Horror on Film, part 4: The Zombie Apocalypse

Oh, those shambling zombies. So lovable, aren't they. We can divide zombies on film into roughly two periods, B.G. and A.G. The G in both cases stands for George, as in Mr. Romero, whom, in 1968, influenced heavily by Richard Matheson's novel I Am Legend, put his stamp on a genre, so made it his own, that he's a sure-fire horror hall-of-famer. A.G., starting with Mr. Romero's groundbreaking Night of the Living Dead(1968) created the shambling, rotting creature we all know and love.

Before George (1932 - 1968)
Before George there was no light. Only darkness. Just kidding. Well, things were decidedly different before Romero's NotLD. Zombies were animated by black magic. In 1932, horror legend Bela Lugosi played a diabolical voodoo priest in Haiti who had his own platoon of the dead. The name of this film was White Zombie, and yes, you guessed it--Rob Zombie likes this film. Lugosi's dead were mostly cheap labor. They also provided cheap labor in films which followed White Zombie, including King of the Zombies, Revolt of the Zombies and Revenge of the Zombies.

One of my favorite films from this period is I Walked With a Zombie (1943). In its truest sense, I Walked is a pure horror film more than a zombie film, but it still featured the black magic-animated dead customary for the period. Val Lewton, low-budger producer extraordinaire, produced the film for RKO pictures. A true classic.

Move ahead twenty years where Vincent Price plays the lead in Last Man on Earth (1964), the first film adaptation of Matheson's I Am Legend. The creatures in Last Man were vampires, not zombies, but both the novel and the film were influential on Romero when he would release his momentous Night of the Living Dead.

After George (1968 - present)
IF you haven't seen the original Night of the Living Dead (1968), your zombie gene is deeply deprived. There's nothing more for me to say about the film which hasn't been said; from the black and white filming, to the razor sharp ending, which juxtaposes men and monsters. Night is not a gory, nor even a particularly violent film, but it's infinitely watchable, even now. There's just something earnestly alluring about this film. One of the great American horror films, IMO. Moreover, Night was filmed in two locations which are in close proximity to my home. One of which, Livermore Cemetery, namesake of the now defunct town, flooded by the building the the Conemaugh Dam.

Some clumsy attempts to utilize Romero's slow-walking dead appeared early in the 1970's, but it was Europe which took advantage of Romero's invention. Tombs of the Blind Dead (1971) is a wonderfully atmospheric film in which the nasties were really zombies, but Knights Templar raised from the dead. In 1974, Let Sleeping Corpses Lie shows an English countryside overwhelmed by zombies.

Romero was busy as well. In 1978, he created Dawn of the Dead, the sequel to Night. Dawn raised a lot of eyebrows at the time for its explicit gore at the time. Dawn is a revered film even today, but in this writer's opinion, Dawn is more notable for its central message more than its actual execution. Dawn is a ponderously long film, and you will notice, by today's standards, the makeup and effects in Dawn are not particularly good--the result of budgetary constraints. Romero's social commentary, as with Night, is razor sharp; Dawn is essentially about a new society cannibalizing an existing society. One of his central motifs is consumerism, and this stands up well today, in our shallow, cell-phone-pasted-to-face society.

The best thing Dawn gave us, aside from the social commentary, was an unofficial sequel. In 1979, Lucio Fulci's Zombie was released. This is a notable film for a number of reasons. For one, the fun quotient may be the highest ever in the zombie genre. Second of all, Fulci, himself working under the constraints of a low budget, managed to outstrip the makeup and gore in Dawn, taking things to a new level.

Let's talking about the name of this film. If you're from the U.S., you most likely know this film simply as Zombie. People overseas have seen the names Zombi 2 (Italy) and Zombie-Flesheaters (England). Why so many names? Well, it's complicated, you could say. Romero's Dawn of the Dead, when it was released in Italy, took the name "Zombi". Thus, when Fulci's masterpiece came along, it took the name Zombi 2. In other countries, of course, it fell under different names. The resemblance between Dawn of the Dead and Zombie is rudimentary at best; Zombi goes in its own direction, using the age-old black magic like the earliest zombie films, to animate the dead. Zombie, as is typical of the work of Lucio Fulci, is violent and over the top. Who can't love a film featuring an underwater fight between a shark and a zombie? And who can't love that special Fulci eye moment? The makeup is some of the best I've seen in a zombie film. These zombies truly look, well, dead.

I don't care what the hell others say. Zombie is an absolute masterpiece of splatter cinema. Definitely not for the faint of heart, though; if you're squeamish, avoid this film like the zombie plague.

The 1980's brought some gems to the genre, starting with Dead and Buried (1981), which is kind of a true zombie film, and kind of isn't. But, it's a fun, traditional horror films, and one of my favorites. The famous Evil Dead followed in 1982, but again, I'm not sure this is a true zombie film--just a hell of a lot of fun. 1985 brought the zombie comedy, ever ascending fun quotient called Return of the Living Dead. 1987 offered Evil Dead II, 1988 The Dead Next Door--and we've bypassed one very important film.

In 1985, George Romero followed up with his third zombie film, Day of the Dead. What George Romero's opinion of this film is now, I don't know, especially given that it turned out not to be the film he wanted--oh, those pesky budgetary constraints. My opinion of Day, however is quite clear: Day of the Dead is the greatest zombie film of all time. It also happens to be one of the best American horror films of all time. If you saw Day of the Dead the first time and hated it, watch it again. That very phenomenon happened to me; hate turned to love during my second film. Maybe the reason for this is that Day is a particularly angry film; the survivors are going crazy trapped together in a military bunker. The military loathe the scientists and vice versa. And somewhere between it all is a crazy scientist the military affectionately call Frankenstein (you see, the doctor, not the monster) who has sort of a pet zombie (they call him Bub) who can remember bits and pieces of his past life as a human. Day of the Dead is an inventive and dark nihilistic film which features some of the best gore effects ever seen on film (remember, Hollywood, when we did things the old fashioned way, when we didn't resort to those fake-looking CGI effects which completely fail when simulating human/humanoid creatures? Remember that, hmm?)

Okay, and then after Day, we went into the nineties, and we hit 2000 and more zombie films came and more came and more came. Wait, can't we talk about Day of the Dead some more?

Okay, look, there were a few notables films in the 1990's. Braindead, aka Dead Alive was the effort of Peter Jackson, he of Lord of the Rings Fame, and a film made long before Jackson had begun having masturbatory fantasies about adding more CGI to his films. Dead Alive is really good, actually, and has the feel of an over-the-top gore comedy. The other notable film in this decade is Cemetery Man, aka Dellamorte Dellamore, one of my personal favorites, and sort of a comedy/fantasy/horror film with the deliciously lovely Anna Falchi (come to pappa) and an ending that ... well, you have to see this film.

The 2000's brought some honorable shambling dead including three more films from George Romero, Land of the Dead (2005), Diary of the Dead (2007) and Survival of the Dead (2009). I regret to inform my readers that Mr. Romero's best days may be behind him. Sorry, George, but Land does nothing for me. Good cast, decent story, but it felt as though you were just going through the motions. It doesn't feel as though the characters in Land are ever in serious jeopardy--certainly not like it did in Night, Dawn and Day. Diary of the Dead was marginally better. I actually found it to be somewhat creative, but Day of the Dead it isn't (it seems that, for Romero, the zombie has become an excuse for social commentary). I haven't seen Survival yet, but the initial reports don't look promising, but you know what they say: there's no accounting for taste.

In 2004, we saw Dawn of the Dead, a remake of the original. I must say, I love this film--I actually prefer it to the original (at least we don't have to look at green skin bleeding purple blood; yikes, what truly bad special effects those were; sorry, George). 2004 also offered the effective horror/comedy, Shaun of the Dead. I love this film. This decade also offered 28 Days Later and its sequel, 28 Weeks Later. I've seen 28 Days Later, and I must say, it's a blind spot for me; I don't get the praise. I actually prefer the Aussie film, Undead (2003), which I believe is underrated. Fido (2006) is an interesting film, though it's more social satire than horror film.

So, despite the popularity of the zombie in modern culture, there haven't exactly been a plethora of great zombie films (though there are a plethora of really, really bad zombie films, none of which are mentioned in this blog, are they, Bruno Mattei?)

What will the future bring? Hopefully a film version of Max Brooks's World War Z. The project is scheduled for completion in 2012, but who knows? How they bring a novel of that detail and complexity to film, I don't know. Brooks, unfortunately, doesn't have a creative voice in the project. The original script, leaked on the Internet and called brilliant by those who read it, has been rewritten. If it was that brilliant, why rewrite it? Brooks's novel is an astonishing work of genius and detail, taking the zombie to place I never thought he'd go. Maybe we'll get a film to match, but I'm incredulous. I predict another shallow, CGI-riddled, Hollywood wankfest.

No matter, we still have Day of the Dead (1985). They've just released a special edition blue ray with 100 hours of extras (well, not that many, but a lot). I have to get myself a blue ray player just for that film. I love you, Bub and Frankenstein.