Brains... Brains... why I LOVE Zombie Movies

Friday night I subjected myself to what was probably the worst zombie movie every. I needed to wind down from a very busy and stressful day so I thought, I want to watch a Zombie movie. When I saw the title of the movie I foolishly mistook it for a George Romero movies. It was bad, have I mentioned that? Wait, yes, it was the worst. It was corny, one of the female stars was naked for the entire movie, the special effects for 1985 where much more advanced than what was used for this movie. The FX people should be ashamed of themselves... Right the title. Return of the Living Dead.... bleech. So, that inspired me to put together a list for you of the some of the top in books of good, bad and evil.

Best Zombie Movie - In my books that is 28 Days Later. Not surprisingly a British made master piece that makes me proud.

Worst Zombie Movie - As mentioned above Return of the Living Dead

Funniest Zombie Movie - Shaun of the Dead. I had to watch this movie three times because, the first time I had to keep explaining ‘British Speak’ to the people watching with me (annoying), the second I was peeing myself while laughing, the third time to actually see what was really going on. And the zombie parts were good too!

Cult Classic - We can thank George Romero for this one. Night of the Living Dead.

First Zombie Movie - The first known Zombie movie was released August 4, 1932 and was called White Zombie. I have it on video cassette and the quality isn't so great, apparently the DVD version has been remastered and is much easier to watch. Me thinks I need a trip to the DVD store.

Biggest Franchise - Living Dead... though I don't think George Romero is making a huge profit from all of them, as so many people are ripping them off.

Best Trend to come out of Zombie movies - Zombie Walks, I so want to do it next year!!!

Best Rip off of a Zombie movie - Micheal Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ Sadly it was is as normal as he would ever look.

A more thorough look at Zombie movies... I stole this from Wikipedia.com

Although the depiction of zombies in film has recently become much more varied, they were originally presented in White Zombie (Victor Halperin, 1932) as mindless, unthinking henchmen under the spell of an evil magician/overlord. This depiction continued through the 1930s until they started to move around more of their own accord, as in I Walked with a Zombie (Jacques Tourneur, 1943). There was often a strong sexual component in the depiction of zombies of this era.

In 1968, George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead premiered. Critics initially reacted negatively to its depiction of cannibalism and gore and the movie's pessimistic tone, but the film soon developed a strong following and is now considered a modern classic. Although cannibalism in horror was nothing new at the time, the movie standardised the depiction of zombies eating human flesh, and created new rules still in use in films, such as a severe head injury being the only way to kill a zombie. Zombies being shown staggering around slowly, moaning and in various states of decomposition, can also be traced back to Romero's films. The 1978 sequel, Dawn of the Dead, can be regarded as the precursor to the modern zombie movie subgenre. The third entry in the series was Day of the Dead (1985), followed two decades later by the fourth, Land of the Dead (2005). The original movie made no reference to the creatures as "zombies," but rather as "ghouls", although the word was used once in the sequel. It is quite likely that the term "zombie" was coined in reference to the trance-like stupor of the creatures, not their cannibalistic tendencies. By 2005, the term was accepted by Romero, with the Land of the Dead character Kaufman (Dennis Hopper) exorting "Zombies, man. They creep me out." [1]

Internationally, Dawn of the Dead was released under the name Zombi, just months before Lucio Fulci's Zombi II (1979), which was in fact filmed at the same time as Romero's 'Dawn', despite the popular belief that it was made in order to cash in on the success of 'Dawn'. The only reference to 'Dawn' was the title change to Zombi II. In America, Dan O'Bannon's 1985 movie, Return of the Living Dead, took a more comedic approach to distinguish his movie from George Romero's; it had the zombies hunger specifically for brains instead of all human flesh. 1981's Night of the Zombies was the first film to reference a mutagenic gas as a source of zombie contagion, later echoed by Trioxin in Return of the Living Dead.

After the mid-1980s, the subgenre was mostly relegated to the underground. Notable entries include director Peter Jackson's ultra-gory film Braindead (1992) (released as Dead Alive in the U.S.), Bob Balaban's comic 1993 film My Boyfriend's Back where a self-aware high school boy returns to profess his love for a girl and his love for human flesh, and Michele Soavi's Dellamorte Dellamore (1994) (released as Cemetery Man in the U.S.), but it was not until the next decade's box office successes (the Resident Evil movies in 2002 and 2004), the Dawn of the Dead remake (2004), and the homage/parody Shaun of the Dead (2004) that the zombie subgenre experienced a resurgence. The new interest allowed Romero to create the fourth entry in his zombie series. In 2006 filmmaker Dean Lachiusa made a cinematic sampling of the 1968 Night of the Living Dead called "Neo-Cine." Although critically acclaimed, this redux-version is a source of debate among film purists. Another zomedy is Canadian film Fido.

Around the turn of this century, there have been numerous direct-to-video (or DVD) zombie movies made by extremely low-budget filmmakers using digital video. These can usually be found for sale online from the distributors themselves, rented in video rental stores or released internationally in such places as Thailand.

Jason Voorhees, the titular character from the Friday the 13th series of films, is much like a zombie, having been killed and revived numerous times (sometimes by electricity).

In the British movie, Shaun of the Dead, a parody of the Romero zombie movies, the reasons for the undead's reanimation were never fully explained, although several possible causes were cited either over radio broadcasts throughout the first half of the movie, or through brief glimpses of newspaper headlines. The causes were traditional horror clichés, but weren't important to the forward motion of the plot. The only way to kill the zombies was by destroying their head. The zombies had little intelligence; at least enough to work at grocery stores or play video games. It is also one of the few modern zombie films to use the word "Zombie" throughout its runtime.

Brains... Brains... Sadly in order to get good ones, I will have to corner some women!