It is 23 October. There are 8 days until Halloween.

Night of the Living Dead.

I don’t need to write anything up on this one, do I? I mean, those five words speak for themselves, no?

Fine, Flyboy. Here goes…

If New England – especially the area around Arkham, MA – is “Lovecraft Country,” then the rolling hills and crumbling infrastructure of Western Pennsylvania is “Romero Country.”

Beginning in 1968 with Night of the Living Dead and ending around the time of The Dark Half in 1993, George A. Romero used Pittsburgh as his canvas. The Three Rivers and the surrounding area became synonymous with all things horror. We’ve had zombie outbreaks, witchy wives, Rust Belt vampires, and things in crates under stairs.

Romero and his gang have always said that they used the names of actual towns in Night of the Living Dead so that there was a veneer of verisimilitude to the horror when it played in local Western PA drive-ins. I can attest to the discomfort of watching the movie, hearing and seeing those town names on the news broadcast, and knowing that Evans City and its cemetery was only a few miles away from my house.

Evans City is a small town like many others in the area (Zelienople, Vandergrift, Mars, etc.). They seem to be caught in the amber, frozen in place during a time when the steel mills were still open. There is something about visiting these towns in the autumn that makes you feel that you are time traveling or a character in a Ray Bradbury story.

The Evans City cemetery got a bit of a facelift when a tornado passed through in 1985, but if you go there, you’ll still see some familiar landmarks.

People in Western PA are very proud and protective of their zombie roots. They celebrate Romero and his films whenever they get a chance. In fact, on this very night at 8pm (EDT), a group by the name of Alone / Together / Pittsburgh is hosting a live-streaming scene reading / interview with those folks that were a part of the 1968 and 1990 versions of Night of the Living Dead – Tom Savini, Tony Todd, Patricia Tallman, Lori Cardille and more! Billed as Ghouls4Good, the show is a fundraiser for the Biden/Harris campaign and the Pennsylvania Democratic Party. Bonus good news is that Pittsburgh synth-rockers, Zombi, are supplying the musical accompaniment, and if you like what you hear, then you can pick up their album on Bandcamp here.

If you can’t make that show, then enjoy this USA Up All Night presentation of Romero’s 1968 zombie classic. This is a complete broadcast, so you'll get tons of late-90s commercials, too. A full night of entertainment!

I think the movie still holds up even after 40-odd years. It feels very modern, very prescient. I had this proven to me a few years ago. While in grad school, I taught First-Year Writing to incoming freshmen. I had a lot of leeway and got to build my class from the ground up. As a Film Studies grad student, one of the things I wanted them to write about was a movie. I chose Night of the Living Dead. I wasn’t sure what they were going to think about it. I was afraid they were going to laugh. But as the ending of that movie unfurled before them, I heard gasps, moans, and a lot of anger. They couldn’t believe what they’d just witnessed. I’ve never felt prouder to mold the psyche of the future generations.

Call me Mr. Chips...or better yet...Mr. Woodchipper!