The Living Dead Museum & Gift Shop
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The Living Dead Museum & Gift Shop
Other Undead Stars: Zombie from "Zombie", Michael Jackson from "Thriller" and Bub from "Day of the Dead". Monroeville Mall was the setting for the 1978 film Dawn of the Dead. For many horror fans, it is an icon – the Roswell zombies – and its status as a destination only increased when the Living Dead Museum reopened after an eight-year absence.
The museum, the brainchild of community booster and movie buff Kevin Kriess, began in 2008 as a small shrine in the toy store at Kevin's Monroeville Mall. Kevin wanted to pay tribute to Pittsburgh director George Romero, whose film transformed the mall — and nearby Evans City — into the birthplace of modern flesh-eating zombies.
Over time the shops became smaller and smaller until they disappeared, and the temple grew bigger and bigger until it became a museum. Kevin moved to Evans City in 2013, which proved too far off the beaten path, and the mall welcomed the museum back in July 2021. Kevin told us that the museum, greatly expanded in scope, is now too large for him to move a
The Living Dead Museum
again. And it has a prime spot in the Court of George Romero facing the bust of George Romero Mall – two tributes made with the enthusiastic support of Kevin (George, who died in 2017, has so far not returned as a zombie). "Stay Afraid!"
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George Romero's bloody handprint on the Maul of Fame. With its drop ceilings, neon lights and large text panels, the museum is not what you'd expect from a place usually devoted to cannibal ghosts killing the living. "That shouldn't scare you," Kevin said. "It's a film history museum, not a haunted attraction."
There are several rooms, each with a different theme, as well as alcoves and corridor galleries. Kevin describes the concept - George Romero's film, The Mall, the undead - as "things that stick out in my mind." The real "Dawn of the Dead" elevator is a highlight of the museum.
Visitors are greeted by the "Maul of Fame" museum, a wall where famous characters from Romero's films put their handprints, dipped in blood red paint, next to their autographs. George is here - he was printed on October 7, 2010 - as well as supporting characters such as "1st Dead Ghoul" and "Gray Suit Zombie".
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George Kosana, who played the sheriff in Night of the Living Dead, came in with the most memorable line from the film: "They're dead! They're all messed up!" The Night of the Living Dead room featured a special dummy Bill Hinzman, who played the first of what would eventually become thousands of killer zombies in George Romero's films.
A radio broadcast heard in the film introduces an important piece of zombie lore: "The Survival Command Center at the Pentagon has revealed that a ghoul can be killed by a shot to the head." An information plaque indicates that the "blood" in the 1968 black-and-white film was actually chocolate syrup, originally titled Night of the Flesh Eaters, and absent from the film were the gruesome corpses called "zombies."
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The Dawn of the Dead room features the museum's most famous item: the original Mall elevator from which Stephen "Flyboy" Andrews emerges as a newly minted member of the undead. Among the props on display were SWAT team guns and gas masks, fake body parts designed to spurt blood, SPAM and Iron City beer cans, and Tom Savini's autographed machete half-buried in a human arm—despite Kevin's words.
which probably did not appear in Dawn of the Dead ("They did the same effect in Friday the 13th and many other films"). Information signs indicate that the mall's gun store - which plays an important role in the film - has been completed, and 13 of the mall's 143 stores tell Romero not to leave the screen.
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Kevin added to the view of the museum can be seen in the room that displays the relics of Evil Dead 2: the film that was not shot by George Romero, or in the mall, or even in Pennsylvania. "In my mind, the movies Evil Dead and Living Dead are almost the same," Kevin said, citing their cult status, low-budget creations by young filmmakers launching their careers, "and both are examples of some dead people."
Artifacts on view including a rubber mouse, a tattered piece of styrofoam "located" wood ("It was found in the woods 30 years later," Kevin said) and all the shed where the main character in the movie killed the zombified girlfriend with a chainsaw, which is also on display.
One room is dedicated to the mall - which shows part of an escalator that zombies ride on - while another is dedicated to Romero films that don't have "Dead" in their titles. Items include Sylvia Grantham's cake head from Creepshow and a door from The Crazies which is also covered in the bloody handprints of the cast.
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The timeline's zombie room features the "Bub" doll from Day of the Dead; Michael Jackson from the Thriller video; and the US Army Trioxin Canister zombie from Return of the Living Dead, the 1985 film that, according to Kevin, introduced the "fast zombie" and the idea that zombies like to eat brains.
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Perhaps strangest of all, the museum acknowledges other gore-free movies that have been filmed at Monroeville Mall, an unexpected hodgepodge that includes Flashdance, The Boy Who Loved Trolls, and Zack and Miri Make a Porno. Visitors go outside to the gift shop, where they can buy parts from escalators, parts from warehouses and bricks from parts of the shopping center that have collapsed.
He's very popular," Kevin said of the relic. "We're running low. It's a limited supply." Kevin said that while the original idea was just to get more people to come to the toy store, he's happy with how it turned out. "I've always wanted to do something to promote these movies in Pittsburgh," he said, "even in the early '80s when I thought my career was going to be electrical engineering — nothing as crazy as running a horror movie museum." Stories, Reports
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