With a budget of $8 million, Romero set about casting the movie with the biggest allotment of his career, causing him to be slightly intimidated by the project. Hassanein’s United Film Distribution Company as part of a three-picture deal (which came with the stipulation that one of the trio had to be a third Dead film). The project was shopped to several studios, but was ultimately rejected and picked up by Salah M. King even had t-shirts printed with the slogan “A Laurel Comic is a Moral Comic” a catchy play on the company Romero and Rubinstein had started together (Laurel Entertainment), and the principled twists that usually capped each book in a funny fashion. The end result was Creepshow (’82) – a collection of five stories King had either published before ( The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill*) or penned just for the picture ( Something To Tide You Over) each meant to play on both the jokey gore and ethical dilemmas that usually made up the issues of those filthy funnies. Romero and Rubinstein were bowled over by the pitch, and King promised them a script within sixty days, which he delivered right on time. Rubinstein that they should craft a tribute to the old EC Comics each had grown up reading as children.
Instead, King suggested to both Romero and his longtime producing partner Richard P.
Each vignette would be set in a different era from a Val Lewton inspired B&W chiller, to the in-theater gimmicks of William Castle, to a 3D segment meant to cap the entire affair.
However, the Pittsburgh auteur had an idea for an anthology that could trace the history of horror pictures, complete with aspect ratio and film stock changes. The movie Romero really wanted to direct was The Stand – King’s post-apocalyptic American epic that could’ve never been financed under a major studio (despite Dawn of the Dead dealing with similar End Time themes). However, because of a meeting the suits had set, a friendship had been kindled, as the two scare masters shared a love of cinema (with King professing to be a huge fan of Night of the Living Dead ) and macabre storytelling. The book they’d bought the rights to was Salem’s Lot – a New England vampire spook show that eventually became a stellar two-part CBS Movie of the Week under Texas Chain Saw Massacre (’74) director Tobe Hooper (Romero exited the project just before it headed to TV). Romero initially hooked up with Stephen King after showing Martin (’78) at the US/Utah Film Festival (which would later morph into the Sundance Film Festival), when two studio executives approached him, saying the writer/director would be perfect to helm a new property they’d just acquired from the up-and-coming horror author.
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