title: Emmylou Harris

text: "Old Yellow Moon", an album of duets featuring Harris and former Hot Band member Rodney Crowell, was released on February 26, 2013. This was another "Billboard" Top 10 Country album for Harris, and in 2014 she won her 13th Grammy Award for it.


title: Emmylou Harris

text: "The Traveling Kind", a collaboration with Rodney Crowell, was released May 12, 2015, by Nonesuch Records which earned the pair a second Americana Music Award for Duo/Group of the year and also garnered two Grammy nominations.


title: Emmylou Harris

text: In 2016, Harris was honored with a tribute concert entitled "The Life & Songs of Emmylou Harris", which was later released as both a DVD and a live CD. The concert featured several of Harris's closest friends and collaborators including Rodney Crowell, Buddy Miller, Patty Griffin, Lucinda Williams, Alison Krauss, Lee Ann Womack, Martina McBride, Vince Gill and Sheryl Crow. Harris performed three songs at the concert: "Gone, Long Gone" (with John Starling), "Blackhawk" (with Daniel Lanois), and "Boulder to Birmingham" with the entire cast.


title: Emmylou Harris

text: Harris has been married three times. Her marriage to Tom Slocum lasted from 1969 to 1970 and produced one child, Mika Hallie Slocum, born on March 15, 1970. From 1977 to 1984 she was married to Brian Ahern, with whom she had one child, Meghann Ahern, born on September 9, 1979. From 1985 to 1993, she was married to Paul Kennerley.


title: Emmylou Harris

text: In 1997 and 1998, Harris performed in Sarah McLachlan's Lilith Fair, promoting feminism in music. Since 1999, Harris has organized an annual benefit tour called Concerts for a Landmine Free World. All proceeds from the tours support the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation's (VVAF) efforts to assist innocent victims of conflicts around the world. The tour also benefits the VVAF's work to raise US awareness of the global land mine problem. Artists that have joined Harris on the road for these dates include Mary Chapin Carpenter, Bruce Cockburn, Sheryl Crow, Steve Earle, Joan Baez, Patty Griffin, Nanci Griffith, Willie Nelson, and Lucinda Williams. Harris is a supporter of animal rights and an active member of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). She founded, and in her spare time assists at, Bonaparte's Retreat, an animal shelter in Nashville.


title: Emmylou Harris

text: She became a member of the newly formed Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2011.


title: Emmylou Harris

text: The Grammy Awards celebrate outstanding achievement in music. Harris has won 14 out of 48 nominations.


title: Emmylou Harris

text: The CMA Awards recognize outstanding achievement in the country music industry. Harris has won 3 awards out of 24 nominations.


title: Emmylou Harris

text: The International Bluegrass Music Association recognise outstanding achievement in Bluegrass music. Harris has received five awards for her contributions to a Louvin Brothers tribute album, a Nitty Gritty Dirt Band album and a film (and the resulting documentary) soundtrack.


title: Emmylou Harris

text: The Americana Music Honors & Awards recognize outstanding achievement in Americana music. Of 5 nominations, Harris has won 4.


title: Emmylou Harris

text: The Satellite Awards, presented by the International Press Academy, honor the best in film and television. Harris has won one award.


title: Emmylou Harris

text: Swedish folk duo First Aid Kit released the song "Emmylou" in 2012 as a tribute to Harris. They performed the song for Harris when she received the Polar Music Prize in 2015.


title: Doom (1993 video game)

text: Doom (stylized as DOOM) is a 1993 first-person shooter (FPS) game developed by id Software for MS-DOS. Players assume the role of a space marine, popularly known as Doomguy, fighting their way through hordes of invading demons from hell. Id began developing "Doom" after the release of their previous FPS, "Wolfenstein 3D" (1992)"." It emerged from a 3D game engine developed by John Carmack, who wanted to create a science fiction game inspired by "Dungeons & Dragons" and the films "Evil Dead II" and "Aliens." The first episode, comprising nine levels, was distributed freely as shareware; the full game, with two further episodes, was sold via mail order. An updated version with an additional episode and more difficult levels, "The Ultimate Doom", was released in 1995 and sold at retail.


title: Doom (1993 video game)

text: "Doom" is one of the most significant games in video game history, frequently cited as one of the greatest games ever made. It sold an estimated 3.5 million copies by 1999; between 10 and 20 million people are estimated to have played it within two years of launch, and in late 1995, it was estimated to be installed on more computers worldwide than Microsoft's then-new operating system, Windows 95. Along with "Wolfenstein 3D", "Doom" helped define the FPS genre and inspired numerous similar games, often called "Doom" clones. It pioneered online distribution and technologies including 3D graphics, networked multiplayer gaming, and support for custom modifications via packaged WAD files. Its graphic violence and supposed hellish imagery drew controversy from different groups, such as parents and the news.


title: Doom (1993 video game)

text: "Doom" has been ported to numerous platforms. The "Doom" franchise continued with "Doom II: Hell on Earth" (1994) and expansion packs including "Master Levels for Doom II" (1995). The source code was released in 1997 under a proprietary license, and then later in 1999 under the GNU General Public License v2.0 or later. "Doom 3", a horror game built with the id Tech 4 engine, was released in 2004, followed by a 2005 "Doom" film. id returned to the fast-paced action of the classic games with the 2016 game "Doom" and the 2020 sequel "Doom Eternal".


title: Doom (1993 video game)

text: "Doom" is a first-person shooter presented with early 3D graphics. The player controls an unnamed space marine—later termed "Doomguy"—through a series of levels set in military bases on the moons of Mars and in hell. To finish a level, the player must traverse through the often labyrinthine area to reach a marked exit room. Levels are grouped together into named episodes, with the final level focusing on a boss fight with a particularly difficult enemy. While the environment is presented in a 3D perspective, the enemies and objects are instead 2D sprites presented from several preset viewing angles, a technique sometimes referred to as 2.5D graphics or billboarding.


title: Doom (1993 video game)

text: While traversing the levels, the player must fight a variety of enemies, including demons and possessed undead humans, while managing supplies of ammunition, health, and armor. Enemies often appear in large groups, and the game features five difficulty levels which adjust the quantity and damage done by enemies, with enemies moving faster than normal on the hardest difficulty setting. The monsters have very simple behavior, consisting of either moving toward their opponent if they see or hear the player, or attacking by throwing fireballs, biting, using magic abilities, or clawing. They will reactively fight each other if one monster inadvertently harms another, though most monsters are immune to attacks from their own kind. The environment can include pits of toxic waste, ceilings that lower and crush objects, and locked doors requiring a keycard or a remote switch. The player can find weapons and ammunition throughout the levels or can collect them from dead enemies, including a pistol, a chainsaw, a plasma rifle, and the BFG 9000. Power-ups include health or armor points, a mapping computer, partial invisibility, a safety suit against toxic waste, invulnerability, or a super-strong melee berserker status. Cheat codes give the player instant super powers including invulnerability, all weapons, and walking through walls.


title: Doom (1993 video game)

text: The main campaign mode is the single-player mode, in an episodic succession of missions. Two multiplayer modes are playable over a network: cooperative, in which two to four players team up to complete the main campaign, and deathmatch, in which two to four players compete to kill the other players' characters as many times as possible. Multiplayer was initially only playable over local networks, but a four-player online multiplayer mode was made available one year after launch through the DWANGO service.


title: Doom (1993 video game)

text: "Doom" is divided into three episodes: "Knee-Deep in the Dead", "The Shores of Hell", and "Inferno". A fourth episode, "Thy Flesh Consumed", was added in an expanded version of the game, "The Ultimate Doom", released on April 30, 1995, two years after "Doom" and one year after "Doom II". The campaign contains very few plot elements, with the minimal story instead given in the instruction manual and in short text segues between episodes.


title: Doom (1993 video game)

text: In the future, an unnamed marine (known as the "Doom marine" or "Doom guy") is posted to a dead-end assignment on Mars after assaulting a superior officer who ordered his unit to fire on civilians. The Union Aerospace Corporation, which operates radioactive waste facilities there, allows the military to conduct secret teleportation experiments that go terribly wrong. A base on Phobos urgently requests military support, while Deimos disappears entirely, and the marine joins a combat force to secure Phobos. He waits at the perimeter as ordered while the entire assault team is wiped out. With no way off the moon, and armed with only a pistol, he enters the base intent on revenge.


title: Doom (1993 video game)

text: In "Knee-Deep in the Dead", the marine fights demons and possessed humans in the military and waste processing facilities on Phobos. The episode ends with the marine defeating two powerful Barons of Hell guarding a teleporter to the Deimos base. Emerging from the teleporter, he is overwhelmed and comes to with only a pistol again. In "The Shores of Hell", he fights on through Deimos research facilities that are corrupted with satanic architecture and kills a gigantic cyberdemon. From an overlook he discovers that the moon is floating above hell and rappels down to the surface. In "Inferno", the marine takes on hell itself and destroys a cybernetic spider-demon that masterminded the invasion of the moons. A portal to Earth opens and he steps through, only to find that Earth has also been invaded. "Thy Flesh Consumed" follows the marine's initial assault on the Earth invasion force, setting the stage for "Doom II: Hell on Earth".


title: Doom (1993 video game)

text: In May 1992, id Software released "Wolfenstein 3D", later called the "grandfather of 3D shooters", specifically first-person shooters, because it established the fast-paced action and technical prowess commonly expected in the genre and greatly increased the genre's popularity. Immediately following its release most of the id Software team began work on a set of episodes for the game, titled "Spear of Destiny", while id co-founder and lead programmer John Carmack instead focused on technology research for the company's next game. Following the release of "Spear of Destiny" in September 1992, the team began to plan their next game. They wanted to create another 3D game using a new engine Carmack was developing, but were largely tired of "Wolfenstein". They initially considered making another game in the "Commander Keen" series, as proposed by co-founder and lead designer Tom Hall, but decided that the platforming gameplay of the series was a poor fit for Carmack's fast-paced 3D engines. Additionally, the other two co-founders of id, designer John Romero and lead artist Adrian Carmack, wanted to create something in a darker style than the "Keen" games. John Carmack then came up with his own concept: a game about using technology to fight demons, inspired by the "Dungeons & Dragons" campaigns the team played, combining the styles of "Evil Dead II" and "Aliens". The concept originally had a working title of "Green and Pissed", but Carmack soon renamed it "Doom" after a line in the 1986 film "The Color of Money": What you got in there?' / 'In here? Doom.


title: Doom (1993 video game)

text: The team agreed to pursue the "Doom" concept, and development began in November 1992. The initial development team was composed of five people: programmers John Carmack and Romero, artists Adrian Carmack and Kevin Cloud, and designer Hall. They moved offices to a dark office building, which they named "Suite 666", and drew inspiration from the noises coming from the dentist's office next door. They also decided to cut ties with Apogee Software, their previous publisher, and self-publish "Doom".


title: Doom (1993 video game)

text: Early in development, rifts in the team began to appear. At the end of November, Hall delivered a design document, which he named the "Doom Bible", that described the plot, backstory, and design goals for the project. His design was a science fiction horror concept wherein scientists on the Moon open a portal from which aliens emerge. Over a series of levels, the player discovers that the aliens are demons while hell steadily infects the level design over the course of the game. John Carmack not only disliked the idea but dismissed the idea of having a story at all: "Story in a game is like story in a porn movie; it's expected to be there, but it's not that important." Rather than a deep story, he wanted to focus on the technological innovations of the game, dropping the levels and episodes of "Wolfenstein" in favor of a fast, continuous world. Hall disliked the idea, but the rest of the team sided with Carmack. Hall spent the next few weeks reworking the "Doom Bible" to work with Carmack's technological ideas. Hall was forced to rework it again in December, however, after the team decided that they were unable to create a single, seamless world with the hardware limitations of the time, which contradicted much of the document.


title: Doom (1993 video game)

text: At the start of 1993, id put out a press release, touting Hall's story about fighting off demons while "knee-deep in the dead". The press release proclaimed the new game features that John Carmack had created, as well as other features, including multiplayer gaming features, that had not yet even been designed. Early versions of the game were built to match the "Doom Bible"; a "pre-alpha" version of the first level includes Hall's introductory base scene. Initial versions of the game also retain "arcade" elements present in "Wolfenstein 3D", like score points and score items, but those were removed early in development as they were not in keeping with the tone of the game. Other elements, such as a complex user interface, an inventory system, a secondary shield protection, and lives were modified and slowly removed over the course of development.


title: Doom (1993 video game)

text: Soon, however, the "Doom Bible" as a whole was rejected. Romero wanted a game even "more brutal and fast" than "Wolfenstein", which did not leave room for the character-driven plot Hall had created. Additionally, the team believed it emphasized realism over entertaining gameplay, and they did not see the need for a design document at all. Some ideas were retained, but the story was dropped and most of the game design was removed. By early 1993, levels were being created for the game and a demo was produced. John Carmack and Romero, however, disliked Hall's military base-inspired level design. Romero especially believed that the boxy, flat level designs were uninspiring, too similar to "Wolfenstein", and did not show off the engine's capabilities. He began to create his own, more abstract levels for the game, which the rest of the team saw as a great improvement.


title: Doom (1993 video game)

text: Hall was upset with the reception to his designs and how little impact he was having as the lead designer. He was also upset with how much he was having to fight with John Carmack in order to get what he saw as obvious gameplay improvements, such as flying enemies, and began to spend less time at work. In July the other founders of id fired Hall, who went to work for Apogee. He was replaced in September, ten weeks before the game was released, by game designer Sandy Petersen. In 2020, Petersen recalled that Carmack and Romero wanted to hire other artists instead, but Cloud and Adrian disagreed, saying that a designer was required to help build a cohesive gameplay experience. They relented and Petersen was hired.


title: Doom (1993 video game)

text: The team also added a third programmer, Dave Taylor. Petersen and Romero designed the rest of "Doom" levels, with different aims: the team believed that Petersen's designs were more technically interesting and varied, while Romero's were more aesthetically interesting. In late 1993, after the multiplayer component was coded, the development team began playing four-player multiplayer games matches, which Romero termed "deathmatch". According to Romero, the game's deathmatch mode was inspired by fighting games such as "", "Fatal Fury", and "Art of Fighting".


title: Doom (1993 video game)

text: "Doom" was programmed largely in the ANSI C programming language, with a few elements in assembly language. Development was done on NeXT computers running the NeXTSTEP operating system. The data used by the game engine, including level designs and graphics files, are stored in WAD files, short for "Where's All the Data?". This allows for any part of the design to be changed without needing to adjust the engine code. Carmack designed this system so that fans could easily modify the game; he had been impressed by the modifications made by fans of "Wolfenstein 3D", and wanted to support that with an easily swappable file structure along with releasing the map editor online.


title: Doom (1993 video game)

text: Unlike "Wolfenstein", which had flat levels with walls at right angles, the "Doom" engine allows for walls and floors at any angle or height, though two traversable areas cannot be on top of each other. The lighting system was based on adjusting the color palette of surfaces directly: rather than calculating how light traveled from light sources to surfaces using ray tracing, the game calculates the "light level" of a small area based on its distance from light sources. It then modifies the color palette of that section's surface textures to mimic how dark it would look. This same system is used to cause far away surfaces to look darker than close ones. Romero came up with new ways to use Carmack's lighting engine such as strobe lights. He programmed engine features such as switches and movable stairs and platforms. After Romero's complex level designs started to cause problems with the engine, Carmack began to use binary space partitioning to quickly select the reduced portion of a level that the player could see at a given time. Taylor programmed other features into the game, added cheat codes; some, such as "idspispopd", were based on ideas their fans had submitted online while eagerly awaiting the game.


title: Doom (1993 video game)

text: Adrian Carmack was the lead artist for "Doom", with Kevin Cloud as an additional artist. They designed the monsters to be "nightmarish", with graphics that are realistic and dark instead of staged or rendered, so a mixed media approach was taken. The artists sculpted models of some of the enemies, and took pictures of them in stop motion from five to eight different angles so that they could be rotated realistically in-game. The images were then digitized and converted to 2D characters with a program written by John Carmack. Adrian Carmack made clay models for a few demons, and had Gregor Punchatz build latex and metal sculptures of the others. The weapons were made from combined parts of children's toys. The developers scanned themselves as well, using Cloud's arm for the marine's arm holding a gun, and Adrian's snakeskin boots and wounded knee for textures.


title: Doom (1993 video game)

text: As with "Wolfenstein 3D", id hired composer Bobby Prince to create the music and sound effects. Romero directed Prince to make the music in techno and metal styles. Many tracks were directly inspired by songs by metal bands such as Alice in Chains and Pantera. Prince believed that ambient music would be more appropriate, and produced numerous tracks in both styles in hope of convincing the team, and Romero incorporated both. Prince did not make music for specific levels, as they were composed before the levels were completed; instead, Romero assigned each track to each level late in development. Prince created the sound effects based on short descriptions or concept art of a monster or weapon, and adjusted them to match the completed animations. The monster sounds were created from animal noises, and Prince designed all the sounds to be distinct on the limited sound hardware of the time, even when many sounds were playing at once. He also designed the sound effects to play on different frequencies from those used for the MIDI music, so they would clearly cut through the music.


title: Doom (1993 video game)

text: With plans to self-publish, the team had to set up the systems to sell "Doom" as it neared completion. Jay Wilbur, who had been hired as CEO and sole member of the business team, planned the marketing and distribution of "Doom". He believed that the mainstream press was uninterested in the game, and as id would make the most money off of copies they sold directly to customers—up to 85 percent of the planned price—he decided to leverage the shareware market as much as possible, buying only a single ad in any gaming magazine. Instead, he reached out directly to software retailers, offering them copies of the first "Doom" episode for free, allowing them to charge any price for it, in order to spur customer interest in buying the full game directly from id.


title: Doom (1993 video game)

text: "Doom"s original release date was the third quarter of 1993, which the team did not meet. By December 1993, the team was working non-stop on the game, with several employees sleeping at the office. Programmer Dave Taylor claimed that working on the game gave him such a rush that he would pass out from the intensity. Id began receiving calls from people interested in the game or angry that it had missed its planned release date, as hype for the game had been building online. At midnight on December 10, 1993, after working for 30 straight hours, the development team at id uploaded the first episode of the game to the Internet, letting interested players distribute it for them. So many users were connected to the first FTP server that they planned to upload the game to, at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, that even after the network administrator increased the number of connections while on the phone with Wilbur, id was unable to connect, forcing them to kick all other users off to allow id to upload the game. When the upload finished thirty minutes later, 10,000 people attempted to download the game at once, crashing the university's network.


title: Doom (1993 video game)

text: Within hours of "Doom"s release, university networks were banning "Doom" multiplayer games, as a rush of players overwhelmed their systems. After being alerted by network administrators the morning after release that the game's deathmatch network connection setup was crippling some computer networks, John Carmack quickly released a patch to change it, though many administrators had to implement "Doom"-specific rules to keep their networks from crashing due to the overwhelming traffic. In 1995, an expanded version of "Doom" developed for the retail market, "The Ultimate Doom", was released by GT Interactive, and contained a fourth episode.


title: Doom (1993 video game)

text: By late 1995, "Doom" was estimated to be installed on more computers worldwide than Microsoft's new operating system, Windows 95. According to Windows producer Gabe Newell, who later founded the game company Valve, "[id] ... didn't even distribute through retail, it distributed through bulletin boards and other pre-internet mechanisms. To me, that was a lightning bolt. Microsoft was hiring 500-people sales teams and this entire company was 12 people, yet it had created the most widely distributed software in the world. There was a sea change coming."


title: Doom (1993 video game)

text: "Doom" has been ported to numerous different platforms, though none were by id Software. The first port of "Doom" was an unofficial port to Linux, released by id programmer Dave Taylor in 1994; it was hosted by id but not supported or made official. Microsoft attempted to hire id to port "Doom" to Windows in 1995 to promote Windows as a gaming platform, and Microsoft CEO Bill Gates briefly considered buying the company. When id declined, Microsoft made its own port, with a team lead by Newell. One promotional video for Windows 95 had Gates digitally superimposed into the game.


title: Doom (1993 video game)

text: Other official ports of the game were released for Sega 32X, Atari Jaguar, and Mac OS in 1994, SNES and PlayStation in 1995, 3DO in 1996, Sega Saturn in 1997, Acorn Risc PC in 1998, Game Boy Advance in 2001, Xbox 360 in 2006, iOS in 2009, and Nintendo Switch in 2019. Some of these were bestsellers even many years after the initial release. "Doom" has also been ported unofficially to numerous platforms; so many ports exist, including for esoteric devices such as smart thermostats and oscilloscopes, that variations on "It runs "Doom"" or "Can it run "Doom"?" are long-running memes.


title: Doom (1993 video game)

text: Although Petersen said "Doom" was "nothing more than the computer equivalent of Whack-A-Mole", "Doom" received critical acclaim and was widely praised in the gaming press, broadly considered to be one of the most important and influential titles in gaming history. Upon release, "GamesMaster" gave it a 90% rating. "Dragon" gave it five stars, praising the improvements over "Wolfenstein 3D", the "fast-moving arcade shoot 'em up" gameplay, and network play. "Computer and Video Games" gave the game a 93% rating, praising its atmosphere and stating that "the level of texture-mapped detail and the sense of scale is awe inspiring", but criticized the occasionally repetitive gameplay and considered the violence excessive. A common criticism of "Doom" was that it was not a true 3D game, since the game engine did not allow corridors and rooms to be stacked on top of one another (room-over-room), and instead relied on graphical trickery to make it appear that the player character and enemies were moving along differing elevations.


title: Doom (1993 video game)

text: "Computer Gaming World" stated in February 1994 that "Wolfenstein 3D" fans should "look forward to a delight of insomnia", and "Since networking is supported, bring along a friend to share in the visceral delights". A longer review in March 1994 said that "Doom" "was worth the wait ... a wonderfully involved and engaging game", and its technology "a new benchmark" for the gaming industry. The reviewer praised the "simply "dazzling"" graphics", and reported that "DeathMatches may be the most intense gaming experience available today". While criticizing the "ho-hum endgame" with a too-easy end boss, he concluded that "Doom" "is a virtuoso performance".


title: Doom (1993 video game)

text: "Edge" praised the graphics and levels but criticized the "simple 3D perspective maze adventure/shoot 'em up" gameplay. The review concluded: "You’ll be longing for something new in this game. If only you could talk to these creatures, then perhaps you could try and make friends with them, form alliances... Now, that would be interesting." Decades later, the review attracted mockery, and "if only you could talk to these creatures" became a running joke in video game culture. A 2016 piece in the "International Business Times" defended the sentiment, saying it anticipated the dialogue systems of games such as "", "Mass Effect" and "Undertale".


title: Doom (1993 video game)

text: In 1994, "PC Gamer UK" named "Doom" the third-best computer game of all time. The editors wrote: "Although it's only been around for a couple of months, "Doom" has already done more to establish the PC's arcade clout than any other title in gaming history." In 1994 "Computer Gaming World" named "Doom" Game of the Year. The various "Doom" console ports have received generally favorable reviews.


title: Doom (1993 video game)

text: In 1995, "Next Generation" said it was "The most talked about PC game ever – and with good reason. Running on a 486 machine (essential for maximum effect), "Doom" took PC graphics to a totally new level of speed, detail, and realism, and provided a genuinely scary degree of immersion in the gameworld." In the same year, Flux magazine ranked the pc version 3rd on their "Top 100 Video Games." In 1996, "Computer Gaming World" named it the fifth best video game of all time, and the third most-innovative game. In 1996, GamesMaster rated the SNES version 7th on their "The Gamesmaster SNES Top 10." In 1998, "PC Gamer" declared it the 34th-best computer game ever released, and the editors called it "Probably the most imitated game of all time, "Doom" continued what "Wolfenstein 3D" began and elevated the fledgling 3D-shooter genre to blockbuster status".


title: Doom (1993 video game)

text: In 2001, "Doom" was voted the number one game of all time in a poll among over 100 game developers and journalists conducted by GameSpy. In 2003, IGN ranked it as the 44th top video game of all time and also called it ""the" breakthrough game of 1993", adding: "Its arsenal of powerful guns (namely the shotgun and BFG), intense level of gore and perfect balance of adrenaline-soaked action and exploration kept this gamer riveted for years." "PC Gamer" proclaimed "Doom" the most influential game of all time in its ten-year anniversary issue in April 2004.


title: Doom (1993 video game)

text: In 2004, readers of "Retro Gamer" voted "Doom" as the ninth top retro game, with the editors commenting: "Only a handful of games can claim that they've changed the gaming world, and "Doom" is perhaps the most qualified of them all." In 2005, IGN ranked it as the 39th top game. On March 12, 2007, "The New York Times" reported that "Doom" was named to a list of the ten most important video games of all time, the so-called game canon. The Library of Congress took up this video game preservation proposal and began with the games from this list.


title: Doom (1993 video game)

text: In 2009, GameTrailers ranked "Doom" as the number one "breakthrough PC game". That year "Game Informer" put "Doom" sixth on the magazine's list of the top 200 games of all time, stating that it gave "the genre the kick start it needed to rule the gaming landscape two decades later". "Game Informer" staff also put it sixth on their 2001 list of the 100 best games ever. IGN included "Doom" at 2nd place in the "Top 100 Video Game Shooters of all Time", just behind "Half-Life", citing the game's "feel of running and gunning", memorable weapons and enemies, pure and simple fun, and its spreading on nearly every gaming platform in existence.


title: Doom (1993 video game)

text: In 2012, "Time" named it one of the 100 greatest video games of all time as "it established the look and feel of later shooters as surely as Xerox PARC established the rules of the virtual desktop", adding that "its impact also owes a lot to the gonzo horror sensibility of its designers, including John Romero, who showed a bracing lack of restraint in their deployment of gore and Satanic iconography". Including "Doom" on the list of the greatest games of all time, GameSpot wrote that "despite its numerous appearances in other formats and on other media, longtime fans will forever remember the original 1993 release of "Doom" as the beginning of a true revolution in action gaming". In 2015, The Strong National Museum of Play inducted "Doom" to its World Video Game Hall of Fame. In 2018, Complex listed the game #47 in their "The Best Super Nintendo Games of All Time."


title: Doom (1993 video game)

text: In 2021, "Kotaku" listed "Doom" as the third best game in the series, behind "Doom II" and "Doom (2016)". They said that the gameplay "still holds up", but argued it was inferior to "Doom II" due to the latter's improved enemy variety.


title: Doom (1993 video game)

text: With the release of "Doom", millions of users installed the Shareware version on their computer and id Software quickly began making $100,000 daily (for $9 per copy). Sandy Petersen later remarked that the game "sold a couple of hundred thousand copies during its first year or so", as piracy kept its initial sales from rising higher, and Wilbur in 1995 estimated first-year sales as 140,000. id sold 3.5 million physical copies from its release through 1999. According to PC Data, which tracked sales in the United States, by April 1998 "Doom"s shareware edition had yielded 1.36 million units sold and $8.74 million in revenue in the United States. This led PC Data to declare it the country's fourth-best-selling computer game for the period between January 1993 and April 1998. The "Ultimate Doom" SKU reached sales of 787,397 units by September 1999. At the time, PC Data ranked them as the country's eighth- and 20th-best-selling computer games since January 1993. In addition to its sales, the game's status as shareware dramatically increased its market penetration. "PC Zone"s David McCandless wrote that the game was played by "an estimated six million people across the globe", and other sources estimate that 10–20 million people played "Doom" within 24 months of its launch.


title: Doom (1993 video game)

text: "Doom" became a problem at workplaces, both occupying the time of employees and clogging computer networks. Intel, Lotus Development, and Carnegie Mellon University were among many organizations reported to form policies specifically disallowing "Doom"-playing during work hours. At the Microsoft campus, "Doom" was by one account equal to a "religious phenomenon". Doom was #1 on "Computer Gaming World"s "Playing Lately?" survey for February 1994. One reader said that "No other game even compares to the addictiveness of NetDoom with four devious players! ... The only game I've stayed up 72+ straight hours to play", and another reported that "Linking four people together for a game of Doom is the quickest way to destroy a productive, boring evening of work".


title: Doom (1993 video game)

text: "Doom" was notorious for its high levels of graphic violence and satanic imagery, which generated controversy from a broad range of groups. "Doom" for the 32X was one of the first video games to be given an M for Mature rating from the Entertainment Software Rating Board due to its violent gore and nature. Yahoo! Games listed it as one of the top ten most controversial games of all time. It was criticized by religious organizations for its diabolic undertones and was dubbed a "mass murder simulator" by critic and Killology Research Group founder David Grossman. "Doom" prompted fears that the then-emerging virtual reality technology could be used to simulate extremely realistic killing.


title: Doom (1993 video game)

text: The game again sparked controversy in the United States when it was found that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who committed the Columbine High School massacre on April 20, 1999, were avid players of the game. While planning for the massacre, Harris said in his journal that the killing would be "like playing "Doom"", and "it'll be like the LA riots, the Oklahoma bombing, World War II, Vietnam, "Duke Nukem" and "Doom" all mixed together", and that his shotgun was "straight out of the game". A rumor spread afterwards that Harris had designed a custom "Doom" level, known as a "Doom WAD" that looked like the high school, populated with representations of Harris's classmates and teachers, and that he practiced for the shootings by playing the level repeatedly. Although Harris did design several custom "Doom" levels (which later became known as the "Harris levels"), none have been found to be based on Columbine High School.


title: Doom (1993 video game)

text: In the earliest release versions, the level E1M4: Command Control contains a swastika-shaped structure, which was put in as a homage to "Wolfenstein 3D". The swastika was removed in later versions; according to Romero, the change was done out of respect after id Software received a complaint from a military veteran.


title: Doom (1993 video game)

text: "Doom" has appeared in several forms in addition to video games, including a "Doom" comic book, four novels by Dafydd Ab Hugh and Brad Linaweaver (loosely based on events and locations in the games), a and a live-action film starring Karl Urban and The Rock released in 2005. The game's development and impact on popular culture is the subject of the book "Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture" by David Kushner.


title: Doom (1993 video game)

text: The "Doom" series remained dormant between 1997 and 2000, when "Doom 3" was finally announced. A retelling of the original "Doom" using entirely new graphics technology and a slower paced survival horror approach, "Doom 3" was hyped to provide as large a leap in realism and interactivity as the original game and helped renew interest in the franchise when it was released in 2004, under the id Tech 4 game engine.


title: Doom (1993 video game)

text: The series again remained dormant for 10 years until a reboot, simply titled "Doom" and running on the new id Tech 6, was announced with a beta access to players that had pre-ordered "". The game held its closed alpha multiplayer testing in October 2015, as closed and open beta access ran during March to April 2016. Returning to the series' roots in fast-paced action and minimal storytelling, the full game eventually released worldwide on May 13, 2016. The project initially started as "Doom 4" in May 2008, set to be a remake of "Doom II: Hell on Earth" and ditching the survival horror aspect of "Doom 3". Development completely restarted as id's Tim Willits remarked that "Doom 4" was "lacking the personality of the long-running shooter franchise".


title: Doom (1993 video game)

text: The ability for user-generated content to provide custom levels and other game modifications using WAD files became a popular aspect of "Doom". Gaining the first large mod-making community, "Doom" affected the culture surrounding first-person shooters, and also the industry. Several future professional game designers started their careers making "Doom" WADs as a hobby, such as Tim Willits, who later became the lead designer at id Software.


title: Doom (1993 video game)

text: The first level editors appeared in early 1994, and additional tools have been created that allow most aspects of the game to be edited. Although the majority of WADs contain one or several custom levels mostly in the style of the original game, others implement new monsters and other resources, and heavily alter the gameplay. Several popular movies, television series, other video games and other brands from popular culture have been turned into "Doom" WADs by fans, including "Aliens", "Star Wars", "The Simpsons", "South Park", "Sailor Moon", "Dragon Ball Z", "Pokémon", "Beavis and Butt-head", "Batman", and "Sonic the Hedgehog". Some works, like the "Theme Doom Patch", combined enemies from several films, such as "Aliens", "Predator", and "The Terminator". Some add-on files were also made that changed the sounds made by the various characters and weapons.


title: Doom (1993 video game)

text: From 1994 to 1995, WADs were primarily distributed online over bulletin board systems or sold in collections on compact discs in computer shops, sometimes bundled with editing guide books. FTP servers became the primary method in later years. A few WADs have been released commercially, including the "Master Levels for Doom II", which was released in 1995 along with "Maximum Doom", a CD containing 1,830 WADs that had been downloaded from the Internet. The "idgames" FTP archive contains more than 18,000 files, and this represents only a fraction of the complete output of "Doom" fans. Third-party programs were also written to handle the loading of various WADs, since all commands must be entered on the DOS command line to run. A typical launcher would allow the player to select which files to load from a menu, making it much easier to start. In 1995, WizardWorks released the "D!Zone" pack featuring hundreds of levels for "Doom" and "Doom II". "D!Zone" was reviewed in "Dragon" by Jay & Dee; Jay gave the pack 1 out of 5 stars, and Dee gave the pack 1½ stars.


title: Doom (1993 video game)

text: In 2016, Romero published two new "Doom" levels: E1M4b ("Phobos Mission Control") and E1M8b ("Tech Gone Bad"). In 2018, for the 25th anniversary of "Doom", Romero announced "Sigil", an unofficial Episode Five consisting of 9 missions. It was released on May 22, 2019, with a soundtrack by Buckethead. It was then released for free on May 31, with a MIDI soundtrack by James Paddock.


title: Doom (1993 video game)

text: "Doom" was influential and dozens of new first-person shooter games appeared following "Doom"s release, often referred to as ""Doom" clones". The term was initially popular, and after 1996, gradually replaced by "first-person shooter", which had firmly superseded around 1998. Some of these were cheap clones, hastily assembled and quickly forgotten, and others explored new grounds of the genre with high acclaim. Many of "Doom"s closely imitated features include the selection of weapons and cheat codes. Some successors include Apogee's "Rise of the Triad" (based on the "Wolfenstein 3D" engine) and Looking Glass Studios's "System Shock". The popularity of "Star Wars"-themed WADs is rumored to have been the factor that prompted LucasArts to create their first-person shooter "Dark Forces".


title: Doom (1993 video game)

text: The "Doom" engine was licensed by id Software to several other companies, who released their own games using the technology, including "Heretic", "", "Strife: Quest for the Sigil", and "Hacx: Twitch 'n Kill". A "Doom"-based game called "Chex Quest" was released in 1996 by Ralston Foods as a promotion to increase cereal sales, and the United States Marine Corps produced "Marine Doom" as a training tool, later released to the public.


title: Doom (1993 video game)

text: When 3D Realms released "Duke Nukem 3D" in 1996, a tongue-in-cheek science fiction shooter based on Ken Silverman's technologically similar "Build" engine, id Software had nearly finished developing "Quake", its next-generation game, which mirrored "Doom"s success for much of the remainder of the 1990s and reduced interest in its predecessor (Wolfenstein 3D).


title: Doom (1993 video game)

text: In addition to the thrilling nature of the single-player game, the deathmatch mode was an important factor in the game's popularity. "Doom" was not the first first-person shooter with a deathmatch mode; "Maze War", an FPS released in 1974, was running multiplayer deathmatch over ethernet on Xerox computers by 1977. The widespread distribution of PC systems and the violence in "Doom" made deathmatching particularly attractive. Two-player multiplayer was possible over a phone line by using a modem, or by linking two PCs with a null-modem cable. Because of its widespread distribution, "Doom" hence became the game that introduced deathmatching to a large audience and was also the first game to use the term "deathmatch".


title: Doom (1993 video game)

text: Although the popularity of the "Doom" games dropped with the release of more modern first-person shooters, the game still retains a strong fan base that continues to this day by playing competitively and creating WADs, and "Doom"-related news is still tracked at multiple websites such as Doomworld. Interest in "Doom" was renewed in 1997, when the source code for the "Doom" engine was released (it was also placed under the GNU GPL-2.0-or-later on October 3, 1999). Fans then began porting the game to various operating systems, even to previously unsupported platforms such as the Dreamcast. As for the PC, over 50 different "Doom" source ports have been developed. New features such as OpenGL rendering and scripting allow WADs to alter the gameplay more radically.


title: Doom (1993 video game)

text: Devoted players have spent years creating speedruns for "Doom", competing for the quickest completion times of individual levels and the whole game and sharing knowledge about routes through the levels and how to exploit bugs in the "Doom" engine for shortcuts. "Doom" was one of the first games to have a speedrunning community, which has remained active up until the present day. A record speedrun on E1M1, the first level in the game, was achieved in September 1998, and took 20 years and "tens of thousands of futile attempts" in order to be surpassed. Achievements include the completion of both "Doom" and "Doom II" on the "Ultra-Violence" difficulty setting in less than 30 minutes each. In addition, a few players have also managed to complete "Doom II" in a single run on the difficulty setting "Nightmare!", on which monsters are more aggressive, launch faster projectiles (or, in the case of the Pinky Demon, simply move faster), and respawn roughly 30 seconds after they have been killed (level designer John Romero characterized the idea of such a run as "[just having to be] impossible"). Movies of most of these runs are available from the COMPET-N website.


title: Doom (1993 video game)

text: One notable fan of "Doom" is Christoph Schneider from the German rock band Rammstein; he uses the stage name "Doom" which was inspired by the video game. Schneider needed a stage name for the German copyright agency, but found there were too many Christoph Schneiders in the entertainment industry. Schneider's band mate Paul Landers suggested the name "Doom" because they liked the game. Schneider has said that had he known that name would be on every Rammstein record he played on, he would have chosen a different one.


title: Jean de Carrouges

text: Sir Jean de Carrouges IV (c. 1330s – 25 September 1396) was a French knight who governed estates in Normandy as a vassal of Count Pierre d'Alençon and who served under Admiral Jean de Vienne in several campaigns against the Kingdom of England. He became famous in medieval France for fighting in one of the last judicial duels permitted by the French king and the Parliament of Paris (the actual last duel occurred in 1547 opposing Guy Chabot de Jarnac against François de Vivonne). The combat was decreed in 1386 to contest charges of rape Carrouges had brought against his neighbour and erstwhile friend Jacques Le Gris on behalf of his wife Marguerite. It was attended by much of the highest French nobility of the time led by King Charles VI and his family, including a number of royal dukes. It was also attended by thousands of ordinary Parisians and in the ensuing decades was chronicled by such notable medieval historians as Jean Froissart, Jean Juvénal des Ursins, and Jean de Waurin.


title: Jean de Carrouges

text: Described in the chronicles as a rash and temperamental man, Carrouges was also a fierce and brave warrior whose death in battle came after a forty-year military career in which he served in Normandy, Scotland and Hungary with distinction and success. He was also heavily involved in court politics, initially at the seat of his overlord Count Pierre of Alençon at Argentan, but later in the politics of the royal household at Paris, to which he was attached as a "chevalier d'honneur" and royal bodyguard in the years following the judicial duel. During his life, he conducted a long trail of legal and financial dealings which infuriated his contemporaries and may have invited violence against himself and his family. The truth of the events which led him into public mortal combat in the Paris suburbs may never be known, but the legend is still debated and discussed 600 years later.


title: Jean de Carrouges

text: Carrouges was born in the late 1330s in the village of Saint-Marguerite-de-Carrouges as the eldest son of the knight and minor noble, Sir Jean de Carrouges III, and his wife, Nicole de Buchard. Jean was an influential man in lower Normandy, being a vassal of the Count of Perche and a veteran soldier in his service. He had been rewarded for his long military service in the Hundred Years' War with a knighthood and the title of Viscount of Bellême, a rank that came with command of a vital hill castle overlooking the town as well as the role of sheriff in the vicinity, a post carrying significant financial and social rewards.


title: Jean de Carrouges

text: Carrouges IV grew up within his father's domain, centred around the village of Carrouges where the family maintained their own hereditary castle. He followed his father into the armed service of the Counts of Perche and served in several minor campaigns against the English and routiers in Normandy. Following his majority at age 21, he was given a parcel of the family lands to administer and became interested in solidifying and expanding the family holdings. In 1367 the family castle and the village of Carrouges were destroyed by English soldiers and a new castle was built on a hilltop nearby, under instructions from Charles V of France.


title: Jean de Carrouges

text: In the early 1370s, Carrouges IV married Jeanne de Tilly, a daughter of the Lord of Chambois whose dowry included lands and rents vital to Carrouges' ambition of expanding his family estates. Shortly after their wedding, Jeanne gave birth to a son, whose godfather was a neighbour and close friend of de Carrouges, Squire Jacques Le Gris. In 1377, Pierre d'Alençon inherited his brother Robert's county of Perche and with it the castle of Bellême. In addition, he gained the fealty of his brother's vassals, including the Carrouges father and son as well as Jacques Le Gris. The younger Carrouges and Le Gris soon joined the court circle of the Count, centered around the town of Argentan.


title: Jean de Carrouges

text: It was at Argentan that the friendship between Carrouges and Le Gris began to deteriorate, as Le Gris rapidly became a favourite of Count Pierre. While Carrouges was overlooked, Le Gris was rewarded for service to the Count, inheriting his father's lordship of the castle at Exmes and being granted a newly purchased estate at Aunou-le-Faucon. Carrouges became jealous of his friend and the two men soon became rivals at the court. A year after entering Count Pierre's service, tragedy struck Carrouges as both his wife and son died of unknown but natural causes. In response, Carrouges left home and joined the service of Jean de Vienne accompanied by a retinue of nine squires. With this force, under the overall command of King Charles V, Carrouges distinguished himself in minor actions against the English in Beuzeville, Carentan, and Coutances in a five-month campaign, during which over half his retinue were killed in battle or by disease.


title: Jean de Carrouges

text: Returning home in 1380 after a successful campaign, Carrouges married Marguerite de Thibouville, the only daughter of the highly controversial Robert de Thibouville. De Thibouville was a Norman lord who had twice sided against the French king in territorial conflicts, betrayals he was lucky to survive, albeit in reduced circumstances. By the union of Marguerite and Carrouges, de Thibouville hoped to restore his family's status while Carrouges was hoping for an heir from the young Marguerite, whom contemporaries described as "young, noble, wealthy, and also very beautiful".


title: Jean de Carrouges

text: Shortly after his marriage, Carrouges revealed another motive for the union. The valuable estate of Aunou-le-Faucon, given to his rival Jacques Le Gris two years earlier, had been formerly owned by Carrouges' father-in-law, Robert de Thibouville, and had been bought by Count Pierre for 8,000 French livres in 1377. Carrouges immediately began a lawsuit to recover the land, based on an assumed prior claim to it. The case dragged on for some months until ultimately Count Pierre was forced to visit his cousin King Charles VI to confirm his ownership of the land officially, as well as his right to give it to whomever of the followers he chose. The lawsuit reflected very poorly on Carrouges at the court in Argentan and resulted in his further estrangement from Count Pierre's circle.


title: Jean de Carrouges

text: Two years after the Aunou-le-Faucon lawsuit, Carrouges was once again in court facing Count Pierre, this time in a dispute over the lands administered by his recently deceased father. Carrouges III's death early in 1382 vacated the captaincy of the castle of Bellême, a post Carrouges IV believed would be his by right. However, due to the failed lawsuit two years earlier, Count Pierre passed Carrouges over for the captaincy and gave it to another of his followers. The infuriated Carrouges again brought legal action against his overlord and again he was defeated in court. The only lasting result of the action was the further separation of Carrouges and Count Pierre's court.


title: Jean de Carrouges

text: In March 1383, Carrouges made a third effort to expand his family holdings, with the purchase of the neighbouring fiefs of Cuigny and Plainville from his neighbour Sir Jean de Vauloger. The sale required approval from Count Pierre, who was overlord of both fiefs, but as a consequence of the previous legal difficulties Carrouges had caused him, he refused to permit the sale and insisted that Carrouges turn the properties over to him in exchange for a full refund of the original price paid. Carrouges had no choice but to comply and subsequently blamed Jacques le Gris' influence for this new misfortune.


title: Jean de Carrouges

text: Late in 1384, Carrouges entered society for the first time since his marriage four years earlier, attending a party to celebrate the birth of a neighbour's son. Carrouges and Le Gris met at the celebration and agreed to end their quarrel, Carrouges introducing Le Gris to his wife Marguerite for the first time. A few months after this meeting, in March 1385, Carrouges attempted to increase his family wealth through military means, by joining the army of Jean de Vienne for an expedition sailing to Edinburgh. This force of about 3,000 soldiers was intended to unite with the Scottish army and raid Northern England, distracting English forces from operations in France. Travelling with men-at-arms, horses, gold, and equipment, Carrouges and his entourage rode to Sluys and took ship to Leith during the spring of 1385.


title: Jean de Carrouges

text: On arrival in Scotland, much time was spent gathering Scottish troops together for the campaign on England, and the French were delayed for some months collecting supplies. The army thus did not move south until July, ravaging villages and farms in the region of the River Tweed before besieging Wark Castle and burning it to the ground. The allied army then continued south through Northumberland and there burned villages, towns, farms, and castles across their line of advance in a large chevauchée. The English responded with an army led by King Richard II which advanced against the allied force and offered battle. The French prepared to fight but their Scots allies retreated, leaving the French exposed, and they were consequently forced to retreat as well. Outside Edinburgh, the Scottish army dispersed and the inhabitants of the city fled north, leaving the French alone. Realising that his force was outnumbered and without food or help, Vienne took the army south, rounding the English on the night of 10 August and reentering Northumberland for further looting, attacking Carlisle but being unable to break through its walls. As the Franco–Scottish forces returned northwards it was attacked by an army under Henry Percy which destroyed their wagon train and took many prisoners. When the defeated French returned to Edinburgh the Scots refused to provide for the French army and many men died of disease or starvation. Late in the year, the French army boarded ships and returned to Flanders, bankrupt and defeated.


title: Jean de Carrouges

text: Despite the expedition's failure, Carrouges had distinguished himself in the campaign. Although he had lost five of his nine men-at-arms and a substantial amount of money, he had also been awarded a knighthood on the battlefield, substantially raising his social status and the amount of money he received from military service. Despite being in poor health on his return from Scotland, Carrouges had business in Paris and in January 1386 he travelled there to collect his wages for the previous year's campaign, leaving his wife with his mother at the village of Capomesnil.


title: Jean de Carrouges

text: Before setting off for Paris, Carrouges first visited Argentan to meet with Count Pierre and there announced his intention of continuing to the capital. What followed was a sequence of events that remain unclear, but which would have a dramatic effect on the lives of all concerned. What is certain is that Carrouges encountered his rival Jacques Le Gris at the court of Count Pierre and words were exchanged, although what was said is unknown. In contrast to his bankrupt rival, Le Gris had not been on the Scottish expedition and had grown wealthier in Carrouges' absence. Le Gris also had a reputation as a fierce and strong soldier in addition to that of a notorious womaniser, a reputation that may have played a part in the allegations that followed.


title: Jean de Carrouges

text: On the morning of 18 January 1386, Dame Nicole de Carrouges departed her chateau at Capomesnil for the neighbouring town of Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives where she had legal business to attend to. Although the journey was only a short one, she apparently took some or all of the household servants with her, leaving her daughter-in-law unattended during the day. Marguerite's testimony then alleged that a man-at-arms named Adam Louvel knocked on the chateau door, which Marguerite opened herself in the absence of servants. According to Marguerite, Louvel then made inquiries about a loan he owed Jean de Carrouges before suddenly announcing that Jacques Le Gris was outside the door and insisted on seeing her. At her refusal, Louvel exclaimed that "he loves you passionately, he will do anything for you and he greatly desires to see you". Although Marguerite protested, Le Gris then forced his way into the house and propositioned her, offering money if she would remain silent if they had an affair. When Marguerite refused, Le Gris then violently raped her with the aid of Louvel and threatened her not to tell anyone what had occurred on pain of death.


title: Jean de Carrouges

text: Marguerite remained silent of her ordeal for several days, until her husband's return on the 21 or 22 January. Upon hearing of the encounter, the outraged Carrouges summoned his circle of courtiers and friends, including his mother and most of Marguerite's family, and a council was convened where Marguerite repeated her account of the rape. Carrouges decided immediately to begin legal proceedings against Le Gris but faced great difficulties in prosecuting them as Le Gris was a favourite of Count Pierre, who would act as judge in the case. In addition, the case was viewed as weak in this time period because the only witness was Marguerite. Indeed, the trial at Argentan was so one-sided an affair that Carrouges and his wife did not even bother to attend. Pierre acquitted Le Gris of all charges and furthermore accused Marguerite of inventing or even "dreaming" the attack.


title: Jean de Carrouges

text: In search of a fair trial, Carrouges travelled to Paris to appeal to the King himself. Knowing that his case depended solely on his wife's testimony and was, therefore, her word against Le Gris, Carrouges developed a plan. Instead of proceeding with a normal criminal trial, Carrouges would challenge Le Gris to a judicial duel, the survivor of which would thus have been deemed by God to have been the rightful claimant. Such trials-by-combat, once common in France, were rare by 1386 and the chance of one being permitted by the King unlikely. Nevertheless, Carrouges saw this scheme as his best option of procuring justice and redeeming his wife's reputation. A few days after his arrival in Paris, Carrouges was presented to the King at the Château de Vincennes in order to make the first official appeal in the lengthy trial process. In doing so, he captured the imagination of the French court, which later became so fascinated with the Carrouges-Le Gris trial that it would shape its schedule around watching the culminating combat.


title: Jean de Carrouges

text: On 9 July 1386, the second stage in the legal process began when both Carrouges and Le Gris, with their followers, presented themselves before the Parlement of Paris at the Palais de Justice to issue the formal challenge. This involved reciting their accusations and throwing down a gauntlet signifying their intention to fight. The declarations were pronounced in front of the King, his brother Louis of Valois and the entire Parlement, who decided to initially hear the case as an ordinary criminal one and defer their decision on whether to permit the judicial duel until both sides had given testimony. Attempts had been made to persuade Le Gris to insist on a church trial, but these proved unsuccessful as Le Gris wished to counter the accusation with a lawsuit against his opponent claiming 40,000 livres for defamation. Following the declarations a number of high-ranking noblemen stepped forward to act as seconds in the duel for both men, including Waleran of Saint-Pol for Carrouges and Philip of Artois, Count of Eu for Le Gris.


title: Jean de Carrouges

text: The criminal trial continued for most of the summer and Carrouges, Le Gris, and Marguerite were all called on to give evidence. Marguerite was by this time visibly pregnant, although medieval medical knowledge claimed that children could not be conceived as a result of rape and her condition, therefore, was determined to have no bearing on the case. Adam Louvel and at least one of Marguerite's maidservants also gave evidence and, as was the custom of the day for people of low birth, they were tortured to test the veracity of their testimony. During this process neither produced evidence incriminating Le Gris, although Louvel was subsequently challenged to a duel himself by Marguerite's cousin, Thomin du Bois. In his evidence, Carrouges' statement repeated and supported his wife's testimony, while Le Gris accused Carrouges of inventing the charges and beating his wife into making the accusations against the squire. In his statement, Le Gris painted a picture of a man driven wild with anger and jealousy who sought to restore his family fortune by concocting false accusations against his most significant rival. Le Gris also offered alibis for his whereabouts during the week the crime was supposed to have been committed and attempted to explain that it was not possible for him to have ridden the 40 kilometres (25 miles) that supposedly separated him from Marguerite on the morning in question. A rebuttal from Carrouges emphasised the shame the trial had brought to his family as a reason against its invention and offered a counter-demonstration of horsemanship indicating that the suggested 80-kilometre (50-mile) round trip was possible even if Le Gris' alibi were true. Le Gris' alibi was compromised some days later when the man providing it, a squire named Jean Beloteau, was arrested for committing rape in Paris during the trial. On 15 September, with the King in Flanders preparing for an invasion of England, the parliament handed down its verdict. As they had been unable to determine the guilt in the case, the two men would fight a duel to the death on 27 November 1386.


title: Jean de Carrouges

text: The two months following the verdict were ones of great activity between the two parties and the citizens of Paris. As judicial duels were now so rare, no established battleground had been set aside, and a jousting arena at the Abbey of Saint-Martin-des-Champs north of the city agreed to host the combat. Both Carrouges and Le Gris endured bouts of illness in the weeks following the verdict but recovered with the aid of their families and supporters, who had joined the hundreds of people flocking to the city from nearby regions to witness the fight. Indeed, the event was so popular that when King Charles VI believed that his return to Paris in time for the combat would be held up in Flanders due to bad roads, he sent a fast messenger to Paris delaying the duel by a month in order that he would be present to witness it. This royal intervention set the date for the combat back to 29 December 1386.


title: Jean de Carrouges

text: In the months between trial and duel, Marguerite and the French queen Isabeau of Bavaria had both given birth to sons. While Marguerite's son Robert was a strong, healthy boy, the Dauphin was a sickly child and died on 28 December. Rather than descend into mourning, the King ordered a frenzy of parties and celebrations, the pinnacle of which was intended to be the duel between Carrouges and Le Gris. The morning of the combat saw thousands of Parisians arriving at the Abbey at dawn, long before the appointed hour. Among the spectators were the King and his entourage, including his uncles John, Duke of Berry, Philip the Bold and Louis II, Duke of Bourbon as well as his brother the Duke of Orléans. Also present, dressed in black and sitting in a carriage overlooking the field, was Marguerite. Should her husband have lost the battle, she would have been burned at the stake in Montfaucon immediately following the duel, having been thus "proven" guilty of perjury by its outcome.


title: Jean de Carrouges

text: The combatants took the field in the early afternoon, mounted and dressed in plate armour. Both carried a lance, longsword, a heavy battle axe known as the "Holy Trinity" and a long dagger called the "misericordia". Carrouges appeared first, reciting his charges against Le Gris to the King and crowd before Le Gris followed and did the same. Le Gris was then knighted in order that he and Carrouges be of equal standing during the fight. Both knights then dismounted and gave oaths to God, the Virgin Mary and St George, thereby sanctifying God's judgment over the duel's outcome. Finally, Carrouges approached his wife and pledged his honour before her, kissing her and promising to return.


title: Jean de Carrouges

text: As the field was cleared, silence descended on the arena following the King's instructions that anybody who interfered in the duel would be executed and that anyone who shouted or verbally interrupted the combat would lose a hand. Readying their steeds, the knights squared up and at the marshal's signal, charged towards one another. Their lances struck but failed to penetrate the thick hides covering their shields and the combatants wheeled and charged again, this time striking one another on their helms. Rounding once more, the knights charged a third time, again striking shields and this time both shattering their lances. Reeling from the impact, the warriors drew their axes and charged a fourth time. Slashing and kicking at one another in the centre of the field, they traded blows until Le Gris, the much stronger man, was able to drive his axe through the neck of Carrouges' horse. As the beast fell to the ground, Carrouges jumped clear and lashed out with his own weapon, disembowelling Le Gris' steed in turn.


title: Jean de Carrouges

text: Now on foot, the knights drew swords and returned to battle. Le Gris, again proving stronger than his opponent, slowly gained the upper hand. After several minutes of engagement, Carrouges slipped and Le Gris was able to stab his rival through the right thigh. As the crowd gasped and murmured, Le Gris stepped back. Carrouges used the opportunity to grab the top of Le Gris' helmet and topple him to the ground. Le Gris' heavy armour prevented him from regaining his feet and Carrouges repeatedly stabbed at his floored opponent, his blows denting but not puncturing the thick plate steel. Realising that his sword was inadequate, Carrouges straddled Le Gris and used the handle of his dagger to smash the lock holding Le Gris' faceplate. Even as his opponent struggled beneath him, Carrouges broke the pin holding the lock and tore his faceplate off, exposing Le Gris. Carrouges demanded that Le Gris admit his guilt. Le Gris refused and cried out "In the name of God and on the peril and damnation of my soul, I am innocent". Unable to obtain a confession (which would have condemned Le Gris anyway), Carrouges drove a dagger through Le Gris' neck, killing him nearly instantly.


title: Jean de Carrouges

text: Standing over his vanquished opponent, Carrouges remained on the field as the crowd cheered him and pages rushed to bind his wound. He then kneeled before the King, who presented him with a prize of a thousand francs in addition to a royal income of 200 francs a year. Only then did he greet his wife in an emotional scene before the thousands of spectators. With the crowd following in a great procession, Jean and Marguerite de Carrouges then rode from the abbey to the cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris, to give thanks for the victory.


title: Jean de Carrouges

text: A few weeks after the duel, Parlement awarded Carrouges a further six thousand livres in gold and a position within the Royal Household. Such rewards enabled Carrouges to begin further legal action, attempting to exert his earlier claim to Aunou-le-Faucon. However, the land which Carrouges so coveted remained beyond his reach. Count Pierre, who held the land, never forgave Carrouges for the death of his favourite advisor and held the estates from him in court.


title: Jean de Carrouges

text: Over the next three years, Jean and Marguerite de Carrouges had two more children and settled in Paris and Normandy, profiting from their celebrity with gifts and investments. In 1390, Carrouges was promoted to a "chevalier d'honneur" as a bodyguard of the King, a title which came with a substantial financial stipend and was a position of important social standing. The following year he was dispatched to Hungary on a mission to investigate the severity of the threat from the Ottoman Empire, the boundaries of which had been steadily spreading under Sultan Bayezid I. In this mission he was second in command to Jean de Boucicaut, a Marshal of France and famous soldier, indicating the elevated social position Carrouges enjoyed following the duel.


title: Jean de Carrouges

text: In 1392, Carrouges was present for one of the more notorious occurrences in fourteenth-century France: the descent into madness of King Charles VI. As a "chevalier d'honneur", Carrouges accompanied the King on the campaign and was present when the Royal Army entered Brittany to hunt for Pierre de Craon, a noble who had fled Paris after a failed attempt to murder Olivier V de Clisson, Constable of France. As the army passed Le Mans on 8 August 1392, a loud noise startled the French King who, believing himself to be under attack, lashed out at the nearest person to him. The man was his brother Louis of Valois, who turned and fled. Killing several pages who attempted to calm his temper, the King set off on the full pursuit of Louis, leaving the army strung out across the countryside behind him. The pursuit continued for hours until the exhausted King was eventually subdued by his bodyguards, including Carrouges.


title: Jean de Carrouges

text: In early 1396, following the peace treaty with England, the French army mobilised against another pressing threat; that of the Turks to the East, as part of a new crusade. As a leader of the original party to investigate events in Hungary, it was natural that Jean de Carrouges would return with his followers in the service of his old commander, Admiral Jean de Vienne. The army crossed Central Europe, united with the Hungarians and marched south, burning the city of Vidin, and massacring the inhabitants before following the course of the Danube southeast, cutting a swathe of destruction through the Ottoman territory. On 12 September, the army arrived at the city of Nicopolis, but was repulsed from its walls, and settled into a siege.


title: Jean de Carrouges

text: Two weeks later, Sultan Bayezid I arrived with a large army to the south of the town, and took up a strong defensive position, challenging the crusaders to meet him. The crusader army moved to confront him on 24 September, but poor discipline and fractured leadership between the national factions resulted in a premature assault by the French force against the bluffs controlled by Ottoman troops. With the allied army strung out, Bayezid marshaled his reserves, and defeated the crusaders in a furious engagement which felled most of the allied army. Thousands more were captured and executed after the battle by the victorious Turkish troops.


title: Jean de Carrouges

text: The exact fate of Sir Jean de Carrouges is unknown, but it is probable that he fell close to his commander, Jean de Vienne, whose forces were trapped in a gully and decimated by Turkish cavalry. After his death, his estates passed to his 10-year-old son, Robert de Carrouges, and a mural of Jean and Marguerite de Carrouges was painted in the Abbey of St. Étienne in Caen to celebrate his memory. Over time, both the family and mural faded into obscurity.


title: Jean de Carrouges

text: His family was succeeded by that of Le Veneur de Tillières. The latter received the land and Château de Carrouges, which they remained the owner of until 1936, when the last representative of the family line ceded them to the State. In 1944, the castle was restored, as well as now managed by the Centre des monuments nationaux, and open to the public.


title: Jean de Carrouges

text: The commune of Sainte-Marguerite-de-Carrouges, close to the town of Carrouges, was also named for Marguerite de Carrouges.


title: Jean de Carrouges

text: Due to the celebrity and controversy surrounding the case, the judicial duel between Carrouges and Le Gris was one of the last permitted by the French government. As a well-attended and infamous event, it soon became a well-known case. In France, the memory of the duel far outlasted its participants, primarily a result of it being recorded soon after by the contemporary chronicler Jean Froissart. Over the following century, vivid and imaginative accounts were carried in the chronicles of Jean Juvénal des Ursins and the "Grandes Chroniques de France", as well as by Jehan de Waurin and others, many embellishing the story with imaginative twists. The factual details of the case are unusually well-recorded for a medieval trial, as the records of the Parlement de Paris have survived intact, and Jacques Le Gris' lawyer Jean Le Coq kept meticulous notes on the case, which still exist. In addition to a clear view of proceedings, these notes also contain Le Coq's own concerns about his client, whose innocence Le Coq deemed highly suspect, according "The Last Duel" author Eric Jager.


title: Jean de Carrouges

text: Despite the well-recorded details several chronicles, including the "Chronique du Religieux de Saint-Denys" and the chronicles of Jean Juvénal des Ursins, tell of a third man confessing to the rape at his death. This story, which "The Last Duel" author Eric Jager claims is "without basis", was subsequently repeated in many later sources, particularly as proof for the great miscarriage of justice of the event and the tradition of trial-by-combat. Jager also claims that the "Encyclopædia Britannica" still contained a version of that false tale, under the entry for "Duel", until the 1970s.


title: Jean de Carrouges

text: Other sources have discussed the story in varying degrees of detail, including a section in Diderot's "Encyclopédie", in the "Histoire du Parlement de Paris" by Voltaire, and in a number of books written in the 19th century, including a work in the 1880s by a descendant of Jacques Le Gris, in which the author attempted to prove his ancestor's innocence. In the 20th century, other authors have studied the case, the most recent being in the book "" in 2004, by Eric Jager, a professor of English Literature at UCLA.


title: Jean de Carrouges

text: Jager's book, "The Last Duel", was adapted by Ben Affleck, Nicole Holofcener and Matt Damon into the screenplay for the 2021 film adaptation "The Last Duel". Damon and Affleck were also cast in the roles of Jean de Carrouges (Damon) and Pierre d'Alençon (Affleck), with Jodie Comer starring as Marguerite de Thibouville, and Adam Driver as Jacques le Gris, with Ridley Scott directing.


title: Jean de Carrouges

text: De Carrouges's duel is sometimes presented as the last of the French authorised duels, which is incorrect. The last duel to be publicly authorised took place on 10 July 1547 at the castle of Saint-Germain-en-Laye. It opposed Guy Chabot de Jarnac against François de Vivonne, following a request from Jarnac to King Henry II for regaining his honour. The duel was won by Jarnac after injuring Vivonne with his sword; Vivonne later died of his wounds.


title: Night of the Living Dead

text: Night of the Living Dead is a 1968 American independent horror film directed, photographed, and edited by George A. Romero, with a screenplay by John Russo and Romero, and starring Duane Jones and Judith O'Dea. The story follows seven people who are trapped in a rural farmhouse in western Pennsylvania, which is under assault by an enlarging group of flesh-eating, undead ghouls.


title: Night of the Living Dead

text: Having gained experience through directing television commercials and industrial films for their Pittsburgh-based production company The Latent Image, Romero and his friends Russo and Russell Streiner decided to fulfill their ambitions to make a feature film. Electing to make a horror film that would capitalize on contemporary commercial interest in the genre, they formed a partnership with Karl Hardman and Marilyn Eastman of Hardman Associates called Image Ten. After evolving through multiple drafts, Russo and Romero's final script primarily drew influence from Richard Matheson's 1954 novel "I Am Legend". Principal photography took place between July 1967 and January 1968, mainly on location in Evans City; aside from the Image Ten team themselves, the cast and crew consisted of their friends and relatives, local stage and amateur actors, and residents from the area. Although the film was his directorial debut, Romero utilized many of the guerrilla filmmaking techniques he had honed in his commercial and industrial work to complete the film on a budget of approximately .


title: Night of the Living Dead

text: Following its theatrical premiere in Pittsburgh on October 1, 1968, "Night of the Living Dead" eventually grossed domestically and internationally, earning more than 250 times its budget and making it one of the most profitable film productions ever made at the time. Released shortly prior to the adoption of the Motion Picture Association of America rating system, the film's explicit violence and gore was considered groundbreaking and unprecedented for the time, leading to widespread controversy and negative reviews upon its initial release. It eventually garnered a cult following and acclaim among critics, and has appeared on lists of the greatest and most influential films ever made by such outlets as "Empire", "The New York Times" and "Total Film". Frequently identified as the first modern zombie film and a touchstone in the development of the horror genre, retrospective scholarly analysis has focused on its reflection of the social and cultural changes in the United States during the 1960s, with particular attention being directed towards the casting of Jones, an African-American, in the leading 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.


title: Night of the Living Dead

text: "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.


title: Night of the Living Dead

text: 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 strange, ashen-faced, stumbling 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, secures the farmhouse by boarding the windows and doors, and drives away the ghouls with a lever-action rifle he finds in the closet and with fire, which the ghouls fear.


title: Night of the Living Dead

text: Barbra, in a catatonic state from shock, is surprised when Harry Cooper 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 ever-increasing numbers.


title: Night of the Living Dead

text: 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, reanimating 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 from Venus.


title: Night of the Living Dead

text: Ben devises a plan to obtain medical supplies for Karen and transport the group to a rescue center by refueling his truck. Ben, Tom, and Judy drive to a nearby gas pump, holding the ghouls off with torches and Molotov cocktails. However, the gas from the pump spills and causes the truck to catch fire and explode, killing Tom and Judy. Ben runs back to the house on his own and breaks down the door when Harry does not let him back in. Ben beats Harry for his cowardice. While the ghouls feast on the remains of Tom and Judy, the remaining survivors attempt to find a way out. However, the ghouls break through the barricades. In the ensuing chaos, Harry is shot dead by Ben. Karen dies from her injuries, reanimates, begins to eat her father's remains, and stabs Helen to death with a masonry trowel. Barbra recovers from her catatonic state and tries to help Ben keep the ghouls out but is dragged away by a reanimated Johnny and the other ghouls.


title: Night of the Living Dead

text: As the horde breaks into the house, Ben takes refuge in the cellar, where he shoots Harry and Helen's reanimating corpses. The next morning, an armed posse arrives and begins dispatching the remaining ghouls in the area. Awoken by their gunfire and sirens, Ben emerges from the cellar but is shot and killed when they mistake him for a ghoul. His body is thrown onto a bonfire and burned with the rest of the ghouls.


title: Night of the Living Dead

text: Romero embarked upon his career in the film industry while attending Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. He directed and produced television commercials and industrial films for The Latent Image, in the 1960s, a company he co-founded with friends John Russo, and Russell Streiner. The trio grew bored making commercials and wanted to film a horror movie during this period. They wanted to capitalize on the film industry's "thirst for the bizarre", according to Romero.<ref name="Hardman/Eastmaninterview"></ref> He and Streiner contacted Karl Hardman and Marilyn Eastman, president and vice president respectively of a Pittsburgh-based industrial film firm called Hardman Associates, Inc. They pitched their idea for a then-untitled horror film. A production company, conceived by Romero, called Image Ten, was formed that included Romero, Russo, Streiner, Hardman, and Eastman. The initial budget was $6,000 with the ten members of the production company, investing $600 each for a share of the profits. Another ten investors were found when it was found that another $6,000 was required but this was also soon found to be inadequate. Image Ten eventually raised approximately $114,000 for the budget ($ today).


title: Night of the Living Dead

text: Co-written as a horror comedy by John Russo and George A. Romero under the title "Monster Flick", an early screenplay draft concerned the exploits of adolescent aliens who visit Earth and befriend human teenagers. A second version of the script featured a young man who runs away from home and discovers rotting human corpses that aliens use for food scattered across a meadow. Russo came up with the concept that they would be the recently dead only because they could not afford to bring long-dead people out of their graves. He also came up with the idea that they would be "flesh-eaters". The final draft, written mainly by Russo during three days in 1967, focused on reanimated human corpses – Romero refers to them as "ghouls" – that consume the flesh of the living. In a 1997 interview with the BBC's "Forbidden Weekend", Romero explained that the script developed into a three-part short story anthology epic. Part one became "Night of the Living Dead". Sequels "Dawn of the Dead" (1978) and "Day of the Dead" (1985) were adapted from the two remaining unfinished parts.


title: Night of the Living Dead

text: Romero drew heavy inspiration from Richard Matheson's "I Am Legend" (1954), a horror novel about a plague that ravages a futuristic Los Angeles. The infected in "I Am Legend" become vampire-like creatures and prey on the uninfected. Discussing the creation of "Night of the Living Dead", Romero remarked, "I had written a short story, which I basically had ripped off from a Richard Matheson novel called "I Am Legend"." Romero further explained:


title: Night of the Living Dead

text: Official film adaptations of Matheson's novel appeared in 1964 as "The Last Man on Earth", in 1971 as "The Omega Man", and the 2007 release "I Am Legend". Matheson was not impressed by Romero's interpretation, feeling that "It was ... kind of cornball", though he later said, "George Romero's a nice guy, though. I don't harbor any animosity toward him."


title: Night of the Living Dead

text: Russo and Romero revised the screenplay while filming. Karl Hardman attributed the edits to lead actor Duane Jones:


title: Night of the Living Dead

text: Eastman modified cellar scenes featuring dialogue between Helen and Harry Cooper. According to lead actress Judith O'Dea, much of the dialogue was improvised. She told an interviewer, "I don't know if there was an actual working script! We would go over what basically had to be done, then just did it the way we each felt it "should" be done". One example offered by O'Dea concerns a scene where Barbra tells Ben about Johnny's death:


title: Night of the Living Dead

text: Although the film is regarded as one of the launching pads for the modern zombie movie, the screenplay itself never uses the word. In fact, Romero would later confess that he felt the film's antagonists were distinct enough from Haitian zombies that they were "something completely new" with Romero actively avoiding any similarities between the two creatures although he notes that they may have subtly inspired him.


title: Night of the Living Dead

text: The lead role was initially written for someone of Caucasian descent, but upon casting African-American actor Duane Jones, Romero intentionally did not alter the script to reflect this. Asked in 2013 if he took inspiration from the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. that same year, Romero responded in the negative, noting that he only heard about the shooting when he was on his way to find distribution for the finished film.


title: Night of the Living Dead

text: The small budget dictated much of the production process. According to Hardman, "We knew that we could not raise enough money to shoot a film on a par with the classic horror films with which we had all grown up. The best that we could do was to place our cast in a remote spot and then bring the horror to be visited on them in that spot". Scenes were filmed near Evans City, Pennsylvania, north of Pittsburgh in rural Butler County; the opening sequence was shot at the Evans City Cemetery on Franklin Road, south of the borough. The cemetery chapel was under warrant for demolition; however, Gary R. Steiner led a successful effort to raise $50,000 to restore the building, and the chapel is currently undergoing renovations.


title: Night of the Living Dead

text: The outdoor, indoor (downstairs), and basement scenes were filmed at a location northeast of Evans City, near a park. The basement door (external view) shown in the film was cut into a wall by the production team and led nowhere. As this house was scheduled for demolition, damage during filming was permitted. The site is now a turf farm.


title: Night of the Living Dead

text: Props and special effects were fairly simple and limited by the budget. The blood, for example, was Bosco Chocolate Syrup drizzled over cast members' bodies. Consumed flesh consisted of roasted ham and entrails donated by one of the actors, who also owned a chain of butcher shops. Costumes consisted of second-hand clothing from cast members and Goodwill. Zombie makeup varied during the film. Initially, makeup was limited to white skin with blackened eyes. However, as filming progressed, mortician's wax simulated wounds and decaying flesh. As filming was not linear, the piebald faces appear sporadically. Eastman supervised the special effects, wardrobe and makeup. Filming took place between July 1967 and January 1968 under the working title "Night of Anubis" and later "Night of the Flesh Eaters". The small budget led Romero to shoot on 35 mm black-and-white film. The completed film ultimately benefited from the decision, as film historian Joseph Maddrey describes the black-and-white filming as "guerrilla-style", resembling "the unflinching authority of a wartime newsreel". Maddrey adds, it "seem[s] as much like a documentary on the loss of social stability as an exploitation film".


title: Night of the Living Dead

text: "Night of the Living Dead" was the first feature-length film directed by George A. Romero. His initial work involved filming shorts for Pittsburgh public broadcaster WQED's children's series "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood". Romero's decision to direct "Night of the Living Dead" essentially launched his career as a horror director. He took the helm of the sequels as well as "Season of the Witch" (1972), "The Crazies" (1973), "Martin" (1978), "Creepshow" (1982) and "The Dark Half" (1993). Critics saw the influence of the horror and science-fiction films of the 1950s in Romero's directorial style. Stephen Paul Miller, for instance, witnessed "a revival of fifties schlock shock ... and the army general's television discussion of military operations in the film echoes the often inevitable calling-in of the army in fifties horror films". Miller admits that ""Night of the Living Dead" takes greater relish in mocking these military operations through the general's pompous demeanor" and the government's inability to source the zombie epidemic or protect the citizenry. Romero describes the mood he wished to establish: "The film opens with a situation that has already disintegrated to a point of little hope, and it moves progressively toward absolute despair and ultimate tragedy." According to film historian Carl Royer, Romero "employs chiaroscuro (film noir style) lighting to emphasize humanity's nightmare alienation from itself."


title: Night of the Living Dead

text: While some critics dismissed Romero's film because of the graphic scenes, writer R. H. W. Dillard claimed that the "open-eyed detailing" of taboo heightened the film's success. He asks, "What girl has not, at one time or another, wished to kill her mother? And Karen, in the film, offers a particularly vivid opportunity to commit the forbidden deed vicariously." Romero featured social taboos as key themes, particularly cannibalism. Although zombie cannibals were inspired by Matheson's "I Am Legend", film historian Robin Wood sees the flesh-eating scenes of "Night of the Living Dead" as a late-1960s critique of American capitalism. Wood asserts that the zombies represent capitalists, and "cannibalism represents the ultimate in possessiveness, hence the logical end of human relations under capitalism". He argues that the zombies' victims symbolized the repression of "the Other" in bourgeois American society, namely activists in the civil rights movement, feminists, homosexuals, and counterculturalists in general.


title: Night of the Living Dead

text: Members of Image Ten were involved in filming and post-production, participating in loading camera magazines, gaffing, constructing props, recording sounds and editing. Production stills were shot and printed by Karl Hardman, who stated in an interview that a "number of cast members formed a production line in the darkroom for developing, washing and drying of the prints as I made the exposures. As I recall, I shot over 1,250 pictures during the production". Upon completion of post-production, Image Ten found it difficult to secure a distributor willing to show the film with the gruesome scenes intact. Columbia and American International Pictures declined after requests to soften it and re-shoot the final scene were rejected by producers. Romero admitted that "none of us wanted to do that. We couldn't imagine a happy ending. . . . Everyone want[ed] a Hollywood ending, but we stuck to our guns". The Manhattan-based Walter Reade Organization agreed to show the film uncensored, but changed the title from "Night of the Flesh Eaters" to "Night of the Living Dead" because a film had already been produced under a similar title to the former. While changing the title, the copyright notice was accidentally deleted from the early releases of the film.


title: Night of the Living Dead

text: The opening title music with the car on the road had been used in a 1961 episode of the TV series "Ben Casey" entitled "I Remember a Lemon Tree" and is also featured in an episode of "" entitled "Bullets Cost Too Much". Most of the music in the film had previously been used on the soundtrack for the science-fiction B-movie "Teenagers from Outer Space" (1959), as well as several pieces used in the classic Steve McQueen western series "Wanted Dead or Alive" (1958–61). The eerie musical piece during the tense scene in the film where Ben finds the rifle in the closet inside the farmhouse as the radio reports of mayhem play in the background can be heard in longer and more complete form during the opening credits and the beginning of "The Devil's Messenger" (1961) starring Lon Chaney, Jr. Another piece, accompanying Barbra's flight from the cemetery zombie, was taken from the score for "The Hideous Sun Demon" (1959). According to WRS, "We chose a selection of music for each of the various scenes and then George made the final selections. We then took those selections and augmented them electronically". Sound tech R. Lococo's choices worked well, as film historian Sumiko Higashi believes that the music "signifies the nature of events that await".


title: Night of the Living Dead

text: A soundtrack album featuring music and dialogue cues from the film was compiled and released on LP by Varèse Sarabande in 1982. In 2008, recording group 400 Lonely Things released the album "Tonight of the Living Dead", "an instrumental album composed entirely of ambient music and sound effects sampled from Romero's 1968 horror classic".


title: Night of the Living Dead

text: "Night of the Living Dead" premiered on October 1, 1968, at the Fulton Theater in Pittsburgh. Nationally, it was shown as a Saturday afternoon matinée – as was typical for horror films at the time – and attracted an audience consisting of pre-teens and adolescents. The MPAA film rating system was not in place until the following month, so even young children were able to purchase tickets. Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" chided theater owners and parents who allowed children access to the film with such potent content for a horror film they were entirely unprepared for: "I don't think the younger kids really knew what hit them," he said. "They were used to going to movies, sure, and they'd seen some horror movies before, sure, but this was something else." According to Ebert, the film affected the audience immediately:


title: Night of the Living Dead

text: Response from "Variety" after the initial release reflects the outrage generated by Romero's film: "Until the Supreme Court establishes clear-cut guidelines for the pornography of violence, "Night of the Living Dead" will serve nicely as an outer-limit definition by example. In [a] mere 90 minutes this horror film (pun intended) casts serious aspersions on the integrity and social responsibility of its Pittsburgh-based makers, distributor Walter Reade, the film industry as a whole and [exhibitors] who book [the picture], as well as raising doubts about the future of the regional cinema movement and about the moral health of film goers who cheerfully opt for this unrelieved orgy of sadism ..."


title: Night of the Living Dead

text: One commentator asserts that the film garnered little attention from critics, "except to provoke argument about censoring its grisly scenes".