“Godfather of the dead” George Romero dies at 77

After a “brief but aggressive battle with lung cancer,” 77-year-old filmmaker George A. Romero has died this Monday morning.

According to a family statement to the Los Angeles Times, he passed away in his sleep with his wife and daughter by his side while listening to the score of one of his favorite films The Quiet Man.

The iconic Night of the Living Dead creator is known for modernizing the zombie movie genre. His earlier zombie films inspired knockoffs and sequels, influenced movies like The Purge, TV shows as The Walking Dead, as well as directors like John Carpenter and Tobe Hooper.

“He took the image of the zombie, which up to that point was rooted in the Caribbean and part of a black Caribbean culture, and turned it into a metaphor for all sorts of things in American culture,” said Leo Braudy, a USC professor who last year published Haunted: On Ghosts, Witches, Vampires, Zombies, and Other Monsters of the Natural and Supernatural Worlds. His Night of the Living Dead film was shot on a budget of just over a $100,000, which then grossed $50 million.

The film had five sequels including Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead which strengthened Night’s position as a cult classic.

Fellow filmmakers and colleagues in film industry paid tribute to Romero like Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn who worked for the screenplay of Dawn of the Dead (2004), horror film director Hostel Eli Roth, and author Stephen King, among others.

Header image by Agence France Presse

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