REMEMBERING GEORGE A. ROMERO

We horror fans lost our patron saint last year.

I was first introduced to George Romero at the age of 10 when someone in my home (most likely my sister) brought home the Creepshow VHS one weekend. That film became my gateway drug into the horror genre. I love that movie the way someone loves their first kiss — and it sits proudly at the top of my DVD pile of flicks I loop in the background while I write.

Romero was known for his walking dead films (I got Night of the Living Dead in my Christmas stocking one year, lovingly put there by my mom). He not only created that genre, but he single-handedly changed the course of the horror film genre with it. Anytime I watch films at horror festivals, you can see the man’s fingerprints all over other filmmaker’s work: obligatory zombie apocalypses, sieges in small areas. The social commentary (the secret sauce, in my humble opinion) is missing in 90% of his imitators, but hey, there was only one George Romero.