I know there were zombie films made before Night of the Living Dead, but AKAIK those zombies, while reanimated corpses, were usually Voodo zombies. And they were under the conrol of a Voodo master (or space aliens in at least one case). Was Romero the first person to come up with the idea of zombies as violent animalistic ghouls who ate human flesh?
I don’t know the answer, but it’s a free bump.
Romero might have been the first, but a some years earlier (1954), Richard Matheson released “I Am Legend,” which dealt with vampire zombies. The first adaptation of it “The Last Man on Earth,” was released in 1964.
Mostly. Romero had some sources of inspiration. Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend was one big one but his creatures were vampires not zombies. (Although Romero never actually called them zombies in the original Night of the Living Dead.) Matheson’s vampires were like Romero’s zombies in that they infected their victims who became creatures like them and constantly attempted to consume the last remaining living people.
In addition, at pretty much the same time that Romero was making Night of the Living Dead, Italian horror film maker Lucio Fulci was making a movie called Gli Ultimi Zombi (The Last Zombie). Romero’s got in theatres first and was a big success in Europe under the title Zombi. Fulci’s movie was retitled Zombi 2 to capitalize on this, which was unfair to Fulci who had conceived his script independently. Like Romero’s, Fulci’s movie used the idea of dead people rising up and driven by a need to consume living people who then became zombies in turn.
'Twas a brave zombie who first et a brain.
Actually, Zombi 2 came out in 1979, and capitalized on Dawn of the Dead, which was Romero’s sequel, made 11 years after the original.
IIRC, vampirism was caused by a pandemic disease. People would become sick and die, only to rise again. The main character was immune to this for some reason but he wouldn’t have become a vampire if he was bitten. I can’t remember if Matheson ever says if it is airborne or what.
But how many zombie film are there with zombie vs. Shark action? :eek:
You’re right. Somebody must have eaten my braaaaaiiiinnnnsssss…
He does.
yes, more or less
T-shirt I saw at a recent SF convention: “Zombies love you for your brains!” 
Does anybody know where that title came from? I always figured it was a misquoting of Mark’s ‘Then Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” He replied, "My name is Legion; for we are many.’ (Mark 5:1-5, 5:9) “I am Legend” is just awkward and makes little sense in the context of the story, while the Mark reference works.
I think the idea is that vampires were legendary up until the plague. After which time the sole human survivor (who wandered around killing vampires when possible) became a mythical object of terror to the vampires, i.e. a legend.
Yup. In the generations to come, vampires will tell their little ones about the evil creatures who used to stalk the daytime, preying upon them (the vampires) while they slept. The narrator then becomes a legend.
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I’ve read that it was never Romero’s intention for the zombification to actually be caused by an infection transmitted by zombies. The premise of the films (at least the first two) was that something had gone so horribly wrong with the world in general that every single person who died came back as a zombie unless their brain was destroyed or severed. This year’s Fido was much better at explaining it, showing that all burials in the post-zombie-war world involve a separate coffin for the head.
And Dawn of the Dead, a collaboration between Romero and Italian filmmakers, was a huge hit in Italy.
I recall a Gahan Wilson cartoon: A crowd of vampires, anxious expressions on their faces, are lining up to see a movie: Van Helsing: The Fiend Who Comes at Dawn!
In the 4th film, Land of the Dead, a man commits suicide by hanging and comes back as a zombie (yet his family is surprised for some reason :dubious: ). In Romero’s films everybody who dies of something other than massive brain trauma comes back as a zombie*. Being bitten simply causes one to die. After that the bite victim is revived by whatever phenomenon that’s causing the zombie outbreak in general. Romero’s never given an actual explanation for zombification in his films, just characters speculating.
*(We never actually saw Dr Logan revive in Day even though he was only shot in the chest.)
I believe, though I don’t have a cite, that Romero has intentionally resisted an actual cause for the Zombie Apocolypse.
I’ll see if I can dig up the quote that makes me think that.
One of the few decent things about his franchise. I wouldn’t pick up a copy of World War Z because it sounded so twee and pedantic, trying to carefully reason a way for the plague of zombies to emerge.