Tina Romero has long called the queer nightlife scene home, performing and making a living for years as DJ Trx in New York City and beyond. Even so, the Pittsburgh native and daughter of late director George A. Romero, who put southwestern Pa. on the filmmaking map with his 1968 horror masterpiece Night of the Living Dead, couldn’t shake her famous father’s legacy.
“I never wanted to touch zombies when I went to film school,” Tina, who earned film degrees from Wellesley College and the NYU Tisch School of the Arts, tells Pittsburgh City Paper. “People would always ask me, ‘Don’t you want to make a zombie film?’ And I would say, ‘No, I want to make gender swapped Peter Pan and movie musicals.’”
Luckily, Tina saw a way to combine her two worlds, integrating her father’s invention — the modern zombie — into the world of DJs, drag, and disco.
“There was a promoter drama that happened at one of the parties that I worked at, and somebody posted a manifesto online asking, ‘When will the queer community stop devouring its own?’” she recalls. “And that it hit me like a bolt of lightning right away.”
Nearly a decade later, Tina has delivered her directorial feature debut. Now in theaters, Queens of the Dead, a horror comedy Tina also co-wrote with comedian and longtime friend Erin Judge, pits an “eclectic group of drag queens, club kids, and frenemies” against a zombie outbreak in Brooklyn. The film recently made its world premiere at the 2025 Tribeca Film Festival, where it earned the Audience Award for Best Narrative Film.
Despite now living in NYC, Tina says she often visits Pittsbrugh, where some of her relatives still reside, and that her cell number still starts with a 412 area code. She returns on Sun., Oct. 26, for a Queens of the Dead screening and director’s Q&A at Row House Cinema. The event is being presented in part by the George A. Romero Foundation (of which Tina serves as vice-president) and the recently announced Horror Studies Center at the University of Pittsburgh, which houses many of George Romero’s archives.
She promises locals will see numerous Pittsburgh Easter eggs in the film — in her cameo, Tina says she wears a Steelers jacket, and they also “threw in some Iron City Beer paraphernalia.” It will also feature Pittsburgh-based makeup special effects artist Tom Savini, who worked on and starred in multiple George Romero films.
Queens of the Dead Credit: Courtesy of Independent Film Company/Shudder
While horror audiences might expect a heavy homage to her father, Tina says she feels proud of producing something he never would have made.
“I’m a little bit more optimistic, I’m a little bit more whimsical, cheesy, fantasy production design,” she says. “My dad had some pretty grim, nihilistic messaging, and not a lot of people make it out of his films alive.”
Ensuring that most of the characters in Queens of the Dead not only survive, but thrive was important to Tina, who views it as a response to the devastating events of the past several years. “The bulk of it got done during [the COVID-19 pandemic] and we were like, we want to make an uplifting zombie film where people walk out of the theater with a little hope in their heart and pep in their step and a feeling of, let’s go forth and keep fighting.”
Tina credits her cast — an ensemble boasting, among others, RuPaul’s Drag Race contestant Nina West, Pose star Dominique Jackson, Jack Haven of the horror indie hit I Saw the TV Glow, and Katy O’Brian of the queer action-thriller Love Lies Bleeding, as well as veteran stand-up comic Margaret Cho — with successfully balancing the horror and comedic elements.
“They understood that they needed to be committed to the world and not be too wink-winky about what was going on. They had to be under duress. They had to be afraid of the zombies, you know … Yes, they’re painted green and they’re sparkly, but they’re scary.”
She believes the choice to make light of the undead will appeal to a wider, more diverse audience, and perhaps introduce newcomers to queer culture.
“You know, people who love drag, but aren’t as comfortable with horror, maybe they would come check this one out because we’re gonna put glitter in the blood,” she says. “And maybe the horror guys who have never been to a drag show would come check this out because we’re doing zombies.”
Tina admits that, while she views Queens of the Dead as a purposeful departure from her father’s work, she hopes people “feel like I am taking the torch and paying respect to him and playing in his sandbox, while also getting to know me as a filmmaker.”
“He’s big time on my mind,” she says. “I really want to do him proud, but I’m also not trying to be him.”
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