JUDY WOODRUFF: Finally,
remembering filmmaker
George Romero, the master
of the zombie movie

and a man whose influence
in the business went further
than many moviegoers realize.

Jeffrey Brown has our look.

ACTOR: Medical examination of
victims bodies show conclusively
that the killers are eating

the flesh of the
people they kill.

JEFFREY BROWN: With a $100,000
in 1968, George Romero brought
the undead back to life in

American culture.

His "Night of the Living
Dead" became a cult
classic, and launched a
modern zombie industry

of soulless ghouls with
a taste for human flesh
popping up everywhere today.

For Romero, his films were
about more than just blood
and graphic violence.

GEORGE ROMERO, Director:
This series of films have
been sort of my platform.

It's ripe for metaphor.

And the zombies, to me, have
always represented the people
that are just unwilling to stand

up.

And, you know, there are a
lot of living dead in America.

JEFFREY BROWN: "Night of the
Living Dead," starring an
African-American actor, was seen

as a kind of social
commentary on racism and the
paranoid mood of its time.

A decade later, Romero's
first sequel, "Dawn of
the Dead," played on
the excesses of American

consumerism.

Roger Ebert dubbed it one of
the best horror films ever
made, savagely merciless in its

satiric view.

Romero followed up with many
other films, including four
more in the "Dead" series,

with varying degrees
of box office success.

But the zombie world he
unleashed took on a massive
multibillion-dollar life of its

own in blockbuster films like
"World War Z," video games,
and AMC's "The Walking Dead."

That, in turn, led Romero
to sour a bit on the genre
he helped popularize.

He spoke on NPR in 2014.

GEORGE ROMERO: It's, all of
a sudden, you can't make a
little zombie film anymore.

Has to be special
effects and big budget.

And I'm not -- I'm just
not interested in that.

JEFFREY BROWN: Later in life,
he shifted to different media,
including teaming up with

Marvel to publish a
comic book series.

George Romero died Sunday
in Toronto from lung cancer.

He was 77 years old.

And for more on George Romero
and his impact, I'm joined by
Justin Chang, film critic for

The Los Angeles Times.

Welcome to you, Justin.

Zombies, who would have thought?

What explains the impact
of those early films?

JUSTIN CHANG, The Los Angeles
Times: Well, I think when you
have a film like "Night of

the Living Dead," which is, I
think, one of the great debut
films that any director in

or outside the horror genre
has ever given us, you have to
look at the context, you know,

Vietnam, Martin Luther
King Jr.'s assassination,
the recent assassinations
of the Kennedy brothers.

It was a time of, obviously,
great social unrest.

And George Romero found,
unwittingly or not, a perfect
metaphor for that unrest.

And I think it was about the
primitiveness of the filmmaking,
the very raw technique.

It was shot on a $114,000
budget, which is about
$800,000 today, still
a very small budget.

And he achieved this kind
of -- a film that was almost
like a documentary nightmare.

And it really captured,
I think, a sense of rage
and of pointlessness,
a kind of senseless,

arbitrary killing that
was really unsettling for
audiences at the time,
and is still enormously

unsettling today.

JEFFREY BROWN: His films, of
course, largely done on the
cheap, but somehow a cult thing

grew into a very large
cultural phenomenon.

He wasn't so crazy -- as
we heard, he wasn't so
crazy about what followed?

JUSTIN CHANG: Absolutely.

I mean, we live in a culture
where zombies are proliferating
on screens, whether it's

"World War Z" or "The Walking
Dead," which is still hugely
popular, or the remake of

"Dawn of the Dead" about 13
years ago, and terrific spoofs
like "Shaun of the Dead,"

which I think is one of the
few that George Romero has
professed to actually liking.

So, in a way, he was, I think,
understandably disenchanted with
the way that Hollywood really

mainstreamed the zombie film and
the zombie TV show, and in some
ways took out that edginess,

that political subtext that he
was so good at putting in there.

And I think he especially
resented things like
"The Walking Dead,"
because it made it

very difficult for him to get
his own zombie movies financed
on an independent level.

And he was a consummate
independent filmmaker,
and something of a
Hollywood outsider and

skeptic, I think, all his
career, which makes his success
all the more remarkable.

JEFFREY BROWN: For a lot of
people, this stuff goes way too
far, right, the graphic violence

that's part of our society
and that's really part of
our entertainment culture.

Did he help create that,
for better or for worse?

JUSTIN CHANG: I don't think
it's entirely fair to lay that
as George Romero's doorstep.

And I say that as someone who's
on the more squeamish side of
the spectrum as far as horror

movie viewers goes.

But I think you have to look
at his films, a film like
"Dawn of the Dead," which is,

I think, as great a
masterpiece as "Night
of the Living Dead" is.

There is always something more
going on beneath the violence.

If you're just there
for the splatter and the
viscera, you will get that.

But he gives you -- he's
always asking you to look a
little closer, see what's going

on, see who these zombies
represent, see who the
real monsters are in a way.

And so I don't think
it's entirely fair to
say that he's responsible
for the fetishization

and exploitation of
violence in our culture.

He's using it -- I mean, he's
exploiting violence in his own
way, to very brilliant and very

provocative ends.

JEFFREY BROWN: Just briefly, I
do want to mention the passing
of another movie figure,

the actor Martin Landau.

He was known early on, on
television, in "Mission:
Impossible," later in
films, including "Ed

Wood," for which he won an
Oscar for best supporting actor.

Let's take a look at a short
scene from Woody Allen's 1989
film "Crimes and Misdemeanors."

MARTIN LANDAU, Actor: This
is what you plan on doing.

You're going to hold on
to me with threats, right,
stupid threats and slander?

This is your idea
of love, right?

ACTRESS: I will
not be tossed out.

I want to speak to Miriam.

MARTIN LANDAU: Think.

For Christ's sake, think
what the hell you are
doing to me, will you?

Please.

JEFFREY BROWN: Justin Chang, a
brief thought on Martin Landau?

JUSTIN CHANG: Martin Landau
was such a wonderful actor.

And that scene you play sort of,
I think, captures his elegance
and gravitas, his ability

to play a silken villain
that we feel for.

In that film, he's an adulterous
husband who contemplates
the murder of his lover.

And it's -- you know, I'm
reminded, too, of his great
performance many decades earlier

in Alfred Hitchcock's "North
By Northwest," where he took
the role of a villain's number

two and made it something
really memorable and really
incisive out of that.

And so it's not that he could
only play villains, certainly
not, but he had, I think, a real

talent for playing morally
ambiguous characters,
and doing it superbly.

JEFFREY BROWN: All right,
Justin Chang of The Los Angeles
Times, thank you very much.

JUSTIN CHANG: Thank you.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And
we thank you, Jeff.

And I was covering my eyes
until we got to Martin Landau.