George A. Romero

Career in horror

George A. Romero was born in the Bronx in 1940, built his career in Pittsburgh, and died in Toronto in 2017. Between those points he made a film that rewired horror. Night of the Living Dead took an old Caribbean folk figure and a pulp tradition of ghouls and turned them into the relentless, shambling dead that every later zombie story had to answer to. He never used the word in that first script, calling the creatures ghouls, yet the label stuck.

Romero stayed deliberately outside Hollywood. He worked with friends and regional crews, financed pictures in pieces, and kept control of his material even when that meant smaller budgets. The Dead series, which ran from 1968 to 2009, used a recurring disaster to examine whatever was frightening American life at the moment: civil unrest, consumerism, the military, class, and the media. Alongside it he made vampire stories, plague thrillers, anthologies and a motorcycle drama, so his range was wider than his reputation.

Signature traits

• Social commentary built into genre plots, usually without speeches or easy answers.
• Ensembles trapped in one location, where the real danger is how the living treat one another.
• Hand-held, documentary-style photography and a deliberately unglamorous look.
• Practical effects, most famously with makeup artist Tom Savini, that treat gore as physical craft.
• Independent production far from Los Angeles, mostly in western Pennsylvania.
• Sequels that change setting and theme rather than repeat the formula.

Key horror titles

• Night of the Living Dead (1968)
• The Crazies (1973), a military quarantine film about a bioweapon released in a small town
• Martin (1977), a vampire drama he considered his favorite of his films
• Dawn of the Dead (1978), the shopping-mall sequel
• Day of the Dead (1985), set in an underground bunker
• Creepshow (1982), an anthology written by Stephen King
• Land of the Dead (2005), Diary of the Dead (2007) and Survival of the Dead (2009)

From the Bronx to Pittsburgh

Romero was born on February 4, 1940, in the Bronx and raised in Parkchester. His father was a commercial artist and his mother was of Lithuanian descent. As a teenager he rented films in Manhattan to watch at home, and he has named Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's The Tales of Hoffmann as the picture that made him want to make movies. He studied at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, earned a fine arts degree, and stayed in the city.

In the early 1960s he and friends formed a company called The Latent Image, financed in part by a $20,000 loan from an uncle. It made television commercials for local and national clients and industrial shorts that won festival awards. He also directed segments for Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood in 1968. The commercial work gave him a trained crew, camera and editing equipment, and a habit of finishing jobs on a budget, all of which went straight into his first feature.

Night of the Living Dead

A group of about nine Pittsburgh friends and colleagues, including Russell Streiner, John A. Russo and Karl Hardman, pooled money as Image Ten Productions. Investors raised roughly $114,000, and the final cost is usually given as $100,000 to $125,000. Shooting ran from July 1967 to January 1968, mostly in and around Evans City, Pennsylvania, on black-and-white 35mm film. Romero directed, photographed and edited, and he co-wrote the script with Russo.

The lead role went to Duane Jones, who Romero has said gave the best audition; the part had not been written for a Black actor and the script was not changed. Judith O'Dea played Barbra. The film opened in Pittsburgh on October 1, 1968, distributed by Continental Distributing, and the title was changed from Night of the Flesh Eaters. In the change the copyright notice was lost, so the picture entered the public domain, a fight its makers pursued in court for years. The Library of Congress added it to the National Film Registry in 1999.

The Dead series

Dawn of the Dead (1978) moved the story into a Pennsylvania shopping mall. Romero got the idea during a visit to the Monroeville Mall, which a friend's company managed, and filming took place at night after the stores closed. The commonly cited budget is $640,000, although producer Richard Rubinstein has said about $500,000 was used, and reported worldwide earnings range from about $55 million to about $66 million. After the MPAA gave it an X rating, the producers released it unrated.

Italian director Dario Argento helped finance it in exchange for international rights and made his own edit, released as Zombi, with music by the band Goblin. Romero's version runs longer and leans on library music. Tom Savini's effects launched his career. Day of the Dead (1985) was cut down from a much bigger script after a dispute over an R rating halved its budget from $7 million to about $3.5 million. Reviews were weaker than for its predecessors, but Romero called it his favorite of the three and its reputation has improved.

Land, Diary and Survival

After a long gap Romero returned to the series with Land of the Dead (2005), released by Universal, which splits survivors by class inside a walled city. Diary of the Dead (2007) restarted the story as a found-footage-style film about students documenting the outbreak, and it connects to found footage and to a media-saturated culture. Survival of the Dead (2009) premiered at the Venice Film Festival, in competition for the Golden Lion, and later screened at Toronto; it sets two feuding families on a coastal island.

Critics have read each film as a commentary on its moment: the upheavals of the 1960s in Night, consumerism in Dawn, science against the military in Day, class conflict in Land, new media in Diary, and war in Survival. The remakes that followed, including Tom Savini's 1990 version of Night, written by Romero, and Zack Snyder's 2004 Dawn, suggest how widely the template spread, a story told in the zombie apocalypse entry.

Beyond zombies

The Crazies (1973) imagined a military quarantine after a crashed plane releases a bioweapon. It cost around $270,000, earned only about $144,000 in its original run, and Romero blamed poor distribution. Martin (1977), shot in Braddock, near Pittsburgh, follows a troubled young man who believes he is a vampire and never settles whether his visions are memories or fantasy. It cost far less than its listed budget of $250,000 according to Rubinstein, who put the real figure near $100,000, and it was the first collaboration with Savini. Romero named it his favorite of his films.

Creepshow (1982), with a screenplay by Stephen King, paid tribute to the EC horror comics of the 1950s, using comic-book colors and effects. It cost about $8 million and earned about $21 million in the United States and Canada, a hit for Warner Bros. that led to Creepshow 2 (1987) and a television series that ran on Shudder from 2019 to 2023. He also made Monkey Shines (1988), co-directed Two Evil Eyes (1990) with Argento, and adapted King's The Dark Half (1993).

Collaborators and method

Romero's crews were small and loyal. Tom Savini built the makeup effects for several films, and on Day of the Dead he was assisted by Greg Nicotero and Howard Berger. John Russo wrote the first film with him, Richard Rubinstein produced many of the later ones, and actors such as John Amplas and Lori Cardille carried leads. Working away from Los Angeles let him shoot where the story needed to be and kept studio notes out of the process.

The look was plain on purpose: available light, long takes of ordinary rooms, edits that cut away from the violence only after it lands. The editing mattered as much as the gore. Romero cut his own pictures, and the tension in Night comes from news bulletins, broken radios and a farmhouse argument rather than from monsters. The result feels like a news broadcast gone wrong, an effect later directors tried to reproduce.

Honors, influence and legacy

Romero received the Mastermind Award at the Scream Awards in 2009, presented by Quentin Tarantino, and the Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2015. He became a Canadian citizen in 2009 and lived in Toronto in his last years. He died there on July 16, 2017, aged 77, of lung cancer. The University of Pittsburgh acquired his archives in 2019, and his widow, Suzanne Desrocher-Romero, founded the George A. Romero Foundation in 2018.

Directors including Edgar Wright and John Carpenter have been described as influenced by him, and Carpenter's siege films share his interest in groups trapped by forces outside their control. Robert Kirkman, creator of the comic The Walking Dead, is among the writers who have cited him. Several projects went unmade, including a Resident Evil script and a Goosebumps adaptation, which is archived at Pittsburgh. For the monster itself, see the zombie entry.

Verified details

• Romero was born on February 4, 1940, in the Bronx, and died on July 16, 2017, in Toronto.
• His first company, The Latent Image, made commercials and industrial films in Pittsburgh.
• Night of the Living Dead opened in Pittsburgh on October 1, 1968.
• He did not use the word zombie in the script of Night of the Living Dead; the monsters are called ghouls.
• Dawn of the Dead was filmed at night in the Monroeville Mall in Pennsylvania.
• Argento's European cut of Dawn of the Dead is titled Zombi and runs about 119 minutes against 126 for Romero's.
• Martin (1977) was the first film on which Romero worked with Tom Savini.
• Creepshow was inspired by EC horror comics and written by Stephen King, who also acted in it.
• Romero gained Canadian citizenship in 2009.
• The University of Pittsburgh acquired his archives in 2019.

Sources and further reading

• George A. Romero, Wikipedia
• Night of the Living Dead, Wikipedia
• Dawn of the Dead (1978 film), Wikipedia
• Day of the Dead (1985 film), Wikipedia
• Martin (1978 film), Wikipedia
• Creepshow, Wikipedia
• The Crazies (1973 film), Wikipedia