Born and raised in the Bronx, George Romero grew up feeling he had an artistic view that was not freely realized making 8mm films in his native New York. A view that would eventually lead to his direction of two of the greatest modern America horror films of all time (Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead).  By the time he had reached college age, he would pursue his filmmaking dreams not in his native New York, but at Carnegie Mellon Institute in Pennsylvania. After finishing his studies Romero and his friends would make an anthology Horror film entitled Expostulation. The film, an anthology of five horror stories, would never be wholly finished, but it would lead to Romero’s next endeavor.

In 1962 Romero established his own commercial production house, The Latent Image. Because of the lack of film production in Pittsburgh, it wasn’t long before the company started making money producing local TV spots, commercials, and political ads for advertising agencies in Pittsburgh. After several years of the production grind and looking for another money-making opportunity, Romero and his friends turned back to the Horror genre. Knowing, from his previous experience with Expostulation, that this was a genre he felt comfortable in he created the film that would transform a genre, Night of the Living Dead (1968).  Not wanting to get trapped in the Horror genre, Romero created a series of films that still tapped into the darker side of human nature (There’s Always Vanilla, Hungry Wives, The Crazies) and again challenged the Horror genre. With Martin (1977) he returned to horror full tilt with a fresh and unique take on the Vampire tale. After his triumphant return to the Zombie genre with Dawn of the Dead (1978) Romero continued to work steadily into the 80’s on both feature films (Creepshow, Day of the Dead, Monkey Shines) and television series such as Tales From The Darkside (1984-1986). Although always working, Romero’s output seemed to dwindle into the 90’s. Still features such as The Dark Half (1992) and his segment The Facts in the Case of Mr. Valdemar in the horror anthology Two Evil Eyes (1990) showed that Romero still had the drive and artistic power to chill and challenge audiences. Recently Romero has returned to the Zombie genre with 2005’s Land of the Dead and 2007’s The Diary of the Dead.