Queens of the Dead director Tina Romero reveals why Santa scares her more

What was it like to be raised Romero? "I sat on a zombie's lap before I met a mall Santa," Tina Romero told Mashable Entertainment Editor Kristy Puchko on the Say More couch.

With her debut feature Queens of the Dead, Tina Romero continues a family legacy of zombie love. The daughter of George A. Romero, who defined zombies with films like Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, and Day of the Dead, brings this monster to a modern and definitively queer arena, inspired by her own experiences.

When Romero stopped by Mashable's Say More studio, she told us all about the queer joys of making zombies her own. You can hear about it in the full interview on YouTube.

Romero also shared an insight into what growing up was like when your dad is a horror master. "People do ask me all the time," she said, "'Was your childhood a little fucked up?' And I say, 'No, no, no. It wasn't the zombies that messed me up. It was Santa Claus.'"

Romero went on to explain how her father used his skills in filmmaking and and practical effects to sell his kids on Santa's existence. "My dad was [a] really creative, detail-oriented, wonderful Santa Claus," she shared, revealing how her father made a wallet full of preciously detailed props to prove it was Santa's billfold that had been left behind after dropping off gifts. But that's not all.

"The cookies were eaten, but there were just these special, special details. If there was a note, there was a wax [seal]. It was so legit," she went on, adding that the elder Romero even staged a Santa visit to be caught on a camera.

"They put a camera at the top of the staircase and in real time let it play out," she recalled. "So they waited until like 3 a.m., and my dad had his friend come in with, like, a pillow under the suit, do the thing at the tree. And then he rigged the lighting outside our house so that there was a gobo [a cutout placed on a light] with a silhouette of a sleigh taking off outside the window. Like, he did a full-on production."

See Tina Romero follow in her father's footsteps with her full-on production of queens that slay in Queens of the Dead.

Queens of the Dead is now in theaters.

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