The CineFiles

We’re kicking off #Drawlloween 2016 with two of the founding fathers of the zombie film genre, George Romero and Tom Savini. Night of the Living Dead and it’s many sequels, most notably Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead, redefined the zombie picture for modern audiences. George Romero’s stark imagery and bleak storylines combined with Tom Savini’s signature make up and special effects are the templates for all the risen terrors who shamble across our screens to this day. Call me a zombie traditionalist, but I still prefer the slow, inexorable staggering dead who never stop coming no matter how fast you try to outrun them, pursuing your delicious living flesh doggedly until you give up from exhaustion to the fast moving rage zombies of the jump-cut 2000s. I guess I’m just a Pittsburgh girl living in a Hollywood world. And speaking of Pittsburgh, how cool is it to grow up in an area that spawned the modern zombie craze? I dare you to visit at the Monroeville Mall (the filming location for the original Dawn of the Dead) and not stagger past the Claire’s and the Orange Julius moaning and flailing your arms stiffly in front of you. Well, okay, to be honest, that’s pretty much how anyone survives a trip to the mall anywhere.

Tune in tomorrow for Carnival Creeps where we pay a visit to another legendary director whose dark visions inserted serious nightmare fodder into our collective imagination. (But no clowns. I’m not a monster.)