Romero brings his zombies back to life

A zombie film for every era
After an early career in commercials and industrial films, Romero shot “Night of the Living Dead” in stark black and white with a documentary style that fit the naturalism overtaking American cinema in the 1960s. The tale of bickering people trapped in a farmhouse surrounded by hungry zombies reflected the decade’s social unrest.

“Collapse of the family unit, lack of communication, people not being able to get it together. ‘Should we stay upstairs or go down to the basement?’ Instead of trying to really sort of pull together and address the problem,” Romero said. “Just missed opportunities. The ’60s in a nutshell.”

“Dawn of the Dead” was a perversely funny condemnation of mall culture, featuring survivors who take refuge against zombies in a shopping center. When zombies manage to get inside, they passively ride escalators and mindlessly window shop for savory morsels — essentially, the same thing they did while living.

“‘Dawn of the Dead’ is bawdy. It’s this comic book, and it’s in your face with the criticism of consumerism,” Romero said. “It was the beginning of logo shirts and murder for Nikes. It was that period in time.”

“Day of the Dead” reflects the cold opportunism of the 1980s, centering on scientists and military officers performing experiments on zombies in a bunker, where humans begin devolving amid the new world order of the undead.

“Land of the Dead” is a have and have-not story — timely, given the current focus on the chasm among classes in the United States. An elite few live the good life in a skyscraper while the masses suffer in squalor. Mercenaries scour the suburbs, gunning down zombies and foraging for groceries for the urban privileged.

The wealthy use fear of zombies to control the living population, an angle Romero uses to comment on the post-Sept. 11 world.

“Since 9/11, a fear came into it, and people have capitalized on how productive fear can be as a device,” co-star Baker said.

Romero doubts he ever will do a movie resolving his zombie-vs.-human scenario but he thinks his films have been moving toward some degree of peaceful co-existence between the living and dead.

“When you think about how do you solve this problem, there has to be some degree of that,” Romero said. “But the zombies also have to cooperate with that. I think one of the things is, they have to learn to eat something else.”

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