1. Creating The 'Zombie' As We Know It - I Am Legend
Its a frequent fun fact to bandy around, but true nonetheless; before the ravening undead rose from their moldering graves in Romeros Night of the Living Dead, the spiritual concept of the modern zombie was birthed in Mathesons popular 1954 science fiction novel, I Am Legend. Yes, in the original story, the viral apocalypse leaves behind a society of vampires, not zombieszombies were mostly exclusive to Haitian voodoo mythology at the timebut these creatures bear much resemblance to our current concept of the undead. Neville, the last normal man on Earth, is forced to fight his friends and neighbors who have become a vicious, transgressing form of other that want to hunt, kill and consume him. Romero himself admits to ripping off Mathesons idea for Night of the Living Dead, and then pairing it with traits of the then traditional zombie. Matheson, who tried to imagine a world where a singular monster like Dracula was the reigning entity, trail-blazed the idea that a faceless horde of adversaries could be just as chilling in this changing world as a single, personalized nemesis. That idea stuck, as too did the idea of apocalypse as transformer instead of decimator, leaving a new race in the wake of the old one. What few of the zombie films and works to come after failed to grasp, is Mathesons sense of humanity breaking apart on its own tendencies, and new hope ascending out of the seeming destruction of our race. Strangely enough, the three adaptations of I Am Legend never quite reconciled this aspect either, although they all found time for chase scenes between the heroic Neville and his mutant adversaries.