“Chilly Billy,” Bill Cardille, left, who played a reporter in “Night of the Living Dead” and Gary Streiner who was a sound technician for the film, chat at the Living Dead Festival Saturday in EDCO park.

When George A. Romero's “Night of the Living Dead” premiered in October 1968, no one, not even the cast and crew, thought it would become a cult classic.

Joyce Bessor, who reviewed the film for the Butler Eagle a day after its first showing, certainly did not.

The Zelienople native summed up the film by writing at the time “not a bad film, if you like that sort of thing.” Bessor said she's still surprised the attention it receives.

“It's amazing the interest has lasted,” she said. “It's still big news right now.”

Bessor was a correspondent for the paper at the time, primarily covering the southwest corner of Butler County.

While she was hardly a film buff, she was asked to review the film because of the number of Evans City residents appearing as ghouls. The world premiere was hosted at the Fulton Theater in Pittsburgh.

Bessor wrote in her review that limousines lined up for two blocks to take the stars and honored guests to a reception at the William Penn Hotel after the show.

The film now is viewed by many as spurring a revitalization of the horror genre, but Bessor said she had a different reaction to the ghouls than most of the viewers in the audience.

“I thought it was a funny movie because I could recognize people in it,” she said, citing how many of the zombies in the film were played by county residents. “But there were people in the audience who were frightened by the movie.”

Bessor's review did show the producers of the film had warm feelings toward Evans City, even before the film made them icons in the horror community.

In her review she mentions how Russ Streiner, co-producer of the film, said the people from the area were great to work with and that everyone had fun making the film.