Not many directors get to create what amounts to a modern mythology, but George Romero, director of "Night of the Living Dead," "Dawn of the Dead," "Day of the Dead," "Land of the Dead," and most recently, "Diary of the Dead," did just that.
Romero is coming to The Light Factory in Charlotte, NC the weekend of Feb. 20 and you'll get a chance to see some of his lesser known films as well as his famous zombies (see our earlier post on the event).
It's hard to imagine now, after decades of splatter films and torture porn, the effect that Romero's zombie movies had when they first appeared.
Film critic Roger Ebert first gained national notoriety panning "Night of the Living Dead," in a widely reprinted Reader's Digest piece, although he later recanted. Ebert now praises Romero, particularly "Dawn of the Dead," which remains, perhaps, his masterpiece.
The sheer horrific realism of Romero's zombie movies, particularly the first two, of little girls chewing on a parent's severed limb, of zombies biting gooey, bloody chunks out of shoulders or legs, of zombie heads blown apart, had an effect on the horror genre similar to Peckinpah's on the western with the graphically violent "The Wild Bunch."
Nowadays, with zombies enjoying a faddish vogue, filmmakers and writers speak of Romero zombies, the plodding, rotting, hungry corpses that are nothing like Voodoo zombies or the blurry creatures of films such as 28 Days Later, Resident Evil and assorted sequels.
Romero and company invented the modern zombie.
Romero coined the phrase, "When hell is full, the dead will walk the Earth," in "Dawn". There is a certain raw poetry to the writing in many of Romero's films that remind me a bit of the same sort of thing in Universal's "Wolfman" films, with the doggerel verse, "Even a man who says his prayers by night, can become a wolf, when the wolfbane blooms, and the moon is full and bright."
Indeed, many critics have seen "Dawn" as a commentary on our mall-oriented consumerism, which creates a sort of walking dead all its own. Its that subtext--present in all of Romero's films, including "The Crazies," and very fine "Knightriders," as well as his other zombie flix, that gives his films such staying power.
"Dawn" also combined slapstick humor with horror as a rampaging gang of bikers invade the shopping mall and shove pies in the faces of hapless zombies. Again, with "Scream" and sequels, among others, playing horror for laughs, we're more accustomed to that now. Back then you didn't see horror and humor combined often unless the films starred Abbott and Costello, Bob Hope or some other comedy star(s). Romero pioneered the humor/horror mix.
Personally, I enjoyed "Diary of the Dead," filmed on video and even less expensively than some of his other efforts, as much as any of the Dead films. It had that poetry of horror feeling. It brings the same sort of underlying subtext to the zombie myth that "Dawn" did. It's about more than zombies.
Many people are not familiar with Romero's smaller films, "Martin," and "The Crazies," and "KnightRiders," all of which show his ability to create believable characters even in fantastic plot situations.
The Ultimate "Dawn of the Dead" DVD collection, which includes every version of the film ever released and the most entertaining and informative commentaries by Romero, the actors, and crew I've ever heard, as well as two documentaries, belongs in any zombie fan's home collection.
