It’s rare for any artist in any medium to truthfully be able to say “I created an entire genre.” But George Romero could.

With his feature film directorial debut, 1968’s Night of the Living Dead, Romero invented the modern zombie movie, paving the way for hundreds of living dead movies, tv shows, books, and comics.

George Romero died today at age 77, after what The L.A Times called “brief but aggressive battle with lung cancer.”

Romero will be missed but his memory will live on in his movies and in the work of all the creators who were inspired by the genre he created.

Night of the Living Dead

There is panic throughout the nation as the dead suddenly come back to life. The film follows a group of characters who barricade themselves in an old farmhouse in an attempt to remain safe from these bloodthirsty, flesh-eating monsters.

Dawn of the Dead

When a mysterious virus turns people into mindless, flesh-eating zombies, a handful of survivors wage a desperate, last-stand battle to stay alive … and human! The last remaining humans escape to a shopping mall, where they decide that the only way to truly elude the approaching throng of undead is to somehow make their way to an island that is supposedly zombie-free.

Day of the Dead

In the third film in the saga of the undead from writer/director George A. Romero, a small group of scientists and soldiers have taken refuge in an underground missile silo where they struggle to control the flesh-eating horror that walks the earth above. But will the final battle for the future of the human race be fought among the living or have they forever unleashed the hunger of the dead?

Land of the Dead

With the remaining members of the living bunkered inside the walls of a city that tries to block out the dead–who roam in droves outside–both sides are preparing to wage war against each other.

Diary of the Dead

The zombie apocalypse is told from the perspective of a student filmmaker who sets out to shoot a low-budget fright film, but instead captures the breakdown of modern society at the decaying hands of flesh-eating ghouls.

Survival of the Dead

On Plum Island, a beautiful refuge off the coast of North America, isolation allows two powerful families to maintain an impression of order in the wake of the zombie epidemic. But as the inhabitants slowly die off, the two clans become sharply divided.