Night of the Living Dead

George A. Romero was born in the Bronx, to Anne and George Romero, a commercial artist. His mother was Lithuanian, while his father, who moved from Spain to Cuba as a child, often identified as Castilian despite being reported to have been born in A Coruña, with roots in the Galician town of Neda.  As a child, George frequently rode the subway into Manhattan to rent film reels, one of only two people to repeatedly rent the opera-based film The Tales of Hoffmann—the other being future director Martin Scorsese. Romero attended Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh. After graduating from college in 1960, Romero began his career by shooting short films and TV commercials. In the late 1960s, he and nine friends, including screenwriter John A. Russo, formed Image Ten Productions, the company that produced Night of the Living Dead (1968). Directed by Romero and co-written with John A. Russo, the movie became a cult classic and a defining moment for modern horror cinema. George made three films after Night of the Living Dead, There's Always Vanilla (1971), Jack's Wife / Season of the Witch (1972) and The Crazies (1973). These films were not as well received as Night of the Living Dead or some of George's later work. The Crazies, dealing with a biological spill that induces an epidemic of homicidal madness, and the critically acclaimed arthouse success Martin (1978), a film that deals with the vampire myth, were the two well-known films from this period. George returned to the zombie genre in 1978 with Dawn of the Dead. George made the third entry in his “Living Dead Series” with Day of the Dead in 1985. Between the latter two "Dead" films, Romero shot Knightriders (1981), another festival favorite about a group of modern-day jousters who re-enact tournaments on motorcycles; and Creepshow (1982), written by Stephen King, an anthology of tongue-in-cheek tales modeled after 1950s horror comics. The cult-classic success of Creepshow led to the creation of George's Tales from the Darkside, a horror anthology television series that aired from 1983 to 1988. From the latter half of the 1980s and into the 1990s came Monkey Shines (1988), about a killer helper monkey; Two Evil Eyes (1990), an Edgar Allan Poe adaptation in collaboration with Dario Argento; The Dark Half (1993) from a novel written by Stephen King; and Bruiser (2000), about a man whose face becomes a blank mask. George updated his original screenplay and executive-produced the 1990 remake of Night of the Living Dead directed by Tom Savini. Savini is also responsible for the makeup and special effects in many of George's films including Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, Creepshow, and Monkey Shines. In 2005, George directed the fourth film in the "Living Dead" series in Toronto, Land of the Dead. The movie’s working title was Dead Reckoning. Actors Simon Baker, Dennis Hopper, Asia Argento, and John Leguizamo starred, and the film was released by Universal Pictures (who released the Dawn of the Dead remake the year before). The film received mostly positive reviews. George made an appearance in the video game Call of Duty: Black Ops. He appears as himself in the zombies map Call of the Dead as a non-playable enemy character. He returned to video games recording his voice for Zombie Squash as the lead villain, Dr. B. E. Vil. In 2014, Marvel Comics began releasing Empire of the Dead, a 15-issue miniseries written by George. The series is broken up into three acts, five issues each, and features not only zombies but also vampires. On July 16, 2017, Romero died in his sleep following a brief but aggressive battle with lung cancer.

1968 Night of the Living Dead
1973 The Crazies
1978 Dawn of the Dead
1985 Day of the Dead
1988 Monkey Shines
1993 The Dark Half
2005 Land of the Dead
2007 Diary of the Dead