Living Dead

Living Dead is a blanket term for various films and series that all originated with the seminal 1968 zombie movie Night of the Living Dead created by George A. Romero and John A. Russo.

After the film's initial success, the two creators split in disagreement regarding where the series should go and a contract was drawn up. Any future Romero films would lose the "Living" prefix and simply be referred to as Dead movies and Russo, who wanted to branch the series off into literary territory, would retain the rights to "Living Dead" (though fans nevertheless refer to Romero's as Living Dead films). Thus, both series would be considered canon and each would be able to do what they liked with the continuity of the projects.

Romero's Dead series

1. Night of the Living Dead (Romero, 1968)
2. Dawn of the Dead (Romero, 1978)
3. Day of the Dead (Romero, 1985)
4. Land of the Dead (Romero, 2005)
5. Diary of the Dead (Romero, 2007)
6. Survival of the Dead (Romero, 2009)

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD

Labeled Trilogy of the Dead until Land of the Dead, this is considered by most fans as the one true series. Each film is laden with social commentary on topics ranging from racism to consumerism. The films are not produced as direct follow-ups from one another. The films' only continuation is the epidemic of the living dead, the situation advancing with each film, but with different characters and even moving the time ahead from the last to the time in which they were filmed despite the world's progression being the only interlocking aspect of the series. They are different stories telling how different people react to the same phenomenon ranging from citizens to cops to army officials and back again. There are no real happy endings to the films as each takes places in a world that has gotten worse since the last time we saw it, the number of zombies ever increasing and the fate of the small amount remaining living always in the balance.

Official reports of the fifth film, which premieres on September 8 at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival, is that it will not continue the depiction of the progress of the world; instead it will go back to the beginning of events from the first film, but will be nonetheless contemporary as the sequels are. Romero does not consider any of his Dead films sequels since none of the characters or story continue from one film to the next. Only the premise that there are zombies is the same.

Film critic (and avid Romero defender) Danél Griffin, who writes online for the University of Alaska Southeast, has speculated that Romero's segment of Two Evil Eyes, an anthology film co-directed with Dario Argento, serves as a kind of prequel to the Dead series. The segment, based on Edgar Allan Poe's story "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar", deals with metaphysical experiments that cause the dead to return to life. Though Griffin admits that Romero probably did not intend the film to be seen as part of the series, he writes that like Romero's official series, the segment "concerns zombies and uses them to represent the rich class’s pathetic attempts to exploit the feeble and then turn on each other as they fight for the bones." Griffin further argues that Romero's segment "might explain the metaphysical events that ruptured the relationship between the living and the dead that would compel the latter rise in the first place".

Dead series remakes

1. Night of the Living Dead (Savini, 1990)
2. Dawn of the Dead (Snyder, 2004)
3. Day of the Dead (Miner, 2008)

The films that originally made up Romero's trilogy have all have been remade in order, with the remake of Day of the Dead still in production. However, these remakes do not follow on from each other and are entirely different films. This is because they were all made by different people and have no real link between.

The official Night of the Living Dead remake, released in 1990, was produced for two reasons. First, a rival company was planning a remake which Romero did not want to see happen without his involvement. Second, it was seen as an opportunity for the original creators to finally get some money back from the name Night of the Living Dead. The film saw another team-up with Tom Savini and Romero, though not in the same roles, as Savini directed the film based on a script by Romero.

The Dawn of the Dead remake also received mixed feelings, with common criticisms such as the altering of the "rules" by having the zombies running rather than the standard slow lumbering. However, reviews were generally favorable, with Romero himself stating that it was "much better" than he had expected, but he considered it an action movie rather than a horror film.

A remake of Day of the Dead is expected to be released in 2008 and directed by Steve Miner.

Unauthorized sequels/remakes and parodies

There are also some other films that have been released as sequels to various films in Romero's Living Dead series, most likely to ride on the name recognition that Romero's films enjoy. They have been produced because due to various mix-ups with the copyright and ownership of the movies, Romero himself owns only Dawn of the Dead from his four films.

These include:

• Zombi 2 (known as Zombie in USA) (Fulci, 1979) is a film that was already in production when Dawn of the Dead was released, but was renamed to be a sequel upon its release (Dawn of the Dead was titled Zombi in Italy). This movie has a history of official and unofficial sequels itself. See Zombi series.
• Hell of the Living Dead (known as Virus in Italy) (Mattei, 1980).
• Day of the Dead 2: Contagium (Clavell, 2005), while billed as a sequel as Taurus Entertainment holds the original's copyright, it has no actual ties to the original Day of the Dead or the series (although the prologue is set in Pittsburgh, 1968).
• Night of the Living Dead 3D (Broadstreet, 2006) is a remake/reimagining of the original film made in a 3D format. The original's status as public domain made it possible to produce this film without the involvement of either Romero or Russo.

There have also been ultra-low budget parodies such as:

• Night of the Living Bread A parody of the original film, where a satellite crashes to Earth bringing radiation that promptly animates--as opposed to re-animating--all manner of homicidal bread, from buns to biscuits to Communion wafers.

Also, there have been films that pay homage to the genre:

• Shaun of the Dead, a film about an unmotivated slacker who must cope with a zombie uprising, in London, while trying to sort his life out. Features numerous references to not only Romero films, but several other horror/science fiction movies too.

Romero, it has to be noted, is often positive of derivations of his work, stating that any new film in the horror genre is a step forward, whether completely original or a 'copycat'.

Living Dead in other media

Although the majority of the Living Dead media has been films, there has been times when related projects have been released in other media. Specifically, there have been a handful of books and comics books that take place in the Living Dead universe. As with the films, some of them are officially endorsed while others unofficially use the universe.

Books

• Night of the Living Dead (1974) by John A. Russo, a novelization of the first film.
• Return of the Living Dead, by John Russo (1977). A stand-alone sequel to Night of the Living Dead, with few similarities to the eventual films of the same name.
• Book of the Dead (1989) and Book of the Dead 2: Still Dead (1992), anthology books meant to take place in Romero's universe; not authorized by Romero himself.

Comics

• The Death of Death was a story by Romero that appeared in issues #1-6 of DC Comic's Toe Tags from late 2004 to mid 2005. It was drawn by Tommy Castillo and Rodney Ramos, with covers by famed horror artist Berni Wrightson. Romero's story is actually based on an unused script for a sequel to his Dead films; the miniseries therefore follows his similar tropes: Extreme gore, social commentary, evolving zombies, and the heroes riding off in the end into an unknown fate.
• Escape of the Living Dead (2005), written by John A. Russo, takes place between the events of Night and Dawn, and it explains that the zombie hunters were able to kill most the zombies, but a few had been kept "alive" in a military base for study, but they inevitably escaped and started it all over again.

Documentaries

• Fan of the Dead, filmed in 2003 in Pennsylvania with a 2007/2008 DVD release date in USA, Canada, France, Italy and Germany. Directed by the french filmmaker Nicolas Garreau. The film is a 52 minutes road-movie revealing the filming locations of Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead and Night of the Living Dead (1990).