The Cinema of George A. Romero: Knight of the Living Dead

By Stefan Isaksson

The Cinema of George A. Romero: Knight of the Living Dead
Tony Williams
Wallflower Press
214 pages
ISBN: 1903364736

I doubt there’s a single horror-movie fan on this entire earth who doesn’t know who George A. Romero is, the creator of zombie classics Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, and Day of the Dead (and the fourth one, Land of the Dead, however, this movie hadn’t yet been made when The Cinema of George A. Romero came out and thus it’s not included in the book).

But Romero is more than just a creator of zombies, and Tony Williams presents in his book a study of all Romero’s movies, not just the ones where the living dead stumbles around in the streets, looking for the next human being they can get a snack from. Romero is a creator of movies where he likes to make a point, or points; he has tons of thoughts and ideas – and especially social criticism – that he includes in his work, and Williams manages to offer a clear picture of Romero’s complete production and the reasons as to why it looks the way it does.

This is most definitely a book for movie-lovers, and even though it happens to be a scholarly book this still doesn’t mean that movie-lovers who are not scholars cannot get something good out of it. Or put in other words, The Cinema of George A. Romero is a book that can be read by all, scholars as well as non-scholars.

But even though Romero, as we all know, not only masters how to create creepy zombies it’s still these creatures and the movies they star in that most people think of when they hear his name. And perhaps that isn’t much of a surprise, considering how immensely popular they still are, despite having been made quite a few years ago. The horror genre of today isn’t what it used to be, and most contemporary horror flicks are “almost entirely devoid of social meaning and dependent upon gratuitous sensationalism” (p. 21).

Well, not so with the ones made by Romero, and this book will most definitely tell you the reasons why.