Original subtitles

[ominous music]

- The zombie is absolutely

all-American horror metaphor.

- [growling] - They are the monster

of the 21st century.

- Right now it does seem like we're in the middle

of a zombie apocalypse.

- We're getting our chance to exercise

our most anti-social emotions.

- [screaming] - You know, that--

that mob impulse that's like, "Yeah, kill them all

and let God sort them out."

[zombies groaning]

- Eventually they overwhelm you.

They're not stopping to eat. - [screaming]

- Well, I mean, unless they're stopping

to eat one of you. - We're all gonna die.

We all are gonna get cancer one day.

We're all gonna get sick.

It's almost like an accelerated version of that.

- We don't want zombies

to come and destroy all of our friends

and family and institutions...

but on some level, maybe we do.

Like, on some level it provides us a chance

to just dismantle everything...

[frantic music]

And possibly start over.

- [screaming]

- What are humans like when faced with the end

of humanity?

What are they like when they're faced

with very few choices

in--in regards to how to survive?

That's the horror of zombie movies.

- No! - It's the wrong impulses

that come out of people that are far more terrifying

than the walking dead.

[zombies growling, screeching]

� �

[sinister music]

� �

[foreboding music]

- I'm Eli Roth.

- [hissing]

- The history of horror is filled with monsters.

Nightmare figures that tap

into our deepest fears.

� �

But our fears, and our monsters,

change with the times.

� �

Right now, it's the time of the zombie.

[zombies growling, screeching]

Fast zombies, slow zombies,

comedy zombies, teen zombies...

- [screaming]

- Whatever their shape,

zombies are everywhere.

How did we get here?

What set off zombie fever?

As we'll see,

zombies have been around for decades.

[zombies hissing, growling]

� �

But the debut of "The Walking Dead"

in 2010 saw them explode

into popular culture. - [growling]

- To almost everyone's surprise, a horror series

became the most popular show on television.

� �

- My brother's kids--

ten years old, five years-- they watch "Walking Dead."

- [yells]

- Kids eight years old watch "Walking Dead."

What is it about "Walking Dead"

that zombies have become so, almost normalized

that kids love it. - [clears throat]

- They don't take it seriously. I think it's amazing.

- Well... - "Walking Dead" plays

like a family show. - It's all about

the characters.

� �

You can follow this group of people

as they struggle to survive

week after week after week after week.

- [hissing]

� �

- You can see them live, you can see them die,

you can see everything that they go through

with the zombie apocalypse set as the backdrop.

[zombies growling] - [panting]

- Everybody wants to...

think that they would be able to survive

the zombie apocalypse.

- [grunting, exclaiming]

- You figure, "What would I do to survive?"

Uh, because that is the crux of the show,

ordinary people who all of a sudden

are thrust into an extraordinary situation.

which always give you some of the best drama.

- [zombie growling]

- Are you gonna fight for what you believe in?

Are you gonna be the type of person

that runs away from it?

You know, there's no status and--and fame,

and money, and uh,

there's none of that bull[bleep].

- The apocalyptic simulation is really an interesting

sociological experiment about, you know,

who do people become, and who would I become,

and what would be okay if the rules weren't

the same anymore?

I want to be a Michonne...

[zombies hissing]

But I'm probably more of, um...

I don't know, a Eugene. [laughs]

- You got a name, ass[bleep]?

- Eugene.

- They're coming to get you, Barbara.

- Stop it! You're acting like a child.

- They're coming for you.

Look, there comes one of them now.

- Without George Romero and "Night of the Living Dead,"

there would be no "Walking Dead."

"Night of the Living Dead" laid the template

for every zombie survival story that followed.

It's a simple plot--

six people trapped in a farmhouse

surrounded by the flesh-eating undead--

but it changed everything.

- You got to see the boundary pushed

going from the 1950s creatures--

the man in the rubber suit-- to like, graphic viscera.

- Mm-hmm. - What was it like seeing it

pushed farther and farther?

[zombies growling] - I can remember just

sort of wandering into a screening

of "Night of the Living Dead."

The whole place was full of kids--it was like

a Saturday matinee-- and they're all, you know,

yelling and grab-assing around and throwing

their popcorn boxes, and that thing got going

and they just fell entirely silent.

- [zombie growling]

- [weeping] - And I was scared, too.

The first time that you see something like that,

you're not prepared for what you're looking at.

[sinister music]

- George Romero really creates the rules.

I mean, the whole thing of, like, if you get bit,

you turned into one... - Yeah.

- Shoot them in the head...

� �

That didn't exist before. - Those rules

for the modern-day zombie were created 50 years ago.

- By George Romero. - If I were surrounded

by six or eight of these things, would I stand

a chance with them? - Well, there's no problem.

If you had a gun, shoot 'em in the head.

That's a sure way to kill 'em.

If you don't, get yourself a club or a torch.

Beat 'em or burn 'em. They go up pretty easy.

� �

- It almost feels like the zombie movie--

there's like a quantum leap that happens

where there are different phases.

Like the 1930s and '40s, it was the--

"I Walked With a Zombie." It was "White Zombie."

It was the hypnotist zombie.

It was a mad scientist on an island

that has found a way to raise the dead

and enslave them. - A lot of zombie films

were about people who had been just stripped

of their identity and were slaves, almost.

You know, they could be workers, or they could just

sort of shamble and look scary, but they weren't attacking

and biting and killing like they did

in "Night of the Living Dead."

- Baby... [gasps]

[whimpering] - Mean, there were things

that were so transgressive in that movie.

- [whimpering]

[wailing]

- The little girl stabs her mother to death.

- The little kid killing her mom, that had--

no one had ever seen anything like that.

- The first time you see it, you're just horrified.

You can't believe what you're seeing.

- [screeching]

- "Night of the Living Dead" was much more

of a claustrophobic nightmare kind of experience,

"Night of the Living Dead" is also, uh,

somewhat facetious, and it's also--

it has its sociopolitical allegory.

- What's important about "Night of the Living Dead"

is the fact that the travails of the people

locked in that house are really a microcosm

of what's going on in American society

- [indistinct] - The tumult of the late 1960s

is reflected in the fear and the--the violence

that--that occur in and around that house.

- That movie's revolutionary in many, many ways

and had profound impact--

the fact it had a black lead--

[suspenseful music]

- [groans]

- Which George always said was not deliberate.

It was that Duane was the best actor.

I don't believe him. I think it was deliberate.

- With all of us working,

we can fix this place up in no time.

We have everything we need up here.

- We can take all that stuff downstairs with us.

Man, you're really crazy, you know that?

- Let's say you're a-- a white viewer

in the late 1960s...

who has a few prejudices, say,

and is a little bit worried that the world is ending

because of all of the, uh, racial legislation

of the '60s-- The Voting Rights Act,

The Civil Rights Act-- and here's this zombie film

where the dead are coming back to life

and a black man is in charge.

- I don't want anyone's life on my hands.

- Is there anything I can do? - I don't wanna hear any more

from you, mister.

If you stay up here, you take orders from me.

- I will contend that that might have been

as frightening to some viewers as the child eating her mother

in the basement. [laughing]

[sinister music]

- What we get is potentially something hopeful, you know,

with the African-American protagonist--

like maybe some new direction socially--

but instead it just turns into vigilante justice

represented by a white lynch mob.

You can imagine the--the shock

that audiences must have felt to--to be coaxed

into identifying with a black man

only to have him shot and then pitchforked

onto a pile of burning bodies at the end.

That's a slap.

That's a direct slap to any audience,

right wing or left wing.

- "The Night of the Living Dead"

does not end on any kind of triumph.

Your hero is shot by police.

It's the most upsetting ending in cinema.

And then that has continued

through horror cinema of actually--

It doesn't always have a happy ending.

� �

I think that's the joy of horror cinema,

is that it can, like, affect you in lots

of different ways. - If George Romero

had only made "Night of the Living Dead,"

he would still be a legend... - [growling]

- But he didn't stop.

"Night of the Living Dead" and its sequels

changed the course of film history.

and inspired the best

the horror genre has to offer.

- [groaning] - He was such a big influence

on "Shaun of the Dead."

We liked this idea of our film taking place

within George Romero's universe.

- [yelling]

[grunts] - "Shaun of the Dead"

was so well done that it opened the floodgates

to, like, everybody to try and make a zombie movie.

[dramatic music]

- Today, zombie movies

and TV shows are everywhere.

but not so long ago,

they had virtually disappeared.

Edgar Wright's "Shaun of the Dead"

helped bring them back bigger than ever.

[sinister music]

[zombies moaning]

- When we thought up the idea for "Shaun of the Dead,"

one of the inspirations for it is because there hadn't been

a zombie film for, like, 15 years.

� �

We always had this theory that, like, uh,

John Landis' video for "Thriller"

sort of killed off zombies for the second half

of the '80s and early '90s.

- [menacing laughter]

- So I think what happened was,

all of a sudden the zombie genre--

which traditionally had probably sort of died out...

- Yeah. - A little bit--

and then all of a sudden you have all these

zombie video games and they're like, "[bleep],

man, people love shooting zombies."

- It was around, like, the late 1990s

when "Resident Evil" came out-- the game.

[gunfire]

- [zombie groans] - So people started

to take an interest in the genre again.

[foreboding music]

- Every now and then, we see a movie

that is supposedly horror...

but yet uses social commentary brilliantly,

and the best example is "Shaun of the Dead."

[cheerful music]

You want to know where Britain was

at that time, you look at "Shaun of the Dead."

- [groaning]

- In the '90s and the dawn of the new century,

we were in a new phase in Britain...

and a whole new generation of Britons were asking:

"What's next?"

And they were a little lost.

[gunfire]

- Hey, man, listen, um-- oh, top left.

- Uh-huh. - I was gonna say--

reload. - I'm on it.

- And it was brilliant.

- What I love about "Shaun of the Dead"

is they're not making fun of...

zombie movies,

they're making a funny zombie movie.

- I'm not gonna say, "If you love her, let her go,"

and I'm not gonna bombard you with clich�s.

But what I will say is this...

[chuffs, sniffles]

It's not the end of the world.

[banging on glass]

[sinister music]

- And they play on all the tropes...

- Sorry, we're closed.

- [moaning]

- I'd been playing "Resident Evil 3,"

like, all night. [laughs]

My girlfriend at the time had gone away...

- [zombie groans]

- And I promised her I wouldn't play video games

all weekend, and I did exactly that.

I remember, vividly,

playing it until the sun came up.

[dramatic flair]

- [snores, grunts]

[coughs]

- And then walking across the street

to the news agent to get some milk

to make some tea...

and I walked across the street, and it was completely empty

on a Sunday morning.

And the shop was the only thing that was open,

and in that moment, I had a thought of thinking,

"What would it be like if if zombies were here right now,

and what would I do?"

Because we don't really have guns in the UK,

How would I defend myself? - [coughing]

- It's just that little thought

really sort of started to inspire the sequence

where Shaun walks

to the store and back hungover.

- So the zombie apocalypse has started,

but he's still unaware of it.

- [growling]

- But he does this walk-- it's a long,

steady cam shot-- and he goes into the shop

and he doesn't notice...

little things.

[music playing over speakers]

- The bloody handprints on the wall,

and he's walking away from the refrigerator

and he just slips in blood.

[shoes squeaking]

It's so subtle, but it's... [laughing]

It's such a great moment

because you know-- you as the audience

know what's coming-- his character doesn't

know it yet, and it's-- he--he's still out of it.

- Nelson. - It's such a simple moment

but it's one of my favorite moments in the movie.

- It's wonderful, the way they show

the collapse of society.

[phone ringing]

Zombies become a symbol of anarchy,

and the collapse of the system,

and all that protects us.

- [indistinct]

[zombies groaning] - Top left!

[lively music]

- Ah! - Reload.

- I'm on it.

- We wanted to stay true to the spirit

of "Night of the Living Dead" and "Dawn of the Dead."

[eerie music]

The film is like a valentine to George Romero

because we love those movies.

We're, like, sharing our deep,

deep love for the subject.

- Right down to its title, "Shaun of the Dead"

is a tribute to what any horror fan will tell you

is the greatest zombie film of all time.

- There's no greater zombie movie

than "Dawn of the Dead."

- I think "Dawn of the Dead" is a real masterpiece.

- It's that rare kind of, like, nightmare world

which you actually wouldn't-- I mean, maybe this is just me,

but you wouldn't mind being in it.

[laughing]

[zombies growling]

- No! No! - George Romero's

"Night of the Living Dead" created the modern zombie.

That was a hard act to follow,

but the director topped it with his sequel,

"Dawn of the Dead."

[zombies growling]

[sinister music]

"Dawn of the Dead" was a potent mixture

of horror, satire,

and outrageous special effects.

- [screaming]

[zombies growling]

- It's, uh, basically a continuation of the--

of "Night of the Living Dead," where zombies are

taking over the world.

[zombies growling]

- This was the first depiction

of a full-scale zombie apocalypse,

a nightmare vision of social collapse

that became the template for virtually

every end-of-the-world story we see today.

Once again, Romero used horror

to comment on American values.

- He is masterfully executing

all of those horror elements

in a way that brings it

right to a social justice scenario...

- Martinez!

You've been watching!

You know we've got this building surrounded!

- Particularly that opening when in the ghettos,

all of the poor are keeping their loved ones

hidden away from the rest of the world,

because they know that they will kill them.

- People in this project are your responsibility.

- In the first 20 minutes, there's a SWAT team

raiding a house... - Yeah.

- And one of the police officers

is unbelievably racist.

- Yeah, come on, Martinez. Show your greasy little

Puerto Rican ass so I can blow it right off.

- And I was like,

"Why is this guy concerned with racism?"

Like, there's zombies in the building.

- [laughing] - It was unbelievable.

I was like, "Aren't there bigger problems?"

- Let's go, let's go!

[all shouting]

- That blew my mind as a kid

because I realized I was watching

a political story

about the race

and class system in America.

[bell ringing]

- After showing society crumbling,

the film shifts focus to a small group of survivors

who take refuge in a suburban shopping mall.

- I think the great thing about zombies

is they are like a catch-all metaphor

of the world's ills, and I think George Romero

doesn't really get enough credit as a satirist

as well as a horror film maker.

- Come on! [shouting]

- "Dawn of the Dead" being the most

kind of savage statement about the state of consumerism

in the late '70s.

[zombie growling]

The idea of the mindless hordes

flock to the big fancy shopping mall...

[cheerful music]

That was very pointed and very funny.

- What are they doing? Why do they come here?

- Some kind of instinct.

Memory of what they used to do.

This was an important place in their lives.

- You can't watch that movie and not become aware

of the fact that this is a story about

what humans really are:

grasping, vampiric creatures

that kind of return endlessly to their old habits

because it's what they're taught.

- I think "Dawn of the Dead"

should be sold in a box set with "Easy Rider."

It should be called "The Baby Boomers:

The Beginning and the End."

Romero has managed to distill...

[camera shutter snapping]

The worst of every generation into all of his movies.

You see the baby boomers

losing their souls.

- What have we done to ourselves?

- Because what Romero did

was channel his outrage

at his generation's ultimate surrender

of all their ideals

and he put it in a movie. - So, I mean,

if you were gonna go out and do a talky little, uh, drama

to try to criticize the consumer society

that we have here, you couldn't make

$30 million, you know? - That's for sure.

- So, terrific. You get a couple of jabs in

while you're having fun with the rollercoaster ride

which really is the surface.

[indistinct shouting]

- Romero was a man with a message,

but his gleeful embrace of gore

made him a horror favorite.

"Dawn of the Dead," I had never seen that level

of a body count in a movie.

[gunshots]

- You're, like, watching like, "Who made this?"

- Yeah. - Like, a maniac?

[dramatic music]

- But normally, one movie, there'd be one kill

that was amazing, and it was like

every 30 seconds, each kill was different.

[propeller whirring]

That helicopter blade... - Yeah.

- Pulling it off the head... - The guy with

the giant forehead. - Which--which if you were--

- Exactly. - By the way, when you're a kid

you never see that coming.

You see he staggers out and his head...

[all chattering]

- You never put two and two together.

Now you look at it and go, "Oh, of course, he's gonna

get his head cut off."

- Really accomplished horror directors knew

having Tom Savini doing the make-up special effects

that it was gonna elevate that film.

and give them a wider audience than they ever anticipated.

- Well, it was Halloween every day.

We did that for three months in a shopping mall.

- [growling]

- 80% of the effects in that were stuff that

we came up with.

We'd go to George and say, "Hey, how about if we drive

a screwdriver through-- through the zombies, here."

And he'd go, "Okay."

So then two hours later we're making

retractable screwdrivers and, you know,

making it bleed inside a zombie's ear.

[dramatic music]

- But the scene that makes you like, wonder,

"Oh, wow...

can I even handle this?"

Is when the zombie in the project--

when, uh, his wife... - [shouting]

- He's still alive, comes to her and--

and embraces him.

"My baby, my baby."

And then she--he just bites--

just a chunk out of her shoulder.

- Carlito... - [growling]

- [shrieking]

- It just looks real.

It just--it just--

you buy it.

- [screaming] - If humans had

shark-like mouths, that's probably the effect

of what would happen

if a sharky human bit you.

- [growling]

- It's just an effect we had never seen before,

and it draws a line in the sand.

"Am I ready for the rest of this?"

[sinister music]

- George Romero's vision was so influential

that for decades, most screen zombies

were slow-moving ghouls.

But in 2002,

Danny Boyle's "28 Days Later"

gave us a zombie

for the fast-moving 21st century

and set off a controversy

that rages to this day.

- I'm a slow zombie guy. - I like fast zombies.

- I'm a card-carrying slow zombie fan.

[zombies screeching, growling]

[dark music]

- Imagine waking up in a world ravaged by a disease

that turns ordinary people

into mindless predators driven to kill.

� �

This is the premise of "28 Days Later,"

director Danny Boyle's groundbreaking reinvention

of the zombie film.

[zombie screaming]

[hissing] - [yells]

- Fight! Fight!

- "28 Days Later"

is a perfect horror movie

because it's based on a premise

you can completely believe.

- [growling] - I don't know what it's like

to be bitten by a vampire. - [roaring]

- I don't know what it's like to be threatened

by a werewolf. - [indistinct]

[electronic interference]

- But I can imagine what it's like...

to have a plague spread like wildfire

because it's just too close

to the headlines of today's news.

- [growling]

[hissing] - It could happen.

[dramatic music]

- "28 Days Later" came out

a year after 9/11, and it includes

these really haunting scenes

of a deserted London...

� �

Missing persons flyers pasted to bulletin boards

like we saw post 9/11...

� �

It also was able to, uh,

capitalize on a lot of the-- the anxieties

and fears of the time.

� �

SARS and anthrax

and Mad Cow's Disease, bird flues...

- [hissing] - Father...

- [growling] - Also, Danny Boyle

was commenting on, uh,

the rage that he saw in society.

Road rage, people fighting on line

in the supermarkets...

- [grunts]

- He envisioned a zombie story that took advantage

of this psychological virus

that could be unleashed and have, like,

a zombie effect on people.

[tense music]

- There was one big difference

between George Romero's' zombies and the infected

in "28 Days Later":

these zombies were fast.

People talked about sort of the next quantum leap

in zombie movies...

As "28 Days Later" 'cause it had running zombies.

Even though there were running infected

in Umberto Lenzi's "Nightmare City" from 1980.

- [laughing]

[indistinct shouting]

- I'm a slow zombie guy.

- [shouting] - Not that I don't like

a good fast zombie movie. - Somebody!

- Uh, I loved "28 Days Later."

Yes, I know.

They're not technically dead.

They are rage virus.

I get that. - [hissing]

[zombies growling]

- If I can make a criticism of running zombies, it's this:

It's that running zombies generally--

there's kind of like a fitness level.

If you look at the zombies in "28 Days Later,"

they're nearly always, like, sort of fit.

You know, like they're in like a sneakers commercial.

[laughing] [zombies shouting]

When you increase the speed, the people that lose out

are the old zombies, and the overweight zombies,

and the little kid zombies, and I would rather have

a more inclusive range of zombies.

[eerie music]

- Zombies that are slow are infinitely more terrifying.

It's the difference between getting shot

and getting cancer. [crowd shouting]

You get killed by, say, a fast zombie

in the "World War Z" movie or "28 Days Later,"

you're dead before you know it.

[zombies growling] Happens too fast.

� �

But the slow zombie...

the zombie that gives you time to think...

allows you to visualize your own death...

[zombies growling]

And that is one of the darker elements

of the human mind.

- Fast or slow... - [growling]

- Zombies are usually created

by accidental radiation leaks or rogue viruses.

- [growling, babbling]

- But there is another kind of zombie:

The deliberately reanimated corpse,

like Frankenstein's monster.

- Alive! - Created by Mary Shelley

in 1818, Frankenstein's monster

is the most famous member of the walking dead.

- Frankenstein's monster

is a zombie for sure.

In the novel, he's just a--

a zombie that can talk way too much.

- As a kid, I really felt connected

to Frankenstein's monster, not so much

to Frankenstein himself.

I think that goes for a lot

of those original horror classics.

Those characters are sort of stand-ins

for people that are on the fringe of society

or castaways--cast outs.

[crowd shouting]

- Boris Karloff's Frankenstein

is still the definitive version

of this monster.

Its direct descendant

is "H.P. Lovecraft's Re-Animator."

With "Re-Animator,"

director Stuart Gordon reimagined the zombie film

as a wildly transgressive horror comedy.

[dark music]

I remember I went to a-- like a--a bunch of kids

were hanging out at a house like have--having a party

and they watched "Breakfast Club,"

and I was never--I had never been so bored in a movie.

I was just, like, waiting for something to happen.

- Somebody get decapitated. - Something.

And I was like, "I have a much better movie."

And I put on "Re-Animator..." - [laughing]

- And the whole party cleared out.

- [wailing] - [screaming]

[both screaming]

- Well, the film is about medical students

who find a way to bring the dead back to life.

Particularly, there's this one genius,

Herbert West-- he's developed a serum which,

when it's injected into a dead body, revives it.

- [screaming]

- But the dead are never very grateful.

- [growling] - [choking]

- What was great about Stuart Gordon's take on it--

he put a really interesting sense of humor

in the whole thing.

- [growls] - 'Cause you can look

at "Re-Animator" as a comedy. - You'll never get credit

for my discovery.

Who's going to believe a talking head?

Get a job in a sideshow.

- "Re-Animator" was like nothing

I had seen before-- like nothing anyone

had seen before-- and the audacity of it

is what makes it so powerful.

[dark music]

� �

- Boy, that's a sick picture.

Really transgressive.

Got a lot of crawling hands and heads rolling around

like bowling balls. - [growling]

- You should not be censoring yourself.

[drill whirring]

You know, they'll be doing everything they can

to censor you.

You should not give them an inch.

[drill whirring]

� �

- "Re-Animator's" fun. I don't know what it's about,

like, that--I don't know that it's about

any big ideas whatsoever,

except that it would be fun to keep heads alive

in a basket. - It's about conquering death.

That's really what it's about. - [snarling]

- [screaming]

[grunts] - My father passed away

when I was 14 years old,

and I think that that was the hook for me.

People always say, "If you could

bring anybody back's life, who would it be?"

In my case, it's a-- it's a no-brainer:

It would be my father.

- [screams] - [wails]

- When you look at most horror movies, I think,

they're about an impossible dream.

- In 1985, "Re-Animator"

and Dan O'Bannon's "Return of the Living Dead"

explored the comic frontiers of the zombie genre.

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- Brains!

- That same year, the king of the zombies--

George Romero--was crafting a much darker film,

what he hoped would be the zombie film

to end all zombie films: "Day of the Dead."

- "Day of the Dead" was intended

to be George Romero's $10 million opus.

[dramatic music]

- No... - George Romero's

first two zombie films

invented a new kind of monster...

- [shrieking] - And a new metaphor

for life in America.

- One, two, three, go.

[gunshots]

- By 1985, he was making

what he hoped would be his ultimate statement,

a zombie film that combined

incredibly realistic special effects

with a powerful message.

- [screaming] - [wailing]

[zombies growling]

- The message of the Reagan era was...

no more war on poverty, no more war on crime,

no more war on racial segregation.

Uh, screw it.

[zombies shouting]

We've lost. There's more of them

than there are of us, so you need to retreat

into your protective enclaves and husband your resources.

And that's exactly what our characters do.

- You must listen! - Listen to this.

[dramatic music]

- In "Day of the Dead," we see the military rule,

and that's even scarier. - I'm running

this monkey farm now, Frankenstein,

and I want to know what the [bleep]

you're doing with my time!

- A bunch of people who are trying to do good

and find a cure are being ruled

by this military presence that is very aggressive

and will do anything it takes to preserve itself,

so that's terrifying as well.

[electrical zapping]

- The zombies are in some ways, you know--

the ones who are being experimented upon--

kind of more sympathetic than many of the humans.

[zombies groaning]

- Rhodes!

- In "Dawn of the Dead," we're losing.

In "Day of the Dead," we've lost.

- Most good directors that really have a grasp

on the medium can do horror.

It's not as delicate as humor. - Mm.

- It's not as delicate.

Uh, there are some tricks of the trade

that you can apply.

- Like his other zombie films,

"Day of the Dead" was shot in Romero's hometown

of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,

far outside of the Hollywood system.

- But that's what made...

George Romero...

such a terrific filmmaker,

was that he was a legit, regional filmmaker,

and what made it special

was the slightly homemade quality

to the movies.

- Everywhere that he would go in Pittsburgh,

you knew somebody that was a zombie.

You knew somebody that was involved

with George Romero's movies,

and that's how I got into the business.

Because when "Day of the Dead" came along,

I had befriended George

because of some mutual family friends, and he's like,

"Hey, I'm doing a sequel to 'Dawn of the Dead.'

Do you want a job?" I'm like...

"I was gonna be a doctor, but this sounds way better."

[suspenseful music]

- And this is where George Romero

and Tom Savini-- arguably their creative peaks

at the same time, working together.

- Special effects artists like Rick Baker

and Tom Savini were heralded

as, like, kings and icons of the horror film

because they were creating special effects

that were out of this world.

Like something we'd never seen before.

- Vietnam was a lesson in anatomy for me.

I was a combat photographer.

I saw horrible stuff.

In fact, I'm the only make-up artist, I think,

that has seen the real stuff. - [screaming]

- [shrieking] - In a movie,

when someone dies they close their mouth

and they wanna look pretty for the camera...

[funereal music]

And that just takes me right out of it,

because that actor doesn't know how to portray death,

or the director doesn't know to tell them...

the mouth always goes slack.

[dark music]

My masterpiece is "Day of the Dead."

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- [moaning]

- There a lot of cool stuff in, uh--in "Day of the Dead."

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We cut the guy's arm off, you know.

I dug a hole under the guy

so his real arm goes into the hole.

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And tearing Taso's head off...

- [screaming]

- And it's actually Greg Nicotero's fingers

in the eyeballs of the fake head,

and we're running cables down

to make the head work, you know,

so it was effects guys

that were the featured zombies tearing the head off.

- My head comes back

as a zombie head in "Day of the Dead."

You gotta think about the way that Tom designed things,

because he approached everything

like it was a magic trick.

You know, the idea that you're--you're taking

a special effect and you're deconstructing it

to the point where it's gotta be a magic trick that's gonna

fool the audience. - The disembowelments

in "Day of the Dead" are unmatched.

[zombies groaning] - [gasping]

- Without a doubt, and that's why you get into--

people who--who watch movies and get--get offended

by the--the gore, and you're like,

"Well, you know it's corn syrup..."

- It's a real presentation. - Red powered--

red powdered food coloring.

- Miller!

Miller! - [screaming]

- The special makeup effects pioneered by Tom Savini

and Greg Nicotero on "Day of the Dead"...

- [growling] - Led directly

to the amazing work we see today

on "The Walking Dead."

- The kind of household I grew up in was, you know,

"Oh, you can't go see 'Day of the Dead.'

That's too--that's too much."

But now you see, uh,

the level of gore that we saw in George Romero's, uh,

"Day of the Dead" on "Walking Dead" every week,

which is insane to me.

[sinister music]

[engine revving]

[tense music]

[zombies growling]

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- Go to the left!

� �

- In the wake of a zombie apocalypse,

a small band of survivors

look for a safe place to live.

The biggest threat they face aren't zombies,

but other people.

This is the premise of "The Walking Dead,"

the TV series that brought realistic horror

to the small screen.

[door creaking]

- [snarling]

- People used to come to me and say, "Can you make us

a violent TV series?"

And I'd say, "Well, what makes horror work is you--

"is you have the threat of killing your characters,

"and what TV--what makes TV work is you want to see

those characters every week..." - Right.

- So you can't have them almost die, and I could never

do the violence I wanted to do. - Yeah, yeah.

- Cut to... - Here we are.

- Greg Nicotero and "The Walking Dead."

[dramatic music]

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- "The Walking Dead" for sure

is the next cultural milestone

really since "Dawn of the Dead" and "Night of the Living Dead."

And, you know, that's really been you.

[hooves clattering]

- "Walking Dead" is basically a Western with--

with the zombie, uh, apocalypse

set as the backdrop.

If "The Walking Dead" had to be told

in a 2 1/2 hour time slot, you'd never be able to do it.

You wouldn't care about the characters.

You wouldn't really know who Daryl is...

- Yeah. - Who--who Rick is.

- I'm sorry this happened to you.

- [growling]

- The plight of the survivors is a dark reflection

of life in America today.

The mortgage crisis of 2008 resulted in more than

3 million people losing their homes.

- Problems with the housing market...

- Since then, rising housing prices

in the major cities have forced more people

to live on the street. - Global meltdown.

- There's a sense that civilization is fragile.

That any day now,

we could be like Rick, Daryl, and Carol,

always moving,

surrounded by threats on every side.

[zombies snarling]

- That's what I always loved-- when "Walking Dead" came out,

I would say to people, like, "If the zombie apocalypse

"were real, this is the closest thing

"that I've seen to what that would probably feel like

and be like."

- When I first read that script, I didn't--

you know, I didn't read it as a zombie thing.

I read it as this guy lost his family,

and he woke up, and he didn't know where he was.

And he was gonna do anything

to go find his family, and that's--

that stuck out on the page way more than a zombie

here and there, you know?

And everybody played it like that.

[somber music]

You have to play everything as real as possible.

- [snarling] - [indistinct]

- There's so many examples on that show where, like--

You're like, "Oh, my God, is this gonna work?"

And the actors... - No, no, no!

- Just pulled it out and made it perfect.

- [screaming] No!

- [grunts] - She was playing with me!

She wanted a friend! - She wanted to kill you!

- I was gonna lead her away!

- You could have died. - It's the same thing!

You killed her! You killed her!

- There's a reason there wasn't really

a zombie TV show before.

[dark music]

- Ugh... - Effects need

to be really good on a television show

so that people don't fall out of the reality

that you're trying to sell.

- The best zombies, I think, are what Greg is doing

in "The Walking Dead." The best zombies today.

Uh, and there's a lot of CGI there, you know,

and necessary, because the zombies

have been around for so long,

now they're decaying and rotting, you know?

- [gagging] - Just a little more.

- [gurgling] - There's that one famous--

the "well walker..." - Stop!

- Come on! - Where he's just

so waterlogged and bloated

that he just sort of, like, comes apart.

[all grunting] - [gurgling]

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- That's one of the beautiful things

that Greg does, is his team--

you can see the lost person

behind the monster, you know?

That's--that's when they become scary.

- I never get sick of it, honestly.

They keep--they keep reinventing the wheel

with the zombies, it's nuts. - [growling]

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- Obviously the--the irony is, who are the walking dead?

Is it the actual zombies or is the people?

- Right, right. - Uh, what are they willing

to do to each other to survive?

And that's... - Yeah, at what point

do you lose your humanity? - Right.

- "Walking Dead" being on for so long surprises me,

'cause y'all should be dead by now, man.

- [snarling]

You know, because it doesn't make sense.

To me. - [snarling]

- [gasping, whimpering]

- Doesn't it feel like zombies are cresting now, too?

Yeah, right now it does seem like we're in the middle

of a zombie apocalypse.

[procession chanting]

Yeah.

The dumbing down of society.

We're all zombies.

[zombies snarling]

- Zombies are representative

of--of Alzheimer's...

a just terrifying disease.

And zombies are representatives of cancer.

To me, what's happened with the zombie

is now they're representatives of anarchy

and the collapse of government.

The collapse of order.

[menacing music]

- Zombies are really sort of a wonderful catch-all metaphor

because they can mean absolutely anything.

- [screaming] - Zombies in 1968

are the breakdown of American society.

[zombies groaning]

In 2017 with "The Walking Dead..."

uh, who knows what it represents.

[zombies growling]

- One take-away could be that everything's hopeless...

[distant shouting]

- [exclaims]

- Another take-away could be that humans

will always persevere even when...

it seems like there's no reason to

or that it's impossible to.

[gunfire]

[zombies snarling]

- Yeah, zombies will never die.

No pun intended. [laughing]

- [babbling] - [screaming]

- It's so interesting, the resurgence of zombies,

and the fact that they kind of won't ever go away.

[zombies snarling]

We'll always be telling stories.

I think we'll-- we're never gonna lose

our fascination with them.

- Half a century ago,

George Romero created the modern zombie--

America's great contribution to monster horror.

[sinister music]

Now, zombie movies are an international phenomenon.

� �

The zombie plague has infected the world.

- [screams] - As relentless

and unstoppable

as the flesh-eating undead.

� �

- We wake them and we got it all!