Romero and the Living Dead

With this bit of recent news that Romero is at it again, I decided to take a closer look at the world of Zombies. Another return to the land of the living dead for George is never a bad thing, I know Diary did not get the best of reviews, but like the Royal Flush, a Romero movie beats all the others hand down in my book. If you are not familiar with the previous entries in the series, go watch all of them now, in this order.

Ok, all caught up, good. Night of the Living Dead is a classic, even having been introduced into the Library of Congress alongside such other classics as Rocky, King Kong, and Blade Runner and is also Raindog Ryan’s favorite. Dawn of the Dead is my favorite in the series; Day of the Dead is the darkest, grittiest and the favorite of Raindogs Jeremy and Jon. After the classic series we were on a twenty year wait till we finally got the next entry, Land of the Dead originally expected to be titled Dusk of the Dead in order to fit the trend closer. Immediately following Land there were rumors of a direct sequel, but alas it was not to be, instead George decided to go to return to his low budget roots with Diary of the Dead. Once again, before Diary even came out, George was talking about a direct sequel. If that will happen or not is still up in the air, but first we will be seeing the new entry, tentatively titled Island of the Dead.

Remember the earlier graph above, well there is something I forgot to mention, there are alternate versions of a few of these films. There are slightly different versions of Dawn and Land and significantly alternate versions of Night and Dawn. Night is in the public domain, so there are many edits of the movie with either added color, added commentary, or alternate sound entirely, one of many Zombie fans’ most hated and despised edits is the “Night of the Living Dead: 30th Anniversary Edition” You see John Russo, the original film’s producer, decided to edit in new footage and new plot lines in order to “modernize” the flick. It is really not saying much more than avoid it. On the other hand, the alternate version of Dawn, titled simply “Zombie” is excellent. When not many people were interested in a Night sequel, former Sergio Leone co-writer and Italian director Dario Argento recognized Romero for all his talents and brought him out to Italy to help him write the script. A great collaboration was born that resulting in Dawn, and many other future collaborations including Romero casting Argento’s hot daughter in the forth entry. So along with Argento bringing Romero out there, he also re-cut the movie for Italy, it was a darker, shorter version that focused more on Tom Savini’s gore than the comedic elements of the original, in itself a great film, but I still prefer George’s theatrical cut. So let’s see that chart again, with these new editions.

Ok, so some of you might be asking yourself, “what about the one with the Zombie and the shark or that other one with the zombies loving brains and hanging out in the cemetery. Well those are related to the series as unofficial sequels. John Russo (this asshat again) used the name and background of Night in order to create the Return of the Living Dead series, even marketing the first entry against Day. Meanwhile in Italy, Zombie was such a huge hit, official and unofficial sequels were made. The many, many unofficial sequels are too many to name, I am only going to mention the significant ones. There are also unofficial sequels made to Day and an official sequel to the god-awful NotLD 30th Ann. Ed, so let’s take a look at the original chart again with all of these.

One of the truly beautiful aspects of Romero’s series is that none of them are really sequels. Night takes place as the outbreak occurs, Dawn takes place the end of the second day or so on through the next couple of months, Day is a good couple months down the road and Land is over a year after the outbreak. Diary and Island seem to be more of side-Tales from the Romero Zombie world. Also, regardless of when the last entry was made, Romero’s films always take place in the modern day, with a sort of reverse sliding timeline of events. Night is set in the late sixties, Dawn in the late seventies, etc. It makes it interesting to see any of the remakes, which are generally set in modern time as well, so quiet late sixties Barbra is changed to independent head strong Barbra in Tom Savini’s 1990 remake. Zack Snyder’s 2004 remake of Dawn picked up the speed of things and gave us one of the first films where I actually enjoyed fast running Zombies. Here is the final version of our chart, including all of the remakes.

I hope this handy dandy flowchart helps you in your future Zombie film watching, maybe next time we will go further into the many parodies, spoofs and homage’s to the world of Romero. Or maybe the multiple versions of home releases for each movie.