George A. Romero, The Father of Zombies
In the last 50 years, zombies have become a main staple in the genre of horror. The flesh craving dead have managed to infect their way into movies, comic books, television and video games. Yet, despite being such a cultural monolith today, the idea of what we call a “zombie” today would be nothing without the work of a single, industrious filmmaker from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
George A. Romero was born on February 4th, 1940 in New York City to Spanish/Lithuanian immigrants George and Anne Romero. During his youth in the Bronx, he became enamored with the campy, pulp fiction of EC Comics, introducing his imagination to the world of horror, science fiction, and fantasy. Once he was a bit older, Romero would save up all of his allowance to rent 16mm film prints from libraries in Manhattan and would project them inside his own home for friends and family, hosting his own screenings.
One famous tale from this period goes as follows; One of the films he always wanted to rent, The Tales of Hoffmann, was consistently taken out already by someone else. Weeks and weeks went by, and the film was still gone. Finally, Romero caved and asked the clerk where the movie was, to which he was told “some kid in Brooklyn named Scorsese has it.” In the years since, the two directors joked that they were the only people in the entirely of New York who wanted to rent The Tales of Hoffmann.
Hoffmann would prove to be a very influential film for him, as Romero would go on to call it his favorite movie. In interviews, he described it as the first film where he saw the moving parts coming together and actually working as a movie. He had already been familiar with many of the cheap science fiction and horror B-movies that were popular during his childhood, and he grew frustrated with them. The poor craftsmanship and lack of care to the photographic qualities these movies pushed him to think that perhaps he could make his own.
After begging his parents for an 8mm camera, they finally caved and he began to shoot his own home movies. Most of them remain unfinished, but they provided an early outlet for the young creative to get an understanding of cinema. In these early years of filmmaking, Romero actually landed himself an early film job in 1959; working as a grip on North By Northwest. Famously, he said he was unimpressed with Hitchcock’s directing style. He believed he was too mechanical and passionless. This frustration with the old way of doing things would go on to be characteristic of him further in his career.
During the filming of a now-lost short titled “Man From Meteor,” Romero got himself arrested for throwing a flaming dummy off a roof. Worried that his newfound hobby was going to get himself into more trouble, his parents sent him to Suffield Academy, a preparatory boarding school. Despite this strict atmosphere, his placement in the academy led him to peruse a degree in art, design, and drama at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
Once graduated in 1960, Romero spent the next 8 years making shorts and commercial films. Most notably, he directed a segment for Mister Rodger’s Neighborhood where Mr. Rodgers got a tonsillectomy. Romero would go on to call it the scariest film he ever made, because he was terrified that he would screw up the job somehow. The unlikely pair would continue to be friends into the 60’s, with Romero inviting Rodgers to future screenings and premieres.
After some time working together on multiple projects, Romero and a handful of his colleagues formed Image Ten Productions, based out of Pittsburgh. This group included screenwriter John Russo, who would pair with Romero later that year. In 1968, the company would release Night of The Living Dead, the quintessential zombie movie of the modern age.
Night of The Living Dead would prove to not only be a raving success for Romero and company, but would be the first use of what we generally call “zombies” in media. Night of The Living Dead popularized all of the classic zombie tropes still found in film and TV today. The dead rising from the grave, craving human flesh and spreading a disease through bites was first seen in this film. Before then, the only real famous use of the term zombie was seen in the 1932 Bela Lugosi vehicle White Zombie, which instead featured people controlled by a hypnotic spell.
The reason why so many movies are legally allowed to rip off these tropes? The movie was inadvertently placed into the public domain on release. Simply put, the final title card used in the movie is missing the proper copyright information. Because of this one slip up, the “zombie” was released, completely free of any true legal ownership. It is unknown how much money Romero could have made with a copyright on this idea. However, what we do know is that without his original work, many beloved franchises like The Walking Dead, Resident Evil, or 28 Days Later would not exist without it.
The film opens on siblings Barbara (Judith O’Dea) and Johnny (Russell Streiner), arriving at a graveyard to replace the flowers on a relatives grave. Suddenly, a ghoul appears from behind a tombstone, and approaches them. The zombie manages to take Johnny down, forcing Barbara to escape to a nearby farmhouse. Inside, an ensemble of characters are gathered together, who plan to board up the house and survive for as long as possible.
The film eventually shifts focus to the central character Ben (Duane Jones), who clearly proves himself to be the most capable of the group. As the night goes on and the dead continue to fight their way into the house, more and more get picked off in gruesome acts of post mortem cannibalism.
Infamously, the film was partly responsible for the implementation of the MPAA’s rating system. Before Night of the Living Dead, films were released completely unrated, leaving any adventurous child who was brave enough completely free to wander into the theater unsupervised. After an influx of angry letters complaining about children scarred for life from thoughts of human flesh getting nibbled off the bone, the MPAA created the first version of the rating system we see with film releases today. At the Chicago premiere of the film, a fresh faced Roger Ebert writing for the Sun-Times wrote:
“The kids in the audience were stunned. There was almost complete silence. The movie had stopped being delightfully scary about halfway through, and had become unexpectedly terrifying. There was a little girl across the aisle from me, maybe nine years old, who was sitting very still in her seat and crying.”
After the success of the first Dead film, Romero kept making films in Pittsburgh as his career bloomed into the 70’s. First was There’s Always Vanilla, his first (and only) romantic comedy. Season of the Witch followed immediately after, which got butchered in distribution and was re-edited to be sold as a soft core pornography film called Hungry Wives. His film The Crazies was a return to horror, and even received an obligatory remake in 2010. Lastly, his film Martin was a stripped down, low budget tale of a boy with suspiciously vampiric tastes — despite not having fangs or a hatred for garlic. These films, while not as successful as Night, showed his talents as a filmmaker growing more and more. In a last ditch effort to end the decade with a bang, Romero decided to make a grand return to his zombie series, this time in bloody color.
A whole decade after the first film, Dawn of the Dead released in 1978 to much praise among zombie fans. Shot almost completely inside Pittsburg’s own Monroeville Mall, the film upped the ante in all departments from the one that preceded it. In Dawn, the scope of the film is larger, there are way more zombies, and the gore is revolting. While Night will always be a classic, Dawn took everything about it to the next level.
The film was shot over four months in the cover of shadow while their location was still operational. The making of the film reflects this; super quick and simple lighting set-ups so they could get what they need and have the place clean of fake blood by sunrise. Many of the kills seen in the final cut of the film were improvised on site, as the crew would think of different ways to mutilate the living dead while they were shooting. Because of this, the film had to be completely saved in editing — a skill that Romero had made himself very familiar with at this point.
Similar to Night, Dawn concerns a rag tag group of survivors, held together within an abandoned shopping mall. Two swat team officers, a television news producer, and her boyfriend who happens to be a helicopter pilot. Once landed, the team realizes that their new spot is actually quite useful to them, as whatever they need to survive is within the store. Only venturing out to keep their resources stocked and the mobs of ghouls down, the group manages to get quite comfortable despite the impending apocalypse — until another group of raiders come to reap the benefits of the mall. Motorcycle tires screeched against the tile floor as the Monroeville Mall was turned into a warzone every night, where zombies and humans alike were turned into fleshy pulp by the special effects crew headed by Tom Savini, taking their work to new levels of realism. Even Mr. Rodgers called it “a lot of fun” when he saw it for himself.
Dawn proved to be another success for Romero, and cemented him as the master of the zombie movie. The film saw international success as well, especially in Italy (thanks to Dario Argento who had a hand in the production) where an entire spin-off series titled Zombi was created completely separate from Romero’s films.
In the 80’s, Romero was able to use his massive success with Dawn to truly kick his career into its highest gear. Working with Stephen King, the two developed Creepshow, a horror anthology film giving homage to the comic horror stories of their youth like Tales From The Crypt — featuring several horror stories, including one starring King himself.
In 1985, Romero made the third in the Dead series, Day of the Dead. While not as well received as Dawn, Day is a much darker take on the zombie apocalypse. While the infection has continued to spread, the last remaining survivors are the dregs of society. Left to their own devices inside an underground military base, the last humans left fight for power as the zombies get closer and closer to completely wiping out the last traces of the human race.
Throughout all of George Romero’s career, the do-it-yourself attitude is clear in his work. In the early years, Romero was generally shooting, directing, and editing the movies he made, all while creating some iconic horror films and being the direct line of origin to one of the most famous horror sub-genres ever.
He continued making films all through his life, but the latter half didn’t quite land as well as the first. Between 2005 and 2009, he wrote and directed three more Dead films; Land, Diary, and Survival of the Dead. While each of these films are interesting in their exploration of a world fully adapted to a zombie apocalypse, the filmmaking itself felt cheap and sloppy.
Romero passed away on February 4th, 2017. Despite the latter end of his career not being as strong, he dedicated himself in this time to his persona as the father of zombies. George was known for making many appearances at horror conventions and making his generosity for the love given to his films well known.
What he left us with was an entire sub-genre to work within as creators. His work gives us the opportunity to be able to tap into use his original ideas and take them to new and interesting places. Romero was a true renegade spirit, and should be accounted for in discussing the most influential American film directors.
A version of this story is archived on CreatorCoffeeShop.com
