(265): George A. Romero Joins the Legions of the Walking Dead

George A. Romero has finally joined the shambling masses of zombies when he passed away on Sunday, July 16 at age 77. He tirelessly ushered in and chronicled the onset of a modern epidemic — the slow overrun of the horror genre with the messy undead. He reported a little known incident in a small community in Night of the Living Dead in 1968 and followed it up with courageous infiltrations into the zombie community (such as it is). (Yes, he was a zombie in some of his films)
I listened to part of a recorded interview with Romero on the NPR show Fresh Air, and it struck me as interesting that when asked what scared him, he didn’t refer to any of the gory flesh-eating scenarios or popups but to his early days during blackout in New York City and the news that Russia had the Bomb. Romero’s boogie men were firmly real life. To him, the zombies were a bit comic bookish.
Every now and then, I enjoy going back to the original Night of the Living Dead, which has all the elements of a good frightening film; it was the claustrophobic inside the house scenes that I think really capture the fear of the unseen (but real), like the Bomb to a kid in the Bronx.
Among the tapes in my voluminous VHS collection (which I need to pare down) is a little film called “Martin,” about a young man who is more like a maladjusted serial killer than the vampire he is represented as; in fact, the two identities mesh together to create an almost mainstream character study, so you don’t really know if he’s a vampire or just a socially awkward guy who copes in a rather antisocial way. I thoroughly enjoyed that film.
Romero was quite the original creator, and he will be missed. There are some early Romero films you can watch on YouTube for free if you’re feeling a bit nostalgic:
Season of the Witch (1973): Oddly the synopsis for this one (life spins out of control for a young housewife when she dabbles in witchcraft) sounds a lot like a Fritz Leiber novel from the 1940’s entitled Conjure Wife. That one was adapted to the screen (small and large), most notably 1944’s Weird Woman, starring Lon Chaney, Jr. I couldn’t find that one on YouTube, unfortunately. I think I have it on DVD…somewhere.
That’s probably enough for any low budget Romero binge watching festival. RIP George! (Or not…)

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