Living Dread: The Cinema of George A. Romero

Living Dread: The Cinema of George A. Romero

Living Dread: The Cinema of George A. Romero

Living Dread: The Cinema of George A. Romero

Living Dread: The Cinema of George A. Romero

Living Dread: The Cinema of George A. Romero

Living Dread: The Cinema of George A. Romero

Living Dread: The Cinema of George A. Romero

TIFF Cinematheque - Retrospective

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The Godfather of Zombiedom himself takes the stage at TIFF Bell Lightbox to kick off our retrospective of his gut-crunching horror classics.

Films in Living Dread: The Cinema of George A. Romero

    • Creepshow
    • George A. Romero

    • Two giants of the horror genre — George A. Romero and Stephen King — teamed up for this five-part cinematic tribute to the notorious EC horror comics of the 1950s.

    • No events playing at this time.
    • Martin introduced by George A. Romero

    • George A. Romero introduces our screening of his revisionist vampire tale, which he famously selected as his favourite of his own films.

    • No events playing at this time.
    • The Crazies
    • George A. Romero

    • A man-made virus turns the inhabitants of a small town into murder-crazed maniacs in George A. Romero's grisly epidemic thriller.

    • No events playing at this time.
    • Monkey Shines
    • George A. Romero

    • A young man confined to a wheelchair after being paralyzed in an accident realizes that his trained animal companion — a Capuchin monkey named Ella — is telepathically channelling and murderously acting on his own impotent rage and resentment, in this fascinating and offbeat horror thriller by George A. Romero.

    • No events playing at this time.
    • Dawn of the Dead
    • George A. Romero

    • Four refugees from the spreading zombie apocalypse take refuge in an abandoned shopping mall and attempt to hold off the shuffling hordes of the undead in George A. Romero's gore-tastic sequel to Night of the Living Dead.

    • No events playing at this time.
    • Day of the Dead
    • George A. Romero

    • As zombies overrun the globe, a small group of scientists and military personnel in an underground Florida bunker battle each other over how to deal with the undead menace, in the bleak and brutal final chapter of George A. Romero's original zombie trilogy.

    • No events playing at this time.
    • Peeping Tom introduced by George A. Romero

    • George A. Romero introduces his Carte Blanche selection of Michael Powell's notorious case study of a murderously voyeuristic cameraman.

    • No events playing at this time.

As a proud young horror/sci-fi movie addict, I was aware of the importance and influence of George Romero's Night of the Living Dead long before I ever saw the film. Growing up in rural Ontario in the 1970s with no late-night horror offerings on the two channels our black-and-white Phillips television received, I wasn't able to see Night until the advent of home video, at which point I rolled pennies to buy a VHS tape of my very own that I watched over and over again. Yes Barbara, they are coming to get you!

Even at that early age, I could see that there was more to Romero's films than zombies munching human flesh. Lurking in the shadows of his shambling undead are themes of ideology run amok, of rampant, soul-destroying consumerism, the failure of the nuclear family and the total disintegration of (North) American culture and society. One of the true mavericks of American independent cinema, Romero has worked outside the mainstream studio system for almost his entire career, choosing a more socially conscious path than many of his peers and revolutionizing modern horror along the way. Equal parts radical allegorist and carny spook-show operator, Romero knows that telling us tales about the boogeyman helps to prepare us for the horrors of real life.

—Colin Geddes