The Case of George Romero

Well, friends, it’s February, which means it’s cold and dark. But, the good news is that it's the perfect time to huddle close and tell some scary stories. Once again, we’re dedicating the entire month of February to the most terrifying genre of all: horror! 

It was the late 1960s in Pittsburg, PA when Fred Rogers went to the hospital for a tonsillectomy. As the host of a children’s TV program, Mr. Rogers realized that showing the children at home his experience might help them face their own fears of doctors, hospitals, and surgery. So, he brought with him a young filmmaker named George Romero. Romero had been shooting one of his independent projects in the Pittsburgh area, a grainy black and white feature about ghouls that ate human flesh, but his work with Mr. Rogers was one of his first paying jobs as a director. He grabbed the little equipment he had, including pin lights from the hardware store, and filmed the beloved TV host as he went in for surgery. He later said it was the most terrifying film he ever directed. 

That was just the beginning. George Romero’s talent and ingenuity took him far, as his films broke new ground and redefined horror. He’s often credited as the person responsible for an entire sub-genre of film: zombies. He was a creative force, passionate about independent filmmaking, and responsible for inspiring–and thrilling–countless people across the globe. So grab some popcorn and turn off the lights, it’s time to get scary with George Romero. 

Family/Young Life

  • George Romero was born in the Bronx, NY on February 4th, 1940 to his parents Anne and George. His mother was Lithuanian, and his father described himself as Castilian, having moved from Spain to Cuba as a child. 

  • Growing up in the 1940s and 50s, George experienced the fears of WWII, like city-wide blackouts in the case of an air raid, and the subsequent terror of a nuclear attack. He was drawn to horror because it scared him in an entertaining way. Being afraid of monsters from another world was an escape compared to the very real and present fears of everyday life. 

  • When George was 11 years old, he saw the first film that ever scared him: 1951’s The Thing From Another World. It was his favorite horror film. However, his all-time favorite movie wasn’t a horror film at all. It was The Tales of Hoffmann, an opera film that was also released in 1951. 

    • Hoffmann introduced George to the possibility of filmmaking as a career. He could see that it had been made on a budget, which showed him that even if he didn’t live in Hollywood or have a huge budget, he could make films too. 

    • The film also introduced Romero to classical music, another one of his lifelong interests. 

  • By the time he was 14, George Romero was already starting his filmmaking career. Armed with his first camera, an 8 mm (some accounts say it was a gift from his parents while George himself said it was his uncle’s camera) he began making his first independent short called, “The Man From the Meteor” 

  • During the shoot, George threw a flaming dummy from the roof of his building, and of course, someone called the police. Here’s what he told NPR about it years later: 

    • “...the man from the meteor was ultimately shot with his own ray gun and fell flaming off the roof where I lived, in Parkchester. And I set fire to a little dummy and dropped it off the roof, having failed to contact the police and let them know I was going to do this. And so, yeah, I was hauled away by the police, and my parents were called. It wasn't a serious arrest, I didn't have to spend the night in jail or anything.”

  • After the flaming dummy incident, George’s parents sent him to Suffield Academy, a college prep school in Connecticut, to finish his education. After graduating high school, he studied art, design, and drama at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, now known as Carnegie Mellon University. 

    • He worked for the Pittsburg Motion Picture Laboratory, delivering reels to news stations via bicycle. He was sometimes paid in lunch money, but it was generally unpaid work.  

  • While living in Pittsburg and going to school, he produced several independent short films. He graduated from Carnegie-Mellon University in 1960 and teamed up with John Russo and Russ Streiner and others to form “The Latent Image,” a company that produced industrial films and commercials. Using a $20,000 loan from his uncle to get started, The Latent Image survived by making promotions for companies like Iron City Beer and Heinz Ketchup. George Romero was later quoted saying, “Fresh out of college, all we had was a Bolex and a couple of pin lights, the kind with aluminum shades that could be bought at any local hardware store. Actually, that’s not true. That’s not all we had. We also had balls. Balls enough to advertise ourselves as ‘Producers of Industrial Films and Television Commercials.’

  • By the late 1960s, Romero set his sites on full-length features. Before releasing his first feature film, he worked on a since-destroyed project called, Expostulations, a silent anthology film. The film was once complete, fully shot and edited, and featured five segments written by Romero, Rudy Ricci, and Richard Ricci. One segment was called, “A Door Against the Rain” and followed a boy whose grandfather built him a freestanding door. The boy then walks through it to go on adventures. While the project tried to secure a musical score, the audio recording company went bankrupt. Recently, portions of the film have resurfaced, but most of it has been lost. George Romero considered this project to be the real beginning of his film career, as they built elaborate sets and worked with paid actors for the first time. 

  • Like we said earlier, one of Romero’s first paid jobs as a director was with the classic TV series Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood! Fred Rogers was one of the first people to hire George, and he was incredibly supportive of his work. If you aren’t a horror fan, you still have likely seen Romero’s work during Mr. Rogers’ “Picture Picture” segments. These were shorts that taught kids how things were made, like lightbulbs and umbrellas. 

    • The Carnegie Mellon University Library quoted George about the experience, saying: He was the first guy who would hire me. Everyone from Pittsburgh who I know from that period, who is still working in the business in any capacity, started with Fred. Fred was so supportive of people.  He was a beautiful guy.

    • Fred Rogers reportedly saw all of Romero’s work in support of his former employee. 

  • Over the course of his life, George Romero married three times:

    • George married Nancy Romero in 1971. They remained married until 1978. 

    • Christine Forrest was Romero’s second wife and starred in some of his projects. Longtime collaborator Stephen King was even inspired to name one of his novels after Christine! They were married from 1980 to 2010.

    • Suzanne Desrocher and George Romero married in 2011 and were together at the time of his death in 2017. She started the George Romero Foundation in his honor. (2011-2017)

How Did We Get to Zombies

  • So before we get into Romero’s most influential works, let’s talk about the zombie in the room. Today, Romero’s name is synonymous with zombies, but the concept of the walking dead existed before he started filmmaking. 

  • As strange as it sounds, George Romero did not set out to redefine zombies. He took pieces of existing lore about flesh-eating creatures and built a new kind of monster with very clear features and rules. 

    • The Romero Zombie is a re-animated human that craves flesh. They are slow-moving and anyone can become one. They can use tools but are able to be destroyed by a shot or a blow to the head. This clear-cut definition is what audiences grab onto while watching the films. When we see a zombie movie, we can yell out “shoot it in the head” before the characters even understand that it’s the only way to kill them. Romero created a list of tropes that make audience members feel more comfortable. 

  • Romero’s zombies were nothing like the Zombies of Haitian lore, another famous type of flesh-eater. This was because Romero didn’t really consider his creations to be zombies at all. In his first living-dead film, they are only referred to as “ghouls.” He and co-writer John Russo needed a chaotic attack that kept the characters confined to a small space throughout the film. Inspired by the vampire creatures of the novel “I Am Legend,” Romero used the concept of bodies that were once human attacking the living. He only started calling his creations zombies because other people did. 

Most Influential Movies

George Romero made many feature films in his lifetime, not to mention the TV series he produced as well. His work evolved over the decades and he showed audiences again and again that there were no bounds to his technical skill and ingenuity. 

  • Night of the Living Dead (1968)

    • While balancing paid jobs, George Romero spent weekends filming his first major feature film. George teamed up with John Russo to write the script and started shooting on 35 mm black and white film about 30 miles north of Pittsburgh. The film had about $114,000 to work with, the definition of a shoestring budget.

    • The story follows a small group of people hiding in a farmhouse and defending themselves against a hoard of flesh-eating ghouls. Romero loved the story in “I Am Legend,” but he wanted to see that kind of story from a new perspective. That’s why Night of the Living Dead takes place at the very beginning of a zombie apocalypse, as society has not fallen to ruin just yet. 

    • Night of the Living Dead was groundbreaking for many reasons. It’s one of the most well-known and influential independent films ever made. Not only that, George Romero chose to cast Duane Jones as one of the first black leads in a horror film. The film was released in 1968, a turbulent time in America. As youth counterculture was on the rise, Romero’s zombies illustrated the concept of old ideals being gobbled up by a new generation. Racial tensions continued to rise, and the political climate seemed to heavily influence a film where a black man survives a monstrous hoard of mindless flesh-eaters, only to be killed by other humans. 

      • To George, this connection was coincidental, as the character was reportedly written as white in the script, but he thought Duane Jones was the best actor for the role. Audiences immediately made the connection to racism, which is partly why the film is remembered as a cultural landmark of the 1960s. George Romero explained: “There was all that anger and, you know, race riots coming up. When we were driving it to New York to show it to potential distributors, that night in the car, we heard that Martin Luther King had been assassinated.

    • Although George Romero was a big fan of making statements within his works, Night of the Living Dead was not originally meant to be a commentary on racism. In last year’s episode on the history of horror, we quoted George Romero in the documentary “Nightmares in Red, White, and Blue.” He says, “Why do you do horror? Well you do it to upset the uppercut. But in the end it kind of gets set back up again. We kill the monster, and I didn’t wanna do that.” 

    • Sure, Night of the Living Dead is a classic, but how exactly did it create the modern zombie? Well, the film was originally called Night of the Flesh-Eaters, but that title was too similar to a film that already existed. The name was changed last minute, but for some reason, the copyright had been left off the final print. Because of this, the film immediately entered the public domain, and Romero and Russo’s version of zombies was up for grabs for other filmmakers to use. So, modern cinema got very familiar with the concept of slow-moving zombies that could turn humans with just one bite. These creatures are capable of using tools and are autonomous, meaning they act independently. 

  • Martin (1977)

    • Martin is about a young man that has a dark secret. He maintains that he is an 84-year-old vampire. He watches women closely and in order to quench his vampire desires, he sedates, rapes, and kills the women using a razor blade to slit their wrists and drink their blood. 

    • Romero wrote and directed this movie, and it was his fifth feature film. 

    • Why it was influential

      • SlashFilm.com talked about how Romero once again changed a genre. When he made the vampire a human it changed how we view the monster. They said, “A vampire is no longer just a monster to be feared. Rather, it can be anyone looking to overpower and dominate others. No thirst for blood actually necessary.” Martin has no supernatural powers, the only power he has is that over his victims when he drugs, rapes, and kills them.  

      • The film is now often talked of as an underrated film that deserves a viewing. Comments on the trailers show that many people see it as their favorite Romero film and sites say that it was also a favorite of his. Some now see the character Martin as an original incel. Merriam Webster defines Incel as “a person (usually a man) who regards himself or herself as being involuntarily celibate and typically expresses extreme resentment and hostility toward those who are sexually active.” Martin exhibits this mentallity through his social awkwardness all the way to his belief that he is owed blood and more. 

  • Dawn of the Dead

    • Synopsis

      • As zombies increase in numbers during an epidemic, four people, (two S.W.A.T. members and a couple) escape to an abandoned shopping mall in order to make their stand and try to survive. 

    • Why it was influential

      • In Roger Ebert’s review he talks of how brilliantly Romero blended the satire, gore, and humor saying “But, even so, you may be asking, how can I defend this depraved trash? I do not defend it. I praise it. And it is not depraved, although some reviews have seen it that way. It is about depravity.”

      • It struck audiences with a realistic approach to an apocalypse with new broadcasts relaying misinformation while crewmembers leave and openly question the facts being presented by experts on air. 

      • It was a bold statement of consumerism and how people are zombies when it comes to their mindless obsession with objects. The main characters, as the world is falling apart around them, use fancy clothes, food, and objects as distractions. The survivors become consumers. 

    • In order to keep his film vision intact, he released the film as unrated instead of bowing down to The Motion Pictures Association of America (hell yeah!) Despite there not being an MPAA rating, it was still Romero’s most profitable film. 

  • Creepshow

    • Synopsis

      • Creepshow is a collection of 5 short stories that combine the macabre with humor. It pays homage to the style of 1950’s comic books. It features monsters, bogeymen, a visitor from outer space, bugs, and a corpse that came back for cake. The five tales are “Father’s Day,” “The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill,” Something to Tide You Over,” “The Crate,” and  “They’re Creeping Up on You.”  

    • Why it was influential

      • Creepshow paved the way for horror on television such as Tales from the Darkside (by Romero and Richard P. Rubenstein who produced Dawn of the Dead), Monsters (by Rubenstein in 1988), Tales from the Crypt, and several others. 

    • Creepshow was the very first George Romero-Stephen King collaboration, and the beginning of a long professional and personal relationship between the two men. 

      • Romero also adapted another Stephen King novel to film a few years later called The Dark Half.

  • Tales From The Darkside

    • Synopsis

      • Tales from the Darkside aired episodes that dealt with science fiction, horror, the occult, and more. At the end of each episode there would be a twist or moral for the viewer to take in, similar to one of its predecessors, The Twilight Zone but with a much creepier vibe.

    • Why it was influential

      • Following the success of Creepshow 

      • For many horror anthology fans, this is the first series that they remember growing up with. It continued to pave the way for more horror anthology series’, even ones like Are You Afraid of the Dark and Goosebumps. 

  • Monkey Shines

    • This film was written and directed by Romero and exemplifies his creativity within the horror genre. 

    • Synopsis

      • Based on a novel by Michael Stewart, the film centers around Allan Mann who is a recent quadriplegic who has lost his former life as an athlete and law student. As he becomes quite depressed a friend and scientist, Geoffrey Fisher, gifts him with a monkey. The monkey is meant to help him, but what Geoffrey does not tell Allan is that he has been injecting the monkey, Ella, with a serum containing human brain tissue. As Allan and Ella form a bond, it turns into a telepathic connection that leads Ella to act out harmful actions towards those that have wronged Allan or those that Ella has become jealous of. 

    • Why it was influential

      • Once again Romero experimented with discussions of the human condition through horror. It has been seen as an experiment in fear and is an exploration into the basic animalistic impulses that are within humans. The monkey acts out the hostilities that Allan would normally suppress. The film was also his first foray out of the independent film world. 

      • It inspired television episodes such as “Girly Edition” on The Simpsons where Homer gets a helper monkey, and the episode “Monkey” on Malcolm in the Middle.

    • For the movie “Monkey Shines” they had to wait for the monkey to be in heat so it would respond well and positively to the actor. The main actor had to be the first male that the monkey saw that day. These were the days when the monkey was the most affectionate and conveyed a strong bond.

  • Romero went on to finish his “dead” series over the course of his career with: 

    • Day of the Dead (1985) 

    • Land of the Dead (2005)

    • Diary of the Dead (2007)

      • With each film, Romero would adapt and incorporate new styles. For Diary of the Dead, he used the found-footage style of filmmaking. 

    • Survival of the Dead (2009)

      • This was Romero’s last zombie film. He declared after Zombieland that he was done with the sub-genre, because it was now a major blockbuster kind of film. 

Contributions to American Culture that you May Not Know

  • George Romero’s third wife, who was married to him when he passed away, began the George A. Romero Foundation. The Foundation aims to keep his legacy alive and to help those who want to pursue film, especially independent film. The Pioneer Award is given every year to a deserving individual and Scholarships and Fellowships are given as well. The foundation also works to restore and preserve Romero’s past work. 

  • Although you may not think of gaming immediately when you hear George Romero’s name, you can’t help but notice that many villains within games are zombies! 

    • He also participated in a few projects such as the 1998 live action Resident Evil 2 trailer and he also appeared in Call of Duty Black Ops–Zombies. His Dead series also was an influence for those that made the original Resident Evil.

Awards

  • George Romero is the definition of cult classic. His films were hardly ever critical darlings, but they made a lasting impact on the horror genre. He was responsible for delighting, inspiring, and terrifying generations of people; and that was award enough for him. 

  • At the New York City Horror Film Festival in 2002, George Romero was given the Life Achievement Award

  • He has a plaque in the Monster Kid Hall of Fame, installed in 2010

  • There is also a Horror Host Hall of Fame Plaque in honor of Night of the Living Dead, placed in 2011

  • He earned the Lon Chaney Award for Excellence in Independent Horror in 2017 at the FANtastic Horror Film Festival (aka FANtastic Fest)

  • He has a atar on The Hollywood Walk of Fame since 2017

  • He earned many other smaller awards for individual films such as Monkey Shines and The Dark Half

Legacy and Death

  • In July of 2017, George Romero died after a brief but intense battle with lung cancer. Directors, producers, writers, actors, and other members of the film community mourned the loss of this living legend. Stephen King tweeted, “Sad to hear my favorite collaborator--and good old friend--George Romero has died. George, there will never be another like you.”

  • In the film “Clapboard Jungle, George Romero is quoted saying, “You can make a wonderful movie and it never gets seen.” This certainly appears to be true, as there are several Romero works that are essentially non-existent. The Amusement Park was a work that Romero directed in 1973 that wasn’t released until after his death. 

    • The Amusement Park was thought to be lost until it was found, restored, and released in 2019. It was not meant to be a full-on horror movie but instead a PSA on elder abuse and ageism. It was funded by a church and a charity organization. Originally it was meant to be on tv but ended up not being released as it was too intense and shocking (what did they expect?) 

    • Since Romero was an independent filmmaker the amusement park used was West View Park in Pittsburgh which closed within a few years after the short 50-minute film was made. 

    • As with any piece of art, many different meanings can be gleaned from the film. The two most prominent are that the park is a visual metaphor for society, or that the park is a sort of purgatory. 

      • In it, the elderly are taken advantage of financially, denied opportunities due to age, neglected in basic medical treatments, and mocked.

    • Even after his death, Romero surprised audiences with his unique approach to storytelling and expert use of visual metaphors. 

When we hear the name George Romero, we think of zombies. But, the Romero Zombie is just one of the many contributions he made to film. He was an artist, a pacifist determined to illustrate the horrors that the human race inflicts and endures every day, through entertaining visuals and fascinating storylines. George Romero was a true independent. He saw a way to make his vision a reality and he went for it. He didn’t have big budgets or high-profile connections to make his art, and he ended up creating something so fascinating, so vivid and understandable to viewers, that he ended up changing horror–and film–forever. 

George Romero may be gone, but his art is very much alive, ready to be devoured. 

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Sources:

Biography, Film History, Horror, Podcast, ZombiesAdam OsburnGeorge Romero, Frightening February, Zombies, Night of the Living Dead, Martin, Dawn of the Dead, Creepshow, Monkey Shines, Tales from the Darkside