As a horror movie afficianado, I knew that sooner or later I would not only need to see this film, but the whole series as well. When it was first released, Night of the Living Dead was actually a pretty controversial film, but over the years, as movies have gotten more graphic, the film has lost a little bit of it's edge. Since it's initial production we've seen a number of remakes/extensions to this franchise with varying degrees of success.
After watching the film, I wasn't really all that impressed with the movie itself, but it was neat to go back and see the start of the zombie genre. The most disturbing scenes are when the zombies eat the flesh right off of their victims, but even at some of it's more intense moments, this film would likely get a pg-13 rating today. If you are planning on watching other films in the franchise, you don't necessarily need to see this film in order to know what's going on, but given it's influence on other horror movies, it's still worth checking out, even if it's just to see how other film makers were impacted by the film.