Trailblazer was ‘Godfather of the Dead’
WHEN George Andrew Romero wrote and directed his first film, the 1968 cult classic Night Of The Living Dead, on a shoestring budget of $114,000, he had no idea he was going to become a trailblazer for the modern zombie genre.
The black-and-white film went on to make $30million at the box office and was followed by five sequels and two remakes. It has since spawned many imitators including TV shows such as The Walking Dead and films such as 28 Days Later.
Yet Romero never expected his career to be defined by the flesh-eating undead.
“All I did was I took them out of ‘exotica’ and I made them the neighbours,” he said, pointing to the success of his chilling films that used terrifying effects, make-up and cuts to satirise consumerism, racism and other social horrors.
“I thought there’s nothing scarier than the neighbours!”
Born in the Bronx to a Cuban father and a Lithuanian-American mother, Romero graduated from the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh where he studied graphic arts, before shooting commercials and short films.
After the success of Night Of The Living Dead, however, came disappointment when movies including The Crazies and vampire film Martin didn’t fare as well at the box office.
In 1978 he returned to his first love – zombies – and made Dawn Of The Dead which had a budget of $1.5m and ended up grossing $55m worldwide.
He followed that by writing and directing Day Of The Dead (1985), Land Of The Dead (2005), Diary Of The Dead (2007) and Survival Of The Dead (2009), a body of work that earned him the nickname Godfather of the Dead.
Interspersed with the “Dead” films, there were others including Monkey Shines, The Dark Half and Knightriders. More recently, he switched to comic books, creating “The Empire Of The Dead” series which was first published by Marvel in 2014 and combined zombies and vampires.
He died following a brief battle with lung cancer and is survived by third wife Suzanne, daughter Tina and sons Andrew and Cameron.