George Romero, 1940-2017
Rest in peace, Mr. Romero. I’ll never get to tell you this in person, but you played a major part in my mental-emotional life, with your Living Dead world helping to explain the non-cinematic “real” world to me in more ways than one. The paper in my Dark Awakenings collection about the possible use of your first three Living Dead films as tools for spiritual contemplation was the culmination of many years of dwelling on and in your imaginary (or perhaps imaginal) zombie otherworld.
Plus, you created Bub, the greatest movie zombie in history. (I’m among the minority of oddballs who favor DAY OF THE DEAD above all others in the series.) But I did always wish that Bub would have successfully shot Rhodes during their showdown…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjPma0Nczuw
And I always felt so deeply sorry for Bub when he experienced an agony of grief upon finding his master and quasi-friend Dr. Logan dead, murdered by Rhodes and his goons.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeaxfJhNwOU
But then again, you and Bub did give Rhodes exactly what was coming to him in the end, didn’t you? For many years, until I stumbled across Peter Jackson’s Braindead / Dead Alive, this was single goriest scene in the single goriest movie that I had ever watched. (Yes, I also watched some European zombie horror and such, but you always seemed to top them somehow.)
Best of all, and apart from all the gore and grimness, you allowed us to witness the weirdly beautiful spectacle of a zombie experiencing a paroxysm of spiritual ecstasy at the sound of the “Ode to Joy” from the fourth movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hXTy058dew
It’s an amazing scene, in an amazing movie, with an amazing actor, from an amazing director. For this, and for the rest of your gift to the world, I do hope you’ll rest more peacefully than the zombies you created for us.