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 as a result 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. Plot Siblings Barbra and Johnny drive to a cemetery in rural Pennsylvania to visit their father's grave. Their car radio goes off the air due to technical difficulties. As they are leaving, a pale man wearing a tattered suit kills Johnny and attacks Barbra. She flees and takes shelter in a farmhouse, but finds the woman who lived there dead and half-eaten. She sees a multiplying number of strange ghouls, led by the man from the cemetery, approaching the house. A man named Ben arrives, who secures the farmhouse by boarding the windows and doors, and drives away the ghouls with a lever-action rifle. Barbra, in a catatonic state from shock, is surprised when two men, Harry and Tom, emerge from the cellar. Harry has been taking shelter there with his wife, Helen, and their young daughter, Karen, after a group of the same monsters overturned their car and bit Karen on the arm, leaving her seriously ill. Tom arrived with his girlfriend, Judy, after hearing an emergency broadcast about a series of brutal killings. Tom aids Ben in securing the farmhouse while Harry angrily protests that it is unsafe before returning to the cellar, which he believes is safer. Ghouls continue to besiege the farmhouse in increasing numbers. The refugees listen to radio and television reports of a wave of mass murder being committed across the east coast of the United States by an army of cannibalistic, reanimated corpses, and posses of armed men patrolling the countryside to kill the ghouls. They confirm that the ghouls can be stopped with a bullet, or heavy blow to the head, or by being burned, as Ben discovered, and that various rescue centers are offering refuge and safety. Scientists theorize that the reanimations are occurring due to radiation from a space probe that exploded in Earth's atmosphere on the way back