THE CINEMA OF GEORGE A. ROMERO

The Cinema of George A. Romero: Knight of the Living Dead is the first in-depth study in English of the career of this foremost auteur working at the margins of the Hollywood mainstream. In placing Romero’s oeuvre in the context of literary naturalism, the book explores the relevance of the director’s films within American cultural traditions and thus explains the potency of such work beyond ‘splatter movie’ models. The author explores the roots of naturalism in the work of Emile Zola and traces this through to the EC Comics of the 1950s and on to the work of Stephen King. In so doing, the book illuminates the importance of seminal Romero texts such as Night of the Living Dead (1968), Creepshow (1982), Monkey Shines (1988) and The Dark Half (1992). This study also includes full coverage of Bruiser (2000), as well as his many screenplays and teleplays.

January 2003
208 pages

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Tony Williams is Professor of Film Studies at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. He has published widely in the areas of horror and American independent cinema.

'This thorough, searching and always intelligent overview does full justice to Romero's "Living Dead" trilogy and also at last rectifies the critical neglect of Romero's other work, fully establishing its complexity and cohesion.'
– Robin Wood

‘A critical volume on the films of George A. Romero is long overdue and in his detailed and rigorous study Tony Williams has provided the definitive account of this horror movie master … This volume is set to become a must read for critical reader and horror film fan alike.’
– Xavier Mendik, Director of the Cult Film Archive, Brunel University

‘There have been books about Romero’s zombie trilogy but this look at the films of Pittsburgh’s most famous director is a first. It covers all his features from Night of the Living Dead to Bruiser.’
– Psychotronic

'While other writers have dissected Romero's films with eloquence and intelligence ... this is the first study of the director that is simultaneously broader (it covers all of the director's films from early obscurities up to the 2000 release Bruiser) and deeper than all of the Romero scholarship that has preceded it ... [the analysis] reveals Romero to be a director of uncommon integrity and complexity whose devotion to realist horror is all the more valuable now that he's one of its practitioners. ... an indispensable book for an abundance of enlightening observations about this important American director.'
– Jim Hemphill, Film Quarterly