The Father of Zombie Films: George Romero
Ever since 1968 George A. Romero has shocked the world with his unique vision of horror fiction. Audiences of horror, as well as the genre of horror itself, were forever changed since the release of Night of the Living Dead. The film was Romero’s first feature film, and it would give rise to three more sequels, all written and directed by Romero. Romero has a distinct style that separates him from the other great directors in horror. Romero has permanently changed the way that horrors stories are told on film, as well as the way horror effects are done.
The themes are always socially oriented in Romero films. The zombie genre is a social retrospect on a world that has gone mad, where the mad consume the sane so the sane will also turn into the mad. In Night of the Living Dead the main theme is miscommunication. The film shows that our advances in technology such as radio, telephone, and television haven’t enhanced our ability to communicate. Even with these technological advances the characters in the film are still doomed by their inability to communicate. Dawn of the Dead was Romero’s commentary on consumer culture. Zombies over run the malls of America because they’re such important places in their lives that they even keep going after death. Day of the Dead was Romero’s commentary on the corruption of military controlled institutions since the 1980s saw rise to many dictatorships. His latest installment into the series, Land of the Dead, touches the issue of class-ism.
Another social element in Romero films is who plays his characters. There is always either a black lead or a female lead in his films. In Night of the Living Dead, the main character was a black man. In Dawn of the Dead, the main characters were a black man and a white woman. In Day of the Dead, the main character is a white woman. The only film in his zombie series that breaks the ethnic rule is Land of the Dead. In Land of the Dead, the main characters are a white man and black zombie. A horror movie rule that Romero clearly breaks is the rule where the black guy always dies early in the film. In most of his films the black man is either the main character or the supporting character. The black character actually lives all the way until the very end of the film.
A distinguished part of Romero’s style is irony. Night of the Living Dead had a lot of ironies within the story. The film showed a life after death where people become mindless corpses who consumed on the living; this isn’t the beautiful afterlife people have always envisioned. Another aspect of irony is that the main character, Ben, is wrong. Throughout the whole film you root for Ben because he’s the hero of the story; then at the end you realize that his plan was the cause of everyone’s death. Another point of irony in the story is when Barbara’s brother who had saved her in the beginning of the film ends up eating her in the climax. Irony is definitely in play in a Romero film.
Romero’s style is very colorful. All his films, except for the black and white Night of the Living Dead, have brilliant colorful palettes. The reason why Romero uses such vibrant colors is because he comes from an advertising background. Romero also always shoots on relatively low budgets. His stories are either dramas that have horror elements, or horror films that are dramatic. These are the films that he had made outside of his infamous zombie series: Theirs Always Vanilla (1971), The Crazies (1973), Hungry Wives (1973), Martin (1977), Knightriders (1981), Creepshow (1982), The Dark Half (1993), and Bruiser (2001). It is apparent in his films that he either always shoots in Pittsburg or somewhere around it.
A huge aspect of Romero’s style is gore. His films are very gory and there is a special emphasis on the effects. In all of the zombie films there is always a disembowelment scene. The only zombie film that didn’t have the disembowelment scene is the first one since they couldn’t do the effect back then. It’s very amazing how Romero shows the scene like a display. He shoots the scene so you can see the reaction of the actors’ faces when they get opened up. He only holds the scene long enough for you to get the impression, but not long enough for you to know that it’s all fake. A scene that has appeared in all of his zombie films is the aftermath scene. In all of the zombie films there is scene where the zombies feast on the recently killed people. The zombies play with their entrails and fight over the scraps of human meat and organs. Romero shoots it so you can tell what part they’re eating and you know that it came from a person.
I would definitely consider George A. Romero as an auteur. Out of the all of the master horror directors: John Carpenter, Wes Craven, Tobe Hooper, Lucio Fulci, Clive Barker, David Cronenberg, and Mark Cunningham; Romero’s style stands out the most. He has done all dark films, but the films that he had done that stand out the most are the zombie films. There had been zombie movies before Night of the Living Dead. The most notable mention of pre-Romero zombie films is Boris Karloff’s The Ghoul. The fact that Romero changed horror movies forever sets him as an auteur. Night of the Living Dead was the first film that had the zombies eat their victims. In the zombie films before it, the zombies just strangled their victims to death and that was that.
He also started unhappy endings in horror movies. Before Night of the Living Dead the formula for a horror film would be this: something causes there to be a monster, monster would terrorize people, people figure out how to defeat the monster, monster then is defeated, everyone lives happily ever after. At the end of Night of the Living Dead, Ben is sole survivor of the events of the night. Ben is then shot in the head by a local militia. They then burn his body with all the zombies. No happy Hollywood ending here.
Romero also pushed the envelope in gore. Before Night of the Living Dead murder scenes in horror films weren’t that graphic. Murder scenes went along these lines: Frankenstein would throw a girl into the lake, Dracula would throw his cape over a woman, and the Wolfman would strangle his victims. In Night of the Living Dead, there were scenes along these lines: Ben sticks a tire iron into a zombie’s head, Barbara finds eaten remains of a woman, zombies take multiple guns shots to their bodies and keep walking, and a little girl repeatedly stabs her mother in the chest with a garden shovel. Luckily for Romero, his freshman feature came out during the time before the MPAA.
Great men must surround themselves with great men, and Romero has collaborated with the best in horror. Romero has worked with Tom Savini since Dawn of the Dead. Savini is a special effects legend in the horror world. What sets Savini aside from other effects people is that he was a photographer during the Vietnam War. He got to see what people really look like when they were dying. Romero actually wrote the script for the 1990 remake of Night of the Living Dead for Savini to direct. The film flopped in the box office. Savini had since made a cameo as a returning zombie in Land of the Dead. Savini no longer does special effects but runs a school where he teaches the next generation of effects people.
Romero has also worked with Greg Nicotero since Day of the Dead. Nicotero is the current master of special effects in horror since Savini stepped down from the throne. Nicotero is the protégé of Savini and also collaborated with Romero on Land of the Dead. Dario Argento and his band, The Globins, composed the music for Dawn of the Dead. Dario Argento would move on to become a master of horror himself.
The greatest honor for any horror aficionado is to work with the master Stephan King. Romero teamed up with King on Creepshow in 1982. King had written the script to Creepshow in the vain of EC horror comics. Romero too shared the love for these comics when he was younger. King was very impressed with Romero’s ability to direct his written words. Since then Romero has directed another Stephen King tale, The Dark Half. Romero is currently working on directing King’s The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon.
George A. Romero definitely is one of my favorite directors in horror. Although his latest film was anti-climatic, I still enjoyed watching his fingerprint on the silver screen. When I watched Land of the Dead I got to see the social satire and hardcore gore that I have grown to love. Romero is unmistakably an auteur in my book, and he is undoubtedly the father of zombie films in everyone’s book.
June 30, 2005
Works Cited
“Biography for George A. Romero (I).” Editorial. Internet Movie Database (IMDb)
5 July 2005 <http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001681/bio>.
Reiniger, and Gaylen Ross. Anchor Bay Entertainment, 1978.
Pilato, Richard Liberty. Anchor Bay Entertainment, 1985.
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