Every George A Romero Movie Ranked Worst To Best

According to Kim Newman, Romero’s 1980s Living Dead movie was once mooted as Zombies In The White House. The plot involved mind-control zombies and ended with a dubious utopia established after the passing of the zombie plague, but Romero couldn’t finance the X-rated film he wanted so he told another story from the zombie apocalypse.

This new version picks up in a world where the dead outnumber the living by 400,000 to 1 and a handful of survivors have retreated underground to argue among themselves and slowly go to pieces while their Frankenstein-like scientist attempts to domesticate the zombies. It’s a grim, gory movie, different in tone from most other mid-1980s horror films, which spelled trouble at the box office.

More successful were the comic horror shenanigans of movies like The Return Of The Living Dead and Re-Animator, which marked the decade’s embracing of effects-heavy monster movies with a tongue in cheek attitude. By the time Romero returned with Land Of The Dead, it was clear that Day stood up better than such 80s hits as House and Trick Or Treat.