Deadline: 4th November 2017

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Hello everyone, it’s time to announce the director that will be featured for this months Halloween edition of Director’s Chair and for this years Halloween special I decided to do a tribute to one of the most important and influential figures in the horror genre, George A Romero.

Now Romero is best known for his work in the zombie sub-genre. Most of the defining features of the modern zombie movie, both in terms of the designs/characteristics of zombies and the social satire that can be explored with zombies, and without the work of Romero, it’s likely that most of the zombie media we’re seeing today would not have been made. Romero wasn’t just involved in horror films though, even though those were the works he was most famous for. He started his career by directing some of the documentary segments on Mr Rogers Neighbourhood and for his films he made the romantic comedy There’s Always Vanilla and the drama Knightriders. Other films that Romero made in the horror genre didn’t strictly follow the conventions of horror though with Martin being more of an arthouse film whilst Creepshow was a tongue in cheek tribute to EC Comics and can be considered more of a horror-comedy.

After a period of time follow Day of the Dead where Romero stayed away from the zombie genre, he started to move back towards the genre in the late 90s with his involvement with Resident Evil, directing a commercial for Resident Evil 2 and writing a script for the film adaptation of Resident Evil, which was ultimately rejected, although Romero’s involvement with video games continued after this with him doing voiceover work for one of the zombie maps for Call of Duty: Black Ops. Romero later made his full return to the zombie genre with Land of the Dead, the rest of the films in his career being zombie themed, with another film, Road of the Dead, in pre-production at the time of his death, with it being likely that the film will not be made.

Along with his films, Romero is known for his more political stance within his films, this being a cornerstone in the Dead series, with this starting with the casting of Duane Jones in Night of the Living Dead, with this making Night of the Living Dead one of the rare films of the time to have a black lead, with this contributing to the social commentary at the end of the film. This continued with his explorations of consumerism in Dawn of the Dead, militarism and elements of lost humanity through Bub in Day of the Dead and class warfare in Land of the Dead.

Now with that overview of the films of Romero out of the way, I’m asking for you to send me any features you have for the films of George A Romero to [email protected]. As a reminder, below are the films of Romero which you can cover any way you wish.

• Night of the Living Dead
• There’s Always Vanilla
• Season of the Witch
• The Crazies
• Martin
• Dawn of the Dead
• Knightriders
• Creepshow
• Day of the Dead
• Monkey Shines
• Two Evil Eyes
• The Dark Half
• Bruiser
• Land of the Dead
• Diary of the Dead
• Survival of the Dead

I look forward to going over whatever you send me about the films of George A Romero.