BY GEORGE

When you think of the great Georges in American history, obviously you start with George Washington, and move on to George Washington Carver and George S. Patton and George Gershwin, and then maybe George Cukor and George McGovern and George Takei...

But really, for horror movie geeks, the next full stop after The Father of Our Country is George A. Romero.

RIP to Romero, who directed the standard, and still the best, cannibal zombie movie, 1968's Night of the Living Dead, and its sequels starting with Dawn of the Dead, and other fascinating, morally complex horror pictures like The Crazies and Season of the Witch and Martin, and who joined the legions of the dead himself last weekend, too young at 77.

RIP, while we're at it, to the brilliant Martin Landau, departed at 89, whose long, varied career reached its pinnacle with his beautiful, hilarious, moving incarnation of the elderly Bela Lugosi in Tim Burton's Ed Wood (1994), for which he won an Oscar. RIP also to the lovable Canadian actor Harvey Atkin, probably best known as the hapless Morty in Meatballs, and as a judge in many episodes of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, passed on at 74.

This week...

Monster-of-the-Week: ...in tribute to Romero, our honoree is Fluffy, the monster in the crate...

 ...in 1982's Creepshow, Romero's jolly collaboration with Stephen King in evoking the spirit of E.C.-style horror comics. Here's Fluffy as rendered by the late great Berni Wrightson in his comic adaptation of the flick...