Raising the Dead – The Work of George A. Romero
Written by Adam Charles Hart
Available at Amazon
Reviewed by Mark Walker
Raising the Dead dives into the expansive, extraordinary body of work found in Romero’s archive, going beyond his iconic zombie movies into a deep and varied collection of writings that never made it to the big screen.
Anyone and everyone who is a horror fan will know the name George A. Romero. Most of them (if not all) will have seen Night of the Living Dead. Many, like me, will likely have seen it when their parents probably wouldn’t have let them, lying in bed, with a 14inch portable black and white TV, the sound turned down as low as possible so as not to wake their parents. Okay, that may have just been a handful of other kids in the 80s (thank you Channel 4) but there is no mistaking the power and longevity of the grandfather of all Zombie films and the impact Romero’s classic has had on generations of horror fans.
They will also be familiar with the follow-ups Dawn and Day, maybe even Land, Diary and Survival, and will likely have seen The Crazies and Martin and many of Romero’s other movies.
But there is a side to Romero that not all fans will be aware of.
We all know Romero never really set out to become the grandfather of horror and, more specifically, Zombies; that he kind of ended up down that route from a combination of the difficulties of finding funding, the eventual success of Night and the possible ‘ease’ of making horror.
What most of us won’t be aware of is the amount of writing, treatments, scripts and synopses that Romero also worked on in his long career, much of which never saw the light of day.
Hart has taken years of archival research and condensed them into an informative and interesting exploration of the man behind the myth. There is more to Romero than just zombies, and Hart has deftly show this in Raising the Dead. While the book inevitably has to spend time on Romero’s classic zombie movies to fully appreciate how it all started, it also explores Romero’s struggles with the industry, the difficulties he had getting other movies made and the proliferation of writing that never made it to the screen.
Hart explores the themes employed by Romero throughout his work, exploring the concept of the monster as a victim, where the real monsters are capitalism and corporations. He paints an in-depth and intriguing picture of Romero, the director and writer, through an exploration of the works we all know and love, but also through a dissection of the unmade and sometimes unseen writings and musings of the legendary filmmaker.
Raising the Dead is a labour of love and a fantastic achievement.
My only caveat with recommending this book is that it is much more towards the academic end of the scale in terms of its content and style. This reads like a PhD that has clearly been meticulously researched, written and edited. That isn’t a bad thing but, if you are looking for a light-hearted jaunt into Romero’s Zombie legacy, this isn’t the book for you. If you are a fan looking to understand the man more, then this is the perfect book.
I was somewhere in the middle when I picked this up for review. I know many of Romero’s films, but I don’t know much of the details of his life and history. And that made Raising the Dead an even more tantalising prospect as I found myself in new territory for much of the book, caught up in the anecdotes and stories about Romero and his work.
Raising the Dead: the work of George A. Romero is a definite recommendation for any fan, just as long as you are aware that this is a serious, academic endeavour and not a coffee table book full of glossy splatter and gore!
Raising the Dead – The Work of George A. Romero by Adam Charles Hart
George A. Romero never intended to become a master of horror, but Night of the Living Dead made him a legend of the genre.
Raising the Dead dives into the expansive, extraordinary body of work found in Romero’s archive, going beyond his iconic zombie movies into a deep and varied collection of writings that never made it to the big screen. From the early 1960s until his death in 2017, Romero was a hugely prolific writer, producing scripts in every conceivable genre, from arty medieval allegories to wacky comedies to grand-scale science fiction epics.
Though he had difficulty funding non-horror projects, he continued to write in whatever mode his imagination dictated, and he rarely abandoned his ideas. Themes, story ideas, and even characters were re-purposed for new scripts, evolving and transforming with each new iteration and, sometimes, finding a home in a horror film. But in order to accommodate ideas that began in such different contexts, Romero would have to change the horror genre itself: a zombie movie could become a brutal satire of consumerism or an excoriating critique of militaristic or capitalist hierarchies. The horror genre became what Romero made of it.
Based on years of archival research, the book moves between unfilmed scripts and familiar classics, showing the remarkable scope and range of Romero’s interests and the full extent of his genius. Raising the Dead is a testament to an extraordinarily productive and inventive artist who never let the restrictions of the film industry limit his imagination.
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