GEORGE A. ROMERO

(4 February 1940 - 16 July 2017)

Film director, writer, producer, editor and actor George A. Romero, who has died from lung cancer at the age of 77, became renowned chiefly for reviving the genre of the zombie movie. His first feature film was Night of the Living Dead in 1968, although there had been zombie films since the 1930s, Victor Halpern’s White Zombie being one of the first (in 1932), while Jacques Tourneur’s I Walked With a Zombie (1942) is considered to be one of the finest ever. Although he wanted to make other films, Romero became stuck in the zombie rut, mainly because his films were very good and very successful. After making some shorts in the 1960s, Romero and his associates clubbed together and made Night of the Living Dead for a mere $100,000, the result being that it made far more than it cost and allowed him to continue in  the horror genre. After The Crazies, Martin, Season of the Witch and Knightriders (with Ed Harris), he returned to zombies with Dawn of the Dead, Creepshow (from a story by Stephen King), Survival of the Dead and Land of the Dead. His last films were Road of the Dead and Day of the Dead which are in post-production. Romero made many other films and television shows and often acted in his films as well as writing, producing and editing some of them. His work has had an obvious effect on the current run of zombie films, Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead (2004) being a prime example of Romero’s abiding influence on the filmmakers of today.

MICHAEL DARVELL