George Romero has died.
May he shamble around aimlessly searching for BRAAINNNS to devour in peace.
As per my son: Don’t worry. He’ll be back in two days to make more movies.
A story. One night, in the military, I was standing watch as a night maintenance person. It was a single person duty, so the only company was the crappy TV in the duty room. Empty building, very dark, things creak in the night. So I turned on the TV and did some limited channel checking, as there were only a few stations available.
I came across what appeared to be a movie in progress. Black and white, two young people visiting a cemetery for some reason. Heavy sigh. Okay, it’s better than nothing. An hour later, I’ve locked the door to the duty room and am jumping at every noise.
Fucking movie scared the crap out of me. I didn’t know the name of it until much later.
I am envious of your son. I wish I could make a good joke that fast. Awesome!
Chefguy When I was little fella it did the same thing to me, still creeps me out, especially the way that zombie folds up that organ (kidney?) and snacks… ick! It has to be because it was in Black and White that makes it more eerie. Reminded me of that Twilight Zone where the lady’s dead husband called her from the cemetery (phone wire fell on his grave)… except gruesome.
RIP, George. The Godfather of zombie flicks will always [DEL]live on[/DEl] be undead in our hearts.
Your story reminds me of a Robert Ebert article from 1969 where he describes a bunch of kids’ reactions to the movie during a matinee screening. This was at a time when horror movies were still widely considered silly B-movies with rubber monster costume shenanigans.
http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-night-of-the-living-dead-1968
Not for long.
This is was, but not too surprising given his age. Also if I may nitpick; Romero’s zombies were flesheaters, not just brains. Nor could they speak (well except for Bub that one time). Dan O’Bannon’s zombies were the brain eaters.
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I didn’t want to be the one to make that nitpick, but I’m glad someone did.:smack:
But shamble in peace, George.
Couple of funny stories (well, I think they’re funny) about this movie. When I was in college they showed this movie one night in one of the big lecture halls. We left at about ten o’clock at night and it was foggy as anything and people were making zombie noises in the dark.
They showed this movie on a local TV station and censored it pretty drastically cutting, among other things, the scene where the kid slices up mommy with the gardening trowel. Well, on some guys last day of work, he splices that scene into the middle of the medical movie they were showing the next day. You hear, “Nurse, scalpel.” and the next thing you know…
I mix him up with Roger Corman in my mind sometimes, despite knowing who each person is and what they look like.
Corman is still going, age 91.
SIP*, George. 
*Shamble in Peace.
Not quite the same, but my very first time home alone - no babysitter - I’m watching a movie on TV; killer ants are attacking the house.
Climatic scene: they dig a trench/moat & fill it with a couple tankers worth of gasoline & are going to set it on fire. Of course the FD is there to monitor the situation.
All of a sudden the sirens seem louder (this in in the days of monaural tube TVs, not home theaters with surround sound), & all of a sudden the room seems to be lighting up brighter from the rotating lights on the top of the fire trucks, & all of a sudden something catches my eye out the window. Seems my neighbor forgot about something in the oven & had a minor kitchen fire.
You know what this means, right? I am convinced that I am never, ever, ever going to be allowed to be home alone again! :smack:
Minor Hijack:
Hey, Spiderman,
My parents left me home alone one New Year’s Eve, and I was watching Silver Streak, and I’ll be damned if there wasn’t a minor earthquake right as the train comes barreling through the wall of the station! 
I never moved so fast in my life!
Hijack over
See ya, George!
RIP Mr. Romero; you done good.
I have consistently placed Knight Riders in my top 20 films since it was released. And from now until forever, no one who loves zombies will not know that George Romero is the reason we love zombies so much.
Romero was a smoker Unfortunatly
When people think of influential filmmakers, names like Spielberg, Lang and Welles come up. George Romero was almost as influential—his work may not have been high art, but it affected a lot of the movies that people actually saw. The horror genre wouldn’t have been the same without him.
I wouldn’t go quite that far, but it narrowly beats out Excalibur as my favourite non-comedy Arthurian movie. And since I’m not a horror fan, it’s by far my favourite Romero piece.
Nitpick: Romero zombies didn’t eat brains, specifically. They ate anything.
Dan O’Bannon* is the one who gave us brain-seeking , speaking zombies in Return of the Living Dead.
- he died in 2009 at a mere 63 years of age, and has presumably been shambling around looking for brains for the past 7+ years.
Unless he comes back as a high-speed remake zombie that is.
I did a couple nights on the original Dawn and a couple days on Knightriders but I never got to really meet or talk to him. I was a broke-ass college student at the time and more interested in the check than the history I was touching. His rep around here is mixed since he basically fled Western PA (Yinzers don’t forgive easily) but as a fan of the zombie thing he really created, he will always be Saint George to me.