 million downloads. The film received a VHS release in 1993 through Tempe Video.