How One Mistake Unleashed a Horde of Night of the Living Dead Bootlegs

would you rather accidentally set your arm on fire with spilled gasoline or spend decades grappling with a paperwork mistake? Gary Streiner, who personally experienced both while making 1968’s Night of the Living Dead, says there’s no contest: “Oh, believe me, I would take the burn again.”Streiner was the sound man on George A. Romero’s classic indie zombie flick, but since everyone on the makeshift Pittsburgh project did multiple jobs he also helped create visual effects, like the fireball on a porch chair that would later engulf his limb. His brother, Russ Streiner, was another multitasker, playing the taunting brother Johnny in the movie’s opening, and serving as jack-of-all-trades co-producer. Both were loyal Romero confidantes who helped him found Image Ten, the production company that created the apocalyptic undead tale.So both were among those bitten in the ass when Night of the Living Dead accidentally ended up in the public domain due to a copyright mistake that was anything but simple to fix. Even today, it hasn’t entirely been resolved, which is why there is a right way and a wrong way to watch the movie (at least, if you care about seeing it in the best possible format, while also not picking the pocket of the people who made it.)Today, Romero is gone, and his debut feature is considered an all-time American classic. Stephen King himself calls it the scariest movie he’s ever seen. But the independent film garnered such success partly because it was so widely and freely shared. The friends and colleagues who helped Romero make Night of the Living Dead have finally figured out a way to pull the movie back into their legal possession. But the freebie versions are still out there, so they are hoping fans will be honest and honorable about the version of the film they choose to play this Halloween.Don’t worry, they aren’t “coming to get you, Barbara,” as Russ intones in the iconic opening of the movie. They are just, once again, asking nicely.Image TenTK“That was the beginning of our nightmare,” Russ Streiner says. “The movie at that time was called Night of the Flesh-Eaters. They didn’t like the title.”Basically, look for the Criterion Collection logo. The beloved cinema preservation group helped the Streiners restore the original black-and-white negative for the Museum of Modern Art, and by refining the moody imagery as Romero originally intended, they technically created a “new” work that Image Ten could officially claim as their own. You can find it on the Criterion streaming service, but also HBO Max is among those that licenses their version of the movie.“All of it's licensed now. Now we get paid for it. That's the point, every time it's screened on any of those platforms,” Gary says.“There are other streaming channels that aren't,” adds Russ. If you don’t spot that big, silver C when Night of the Living Dead starts playing, you’re probably watching a bootleg.The average joe might not care much whether these aging producers or Romero’s estate get their share, but keep in mind that these were average joes too, not Hollywood big shots. They were working stiffs who had a dream, made something immortal (in many senses of the word), and then got stiffed for real.“To be honest with you,” Russ begins. “George—and I want to measure my words pretty carefully …”“He was not a great businessman,” Gary cuts in, not measuring his words at all.“None of us were great businessmen,” Russ adds with a sigh.The Streiner brothers were toiling away on local Western Pennsylvania commercials when they helped Romero bring his feature film dream together, and their collective work inspired generations of other nobodies to max out their credit cards, load up on cameras and lights, and make a crazy movie with their friends. “It’s fair to say that without George A. Romero, I would not have the career I have now,” Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz filmmaker Edgar Wright wrote when Romero died in July 2017. “A lot of people owe George a huge debt of gratitude for the inspiration. I am just one of many.”It’s easy enough to find the right version of Night of the Living Dead, and it happens to be the one that looks the best too. Many of the bootlegs are copies of copies of copies. When the Streiners got MoMA and Criterion to revive a new version of the movie, they went back to the original negatives, part of which they possessed, and some of which belonged to Romero’s co-writer. “We gathered up all of the elements from Russ's basement and John Russo's garage, and we trekked out to their facility, and we were all quite amazed at the good condition that everything was still in, not having been kept in absolute ideal conditions,” Gary says.Now it looks as good as it did when the very first prints were sent out into the world. That also happened to be the moment everything went wrong.LMPC//Getty ImagesThe ’Night of the Living Dead’ title card from 1968.You know how old movies have a noticeable copyright tag in their opening credits, usually right under the title? Today, that’s an affectation, used by filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino and Rian Johnson to conjure a feeling of nostalgia. But once upon a time in real Hollywood, that was actually a legal requirement to establish ownership of a film.Romero and his team understood this, and had it on their initial cut of the movie. The mix-up happened when they were negotiating to get the zombie picture into theaters and struck an agreement with the indie distribution company The Walter Reade Organization. “That was the beginning of our nightmare,” Russ says. “The movie at that time was called Night of the Flesh-Eaters. They didn't like the title. They said, ‘We've got to come up with something new.’”The executives had a point: Night of the Living Dead has a certain ring to it, so Romero and the Streiners agreed. They left the print in Walter Reade’s hands. “They were in charge of changing the title, but when the title got changed, the copyright was left off,” Russ says. “It became their responsibility to deal with their lab, and the copyright notice for Night of the Living Dead went by the wayside.”No one realized the mistake until the prints were shipped out, and by that point it was too late. “Not that ownership was ever denied,” Gary says. “There's never been any, ‘Well, no, you didn't make Night of the Living Dead.’ We made it.”Under the United States’ 1909 copyright law, this technical mistake just meant no one was legally obligated to account for tickets or pay them a portion of the sale. “That was the start of it, and we've been spending tons of money legally to get this thing on its right feet,” Gary adds.If that seems both unbelievable and unfair, then welcome to the copyright law revision of the mid-1970s that eliminated this requirement. “It’s totally different now,” says Russ. “As a matter of fact, Night of the Living Dead was one of the reasons that the language for the copyright office changed, because it was preposterous.”But it was too late for the zombie film and the team behind Image Ten, until the new restoration came about from MoMA and the Criterion Collection. The Streiners learned this lesson the hard way, but they were used to that.Who could have guessed that a simple line of text could cause so much trouble? Well … who could have guessed that when you pour gasoline on a chair for a zombie attack scene that it could somehow also go wrong.Image Ten“All of it’s licensed now,” Gary Streiner tells Esquire. “Now we get paid for it.”“George didn't like the way it was looking, and it took about a half hour for him to reset and get the shot that he wanted,” Russ recalls of the infamous incident. “So the chair was put out, and when it came time to do another take in the new camera position, I had been all over that thing diligently making sure that there were no embers or whatever.”He didn’t think about what was below the surface. “There was no fire on the chair itself, but the interior workings of the chair, the springs and the metal framework, were still hot,” Russ adds. “And when Gary started dousing it with gasoline—BOOM!—it was like an explosion that set him on fire.”“I'm literally pouring gasoline out of a plastic jug, and the flame shot right up,” Gary says, mimicking the motion.Spilled glass on his sleeve meant his whole arm was engulfed. “Fortunately, Bill Hinzman, who was a cemetery ghoul, was actually a volunteer fireman, and he had enough common sense to just tackle me and roll me to the ground,” Gary says.It was over in seconds, with only relatively minor burns that eventually healed. The copyright conflagration took a lot longer to resolve, but now, finally, they don’t feel so scorched by it anymore.