George A. Romero Biography

CIVIL STATUS
Careers Screenwriter, Actor, Director more
Birth Name George Andrew Romero
Nickname George Romero
Nationality American
Born 4 February 1940 (New York – United States)
Deaths July 16, 2017
BIOGRAPHY
Accustomed from an early age to the handling of the 8mm camera, George A. Romero directed his first short film at the age of 14. Over time, he perfected his technique and made a series of short films.

1968 marked a turning point in the filmmaker’s career. With friends, he founded the production company Image Ten Productions, and raised $10,000 to produce and direct his first feature film, Night of the Living Dead. With this horror film, one of the most famous of all time, he was consecrated as a cult director by a whole generation of cinephiles. Filmed in black and white, shot in 16mm and shot on weekends with friends, the feature film was an unexpected and considerable public and critical success. In Romero’s work, as in his illustrious predecessors, Robert Wise (The Day the Earth Stood Still) and Don Siegel (Invasion of the Grave Desecrators), fantasy and horror are coupled with a political parable. Romero, like later John Carpenter, championed the dark side of a paranoid America. Throughout his work, the filmmaker never ceased to dig into this vein.

After two feature films once again focused on horror, he returned to the theme that had made him famous (the living dead) with Night of the Living Fools (1973). In 1977, he tackled vampirism with Martin, the story of a young psychotic teenager, a sort of masculine praying mantis who feasts on the blood of his mistresses.

With the support of another master of horror, Italian Dario Argento, who co-produced and co-wrote the film, he directed Zombie (1978), the sequel to Night of the Living Dead. More bloody than the first part, the second part of what will become the Living Dead Trilogy benefits from the contribution of a genius make-up artist, Tom Savini. The latter directed the remake of Night of the Living Dead in 1990.

In 1982, he directed Creepshow, a big-budget sketch film inspired by the world of comic books. For the first time in his career, Romero called on novelist Stephen King. The two men reunited in 1993 for The Dark Side, a disturbing story of a successful writer in search of respectability.

Three years later, in 1985, Romero closed his “Living Dead” trilogy with Day of the Living Dead. Not devoid of humour, the film is no less dark, since it shows a universe totally under the control of the living dead. Seeking to renew himself, in 1988 the filmmaker directed a manipulative and killer monkey in Incident de parcours, before co-directing with Dario Argento the sketch film Two Evil Eyes (1990). Adapted from two fantastic tales by Edgar Allan Poe, this film brings together one of the muses of horror cinema, Adrienne Barbeau (who had worked with Wes Craven and John Carpenter) and Harvey Keitel.

In 2000, after long years of absence behind the camera and appearances in front of his friends, he directed Bruiser, a variation on the theme of the invisible man, and then, in 2004, he shot a new episode of his saga of the living dead: Land of the Dead, for which he hired, for once, stars (including Dennis Hopper and Asia Argento). Always loyal to the undead, he returned for Diary of the Dead in 2007, featuring film students filming the dead coming back to life. The same year, he starred in the feature film Diamond Dead, a mix of rock musical and horror.