Salute of the Living Dead…

Death comes for us all. Even guys who pioneered an entire genre about people not staying dead.

And while it’s impossible to analyze the “butterfly effect” of what our world would be like without George Romero having existed and having co-created Night of the Living Dead all those years ago, I think it’s safe to say this comic wouldn’t exist. Not in its present form, anyhow. H.P. Lovecraft may have arguably been the first guy to write about people returning from death hungry for human flesh in his story of Herbert West, Re-Animator, but it was NotLD and later Dawn of the Dead that cemented our modern culture’s ideal of the zombie as an infectious, cannibal ghoul, and the resulting zombie subgenre of horror being a place where thought-invoking social commentary could lie in the wake of the shambling hordes.

Mr. Romero passed away July 16th, at the age of 77, after what was reportedly a relatively brief but intense struggle with lung cancer. His family was with him and his favorite song was playing as he died in his bed, so as these things go I suppose it was as good as it gets. He had a long life and a beloved cult following, and speaking as someone who has experienced two close relatives dying from it, cancer is definitely something that is better to be briefly experienced. I’m sure it doesn’t make it any less devastating for the loved ones, of course. My own aunt passed from lung cancer just a few years ago under what I imagine were similar circumstances.

I’ve had my criticisms for Romero’s most recent zombie efforts, but one thing that’s clear is he always had ideas, whether or not he was fully cognizant of how to realize them. A lot of NotLD could be said to arguably be a happy accident, including the Civil Rights era parables, but Romero rolled with the social commentary aspect and the rest is history. Now to say he single-handedly gave us this subgenre is false, but his partner John Russo meanwhile went more down the path of blood and boobs and camp with the Return of the Living Dead series. Russo also gave us the whole “zombies eat brains” schtick that was never baked in from the beginning but is now an instantly recognizable trope.

But this isn’t the Russo reminiscence hour, this is the time to reflect on the legacy George leaves us, and it’s a legacy that shambles on to this day, reinventing itself again and again to stay relevant. George has plenty of other films in his works besides those “…of the Dead,” but certainly zombies are going to be what he’s most remembered for. As I’ve discussed in a previous blog, that legacy may not have even happened had he and Russo not screwed up their copyright and rendered NotLD into public domain, but then again maybe it would still have occurred and he’d have been a multi-millionaire. Regardless, Romero always seemed famously good-humored about it. In fact I don’t think you could have asked for a kindlier patriarch of the zombie realm, always encouraging to up and coming talents who wanted to make their own (tooth)marks. Fellow travelers as diverse as Zack Snyder, Stephen King and Guillermo Del Toro all acknowledge their debt to his vision and have made their statements of remembrance. And for what it’s worth, here I add mine.

As an ending note, Romero supposedly has elected for cremation of his remains. One last wink from the master? In any case, godspeed, George. And thank you.