Monday, June 20, 2005 | 8:27 a.m.
This year's festival winners:
The following were also honored by the film festival:
"Not many filmmakers made movies that change movies. And George did."
-- John Landis on George Romero, who created the zombie film genre with 1968's "Night of the Living Dead."
It's hard to fathom a time before there were zombie movies, really. They've become such an institution in horror films and now video games, including the popular "Resident Evil" series.
For reasons perhaps best left unexplained, a graphically violent, gory demise by chainsaw is more acceptable when administered to the living dead than to the living -- especially in a video game.
George Romero gets credit for that.
After all, it was Romero who created the genre of zombie movies with his low-budget black-and-white masterpiece "Night of the Living Dead."
Made for a now-paltry (at least by feature film standards) $114,000, "Night of the Living Dead" went on to gross millions. More than three decades after its release, the film was inducted into the National Film Registry, selected by the National Film Preservation Board for preservation in the Library of Congress in Washington.
The film joins such classics as "Citizen Kane," "Chinatown" and "On the Waterfront" on the registry.
While "Night of the Living Dead" shocked audiences with an abundance of gore -- including a scene of a zombie daughter eating her father and then stabbing her mother with a hoe -- the film was more than a mere horror fest.
At the heart of the movie was a sly commentary on racism. Romero even included a black actor, Duane Jones, as the film's main protagonist.
"When I was shooting 'Easy Rider' in 1968, 'Night of the Living Dead' was released," said Dennis Hopper, chairman of the Creative Advisory Board for CineVegas Film Festival, which honored Romero with its Vanguard Director Award on Saturday night.
"We were both making different films, but they were both metaphors for what was happening in the country."
When Romero returned to the zombie genre with 1978's "Dawn of the Dead," he commented on rampant consumerism, concocting a story where a group of survivors are trapped in a shopping mall with zombies all around.
The sequel was also well-received by critics and at the box office.
But by 1985's "Day of the Dead," the third film in the "Dead" series, the director seemed to be creatively exhausted by the zombie genre, offering nothing more than a story of scientists and military personnel holed up in an underground facility in Florida who battle the undead horde and each other in the film's climax.
Panned by critics and audiences alike, "Day of the Dead" seemed to be the bullet in the head of Romero's zombie franchise.
But much like his zombies, Romero wasn't finished that easily.
The filmmaker had a story for a fourth "Dead" film, but no studio would make the movie.
Romero's predicament might have remained the same if it weren't for a film producer named Mark Canton.
"I saw a lot of people making George Romero films without George Romero," Canton told a capacity CineVegas audience. "I thought, 'Isn't George Romero alive? Isn't he in Pittsburgh?' "
Canton contacted Romero and learned the filmmaker had a script ready for another zombie film, "Land of the Dead," in which the undead roam the planet and the living reside in a city protected from the zombies. Mixed with the horror, blood and disembowelment, is rather poignant social commentary on the increasing gulf between the haves and have-nots.
Excited by the story, Canton quickly signed on to co-produce the film.
He also convinced his friend Hopper to take a role in the movie, which had its world premiere at CineVegas on Saturday night, nearly one week before it opens in theaters nationwide on Friday.
"Films are a gamble at best, but this is a sure bet," Hopper said. "This is going to be a blockbuster."
But more than a potential blockbuster, the film also marks an opportunity for the 65-year-old Romero: a chance to revisit the genre he created nearly four decades ago.
"This project was held up in another studio," Romero said during his Vanguard Award acceptance speech. "But (Canton) made it happen very quickly.
"This guy brought me back from the dead."
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