It is no coincidence that film studios have remade most of George A. Romero’s films. They are as relevant and gory today as they were at the time of the release. Some are decent (Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead), others are not (the many direct-to-video remakes of Night of the Living Dead). Romero created the modern zombie in Night of the Living Dead, the film that set the standard for all zombie films to come, and has collaborated with horror author Stephen King twice with great results.
Even after his death and 55 years after his first film, his projects are still being realized, with Shudder releasing his lost film Amusement Park in 2021 and his final zombie idea Twilight of the Zombies in the works. Here are eight of the best George A. Romero films, ranked.
8 Monkey Shines
Monkey Shines is a revenge film about a paralyzed young man who is angry at many people he believes are responsible for his condition. Jason Beghe plays Allan, an athlete who is paralyzed from an accident and who attempts suicide. His best friend suggests that he get a monkey assistant, but his real goal is to test out the monkey which he has been injecting with experimental drugs. The monkey is able to tap into Allan’s murderous anger and homicidal rage and soon everyone is getting murdered. There is great tension and action scenes in this unusual film about disability and how it can psychologically affect you.
7 The Dark Half
Timothy Hutton is a writer who uses both his real name, Thaddeus Beaumont, and a pseudonym, George Stark, in Stephen King’s The Dark Half. The Stark books bring in the money and are violent detective fair with little literary merit, but aren't his true passion. After someone threatens to expose him, he goes public and “kills” George Stark, with a fake funeral and everything. Except, George Stark has come to life, and he isn’t going to die that easily. Once brought to life through literature, he now goes on a killing spree, killing everyone involved and threatening to eventually come after Thad Beaumont and his family. Michael Rooker (Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer) plays the local sheriff who believes Thad but still most uphold the law and his job, especially when the evidence of several gruesome murders points to Hutton as the prime suspect.
Romero expertly plays with sense of reality in the film; is the writer schizophrenic or has he brought some sort of evil to life? Is the film about a writer suffering a psychotic break, or a very real force of evil which results in trying to abandon something that's not ready to die? Weirdly enough, indie auteur Alex Ross Perry is directing a remake.
6 Martin
Martin is a fresh take on the vampire film just as Night of the Living Dead was a fresh take on the zombie film. Martin is a vampire, but he doesn’t bite his victims in the neck; his first victim is bitten on the wrist. Martin must worry about withdrawal from blood, making this strikingly original little low-budget masterpiece an analogy about drug addiction, and Martin lives like a user, always hungering blood. He even uses syringes, furthering the drug analogy. He enters into a romantic relationship and sees that this may be the way out of his addiction, but darkness lurks around the corner. In this film, the vampire is very different from the vampires of, for example, Bram Stoker. Martin not follow the same rules and cannot be stopped in the same way as traditional ones. An eerie, atmospheric film with beautiful cinematography. This was actually George A. Romero's personal favorite film.
5 The Crazies
George A. Romero’s film The Crazies is actually quite similar to his zombie films, though much more realistic with its use of pandemics. A biologically-engineered weapon rages through the population of a town, and the military is sent in to take care of the situation. Those infected with the engineered virus become aggressive, killing people just like zombies. In a radical turn, the military makes plans to drop nuclear weapons on the area, and the civilians engaged in armed guerilla warfare with the government and military.This is a surprisingly anarchic, bloody film that really focuses on the terrors not just of disease, but of the government itself.
4 Day of the Dead
Scientists struggle against military types, while both fight zombies in Day of the Dead, the third Living Dead film. The majority of the dark, claustrophobic picture is set in an experimental underground military bunker where a mad scientist, nicknamed Frankenstein, engages in grisly experiments with zombies. The scientific experiments enrage the military leader, played perfectly by an always angry, always shouting Joe Pilato with an ever-present heckling sidekick.
Day of the Dead is a very tense film with a strong female lead, Dr. Sarah Bowman, something we didn’t see much of back in 1985 and something we don’t see enough of now. She is strong and always in control, even as the insanely macho, sexist, racist military men criticize and threaten her and the other scientists. The film has a ton of great gore, the best scene being a man on a hospital gurney rising up as all of his intestines spill out. This film is also noteworthy because of Bub, the first zombie with a personality, a pet project of the mad Dr. Logan. The makeup, which is superb, was done by Greg Nicotero and Howard Berger, most famous for their work on The Walking Dead. Crazy gore effects, Joe Pilato’s manic performance, and a surprising amount of nihilism make this film memorable.
3 Creepshow
In Creepshow, certified horror legends Stephen King and George A. Romero team up for a fantastically fun, wild, and gory ride. This is an anthology film, with four pulp fiction horror stories framed by a wraparound segment about a boy and his horror comics and his ill-treatment at the hands of his close-minded abusive father, who hates trash like Creepshow. In one of the segments, Stephen King himself stars as a hillbilly who thinks he has found a meteor that will make him rich, only to find that he has messed with something he should have avoided; things get messy.
The film is highly stylized and uses many interesting techniques to tell its stories. Monsters in boxes, haunted birthdays, and insect phobias make up the others stories in this delightfully macabre and morbid masterpiece. Romero and King make a great combination, not just in Creepshow but in their other collaboration, The Dark Half, and this film has proven itself to have such a solid framework and foundation that it spawned sequels and a series with an anticipated fourth season on Shudder.
2 Dawn of the Dead
While Night of the Living Dead gets first place, Dawn of the Dead is just right behind it. Dawn is a sequel to Night and the second in the Living Dead series; it may be a dark comedy, but it is so over-the-top gory and violent that you may not notice. Zombies flock to a giant mall in a clever commentary on capitalism and consumerism, and our gang of protagonists has to fight them off to survive. As in Night of the Living Dead, we have a Black lead, with Ken Foree portraying the head of the group. What ensues is a series of incredibly violent encounters between people and zombies, until a bunch of maniacs on motorcycles come, spelling doom for zombies and people alike.
The human being as the truly evil monster is a trope that started with Night of the Living Dead and continues through this film and its sequels and imitations. There is such an incredible amount of gore that this film really needs to be seen to be believed. It even has an exploding head! A tale of total mayhem and destruction at a mall, Dawn of the Dead argues forcefully that humans have become nothing but mindless consumers. Like most of Romero’s films, this is as much a morbid comedy as it is a horror film.
1 Night of the Living Dead
The release of Night of the Living Dead was one of the most important events in the history of the horror film, and for many reasons helped make 1968 the most radical year in cinema. Night of The Living Dead was the first modern zombie movie and the one that inspired and influenced a whole new genre and generation of filmmakers. With a limited budget, Romero directed a masterpiece, and a satirical one at that, one that points out the injustices in our society. Having a Black male lead in any film, let alone a horror film, was a radical and courageous move for the time.
The film takes place in a barricaded house, and everyone inside fights with each other as they simultaneously fight off zombie attacks. The message of the film is simple: the zombies, as gruesome and grotesque as they are, are nothing but a distraction from the very real and deadly conflicts between people, who are shown to be the true evil. Night of the Living Dead is an extremely exciting, fast-paced film with memorable characters, and it became an instant classic and a huge cultural influence. The ending is surprising, shocking, and tragic, and an indictment of vigilante justice and racism all in one.