George Romero: The Cuban American Who Created Zombies As We Know Them

Did you know that the way we think of zombies today--cannibalistic and shoddy--was created by a Cuban American? George Romero was a young filmmaker in Pittsburgh in the late 1960's when he came up with the idea for the seminal Night Of The Living Dead. It would seem to make sense that a guy of Cuban descent would draw on zombies for creative inspiration since their folklore originated in the Afro-Caribbean spiritual belief system of Vodou. In Vodou, a priest has the power to bring people back from the dead--kinda like Jesus, but presumably with much less control. In reality, however, George's exposure to his Cuban heritage was minimal at best. In an interview done in July of this year, George described his father as self-loathing about the Caribbean thing.

George grew up in The Bronx in New York and was raised Catholic. He talked about his Latino heritage and how his own Father held certain prejudices against Latinos. "I'm half Latino, I'm a New York baby right. So my Dad is Cuban, my Mom is Lithuanian. My Dad say's 'I'm not Cuban!'(George shrugs his shoulders) - but you were born in Cuba? 'I am Castilian, from Spain! Family went to Cuba to open a hotel!' Okay, well let's say you're a Cuban, you're a Spanish guy? 'Yes, but I am not a Puerto Rican!' I grew up in New York with a Spanish Dad right in the days of West Side Story, where you know the Puerto Rican gangs and shit? My Dad is telling me Puerto Ricans are shit. I have a Latino Dad who's telling me that Puerto Ricans are shit.(laughs) I mean this is a very confusing situation...anyway."

Perhaps this confusion is what lead Romero to express his angst through monsters. Though, he didn't start out as a horror director. His first job was directing a special for none other than Fred Rogers of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. It was a special for children about not feeling scared if you have to get your tonsils out. To think that George was ever hired to help children not feel scared! Soon enough, he got the idea that he wanted to make a low-budget, horror film with an apocalyptic theme about the invasion of a new kind of monster--a monster that was tearing the world as we knew it apart because the audience didn't know who was one and who wasn't. Their neighbor, their husband, their mother-in-law could all have been infected by the mysterious virus that turned them into these mindless creatures. Much like the way America felt in the 1960's when families were torn apart by diverging political belief systems. Romero didn't actually call his new creatures zombies. He called them "flesh-eaters or ghouls." But somehow, when people wrote about the film, they were dubbed zombies. [caption id="attachment_82501" align="aligncenter" width="450" caption="Image from Night Of The Living Dead poster."][/caption] "My dead guys were the neighbors," he told NPR's Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me.  "And the neighbors were scary enough when they were alive."

Watch The Trailer For Night Of The Living Dead

After forty years and at least half a dozen legendary zombie movies later, this weekend George is appearing in Zombieland. A new film by director Ruben Fleischer and co-starring Jesse Eisenberg and Woodie Harrelson, with a cameo by Bill freakin' Murray, apparently.

A Scene From Zombieland