In Survival Of The Dead, director George Romero once again reworks the zombie genre he almost single-handedly invented in his 1968 debut Night Of The Living Dead, then revisited in Dawn Of The Dead, Day Of The Dead, Land Of The Dead and Diary Of The Dead. This time, he introduces elements of the classic Hollywood western as two rival clans on an island off the Delaware coast go to war over how to deal with the dead rising from the grave. Here, Romero, 70, explains what inspired him to write and direct this latest zombie instalment, as well as revealing how he views the ongoing evolution of the genre…

Survival of the Dead is your sixth zombie film. Do you ever get tired of the genre?

No, I love it. I get a chance with these films to make my own observations, express myself a little bit and do a little social criticism. It’s a pretty good gig.

What social criticism is there in the film?

It always starts with: ‘What’s this movie really going to be about?’ And I think it started a few years ago with the US involvement in Iraq. These young guys going in there, faced with all this tribalism and conflicts that are never going to be resolved. Then I started to think: ‘This is such an age-old problem.’

There’s also a Hollywood western element. Are you a fan of the genre?

The big American guys – John Ford and all of those boys. But the film that was our model for this was William Wyler’s The Big Country. It’s a bit experimental and it seemed to fit. American westerns have always been about individualism and survival of the individual, whereas zombie films – particularly mine – are more about revolution and identity being taken away. I thought that’s an interesting contrast.

You made Land Of The Dead with Universal, but this is an independent production. Which do you prefer?

Oddly, Universal were very understanding and they really let me make the movie I scripted. I’d made two studio films before - Monkey Shines and The Dark Half - at Orion and it was awful. Orion were supposed to be the filmmaker-friendly studio, yet it was just constant interference and changing their minds. All the typical Hollywood craziness you hear about. They forced me to change the endings on both of those films. So everybody warned me off. They said: ‘If you think that was bad, wait until you get in the hands of Universal.’ But it wasn’t true at all. They were very supportive. The problem with more money is that there’s way more responsibility. Everything gets bigger and you’re not free to improvise. You have to get approval on any script change you want to make. You can’t be spontaneous. If you’re working with less money and controlling how you’re spending it, you can budget yourself and make it come out OK. The studios are used to just throwing money at the wall, but it’s never enough to buy back the kind of freedom you have when you’re working on a smaller scale.

One of the most amusing moments in the film is the death by fire extinguisher. Was this one you’d been planning for years?

No, I came up with that when I was writing the script. There are a couple of gags in here that are right out of Looney Tunes. But people don’t get the humour or aren’t willing to see it in the context of a horror film. The last few years, the horror stuff that’s come out has been so dark. But I’ve always had a chuckle with it. I go back to the early comic books before they were restricted. They were brutally gory, but they always had a moral. That’s what I grew up on and it used to make me chuckle. Also, you have to be willing to suspend disbelief. A lot of people can’t see past the traditional horror elements and the gore. They think it’s not serious or they don’t look for the themes that underlie it. They’re not looking for the metaphor. They’re just looking at the movie and going: ‘God, it’s horrible!’”

Why have you always focused on zombies and not, say, vampires?

I got stuck with them! I almost stole the idea for Night Of The Living Dead from Richard Matheson’s novel I Am Legend. He used vampires, so I thought I’d better use something else. I never called them zombies in that first film. I was looking for something that really changes the world in a radical way, so I came up with the idea of the dead coming back to life.

The ‘zombies’ in recent films like 28 Days Later are different to yours…

Well, more aggressive, yeah. Of course, in 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later they’re not dead. They’re just real angry! So that’s OK with me. But when Zack Synder did the remake of Dawn Of The Dead they all looked like the first thing they did when they woke up was go to the health club. It doesn’t make any sense to me. Their ankles would snap. Some people think the fast-moving zombies are more terrifying, but what used to get me as a kid was stuff like The Mummy. He moved slowly, but he just kept coming! Now it’s sparked this huge debate on the internet about how a zombie would move. I have to defend my guys! I’ve actually seen T-shirts saying: ‘Fast zombies suck!’

What are your thoughts on CGI versus in-camera effects?

I’d much prefer to do everything the old-fashioned way, with prosthetic, mechanical devices. But it takes so much time and it so often doesn’t look good. With scenes like the fire extinguisher, CGI enables you to do certain things. Even if you’re just shooting a zombie in the head, it invariably messes up and costs you an hour on the set. When you’re working with tight budgets, mechanical effects really hang things up. But I’d never want to make a movie that was reliant on CGI.

Do you think Survival Of The Dead will be your last zombie film?

No. Well, I don’t think so. That depends. So much of it is economically driven. Land Of The Dead wound up making a lot of dough. That’s how Diary Of The Dead happened. In the end, Diary made a lot of money and so they wanted another one. Some of it is economics and some of it is contractual. They have the right to ask me to do another one.

Maybe you could do zombies on Wall Street…

I can’t figure out how to crack that one. I’d love to, I just don’t know what they’d be doing. They’d have to be a little too smart. They’d have to be too devious. I like these zombies – they’re not that devious. Even in Dawn Of The Dead, you see there’s a flash of learning. There’s one zombie dragging his rifle around all through the movie, then in the end he grabs the hero’s rifle and makes a choice. In the first few films it took years for them to evolve into that. In this film, maybe it’s happening a little more quickly.

Your first three zombie films were spread out between the 1960s and 1980s, but the second three have arrived in the space of a few years. Does this make a difference?

To some extent, having time between films enables you to make them really different – stylistically and every other way. But some of it is just circumstance. With Land Of The Dead I had George Bush, Dick Cheney and all those guys to kick around, so that was pretty topical. Diary Of The Dead was about the electronic and alternate media, so it felt topical. I thought we would be the first ones, but I didn’t know about Cloverfield. The theme of this one is much older and much more universal. It’s not specifically about anything happening today.

There seem to be a lot of zombie-type films around right now. Any idea why?

I don’t get it. I think people are just going: ‘Let’s do a zombie thing.’ It’s become a popular character, mostly because of video games.

What did you think of the dancing zombies in Michael Jackson’s Thriller video?

Oh boy! Don’t get me started on that! I don’t mind… I thought it was a good video, but I’m all over John Landis for that.

How long was the shoot for Survival Of The Dead?

There were 25 scheduled days and we lost about three days to weather. So it was 28 days – 28!

Have you been involved with the recent remake of The Crazies?

I have nothing to do with it. They pay you for it. My agent said: ‘Sure. Why not?’

How do you work with your zombie extras? Do you coach them?

You can’t do a thing. It’s purely: ‘Give me your best shot. Do your best zombie!’ Otherwise, you get 50 people all doing exactly the same thing. I find people so inventive on their own.

Are audiences more receptive to horror films now?

Maybe some of the prejudice is wearing off, but I don’t know. It’s definitely cyclical. In the days when they were cranking out a Friday The 13th every week, there were probably more horror films made from all the different franchises.

Do you think of your films as a franchise?

Oh, yeah. But it ain’t Halloween. Thankfully, I have a lot of very enthusiastic fans worldwide who’ll always buy the DVDs. But none of these movies will ever go through the roof.

And how do you see the future of zombies?

If I have anything to do with it, they’ll be slow. But who knows? Sometimes, if something makes money, then everybody wants to do more. I’m very cynical about that aspect. So I have my little gig going here!

Survival Of The Dead will be reviewed here on Monday.