As a kid in the 1950s, George A. Romero rode the subway from the Bronx to rent 16mm reels of The Tales of Hoffmann, a film only one other boy, Martin Scorsese, checked out as obsessively. This episode follows Romero from that childhood to Carnegie Mellon, a $20,000 loan from his uncle to start The Latent Image, commercials for Iron City Beer and Calgon, and segments for Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, including the tonsillectomy visit, before a weekend project with nine friends at Image Ten became Night of the Living Dead in 1968.

The discussion traces how that film's documentary look absorbed the turbulence of the Vietnam era, then follows Romero through The Crazies and Martin, the shopping mall satire of Dawn of the Dead that turned $640,000 into $55 million, Day of the Dead's clash between scientists and soldiers, and Land of the Dead's por ...