The Jackalicious Files

A look at Zombie Films and their place in movie history

At the conclusion of this editorial, the full length film "Night of the Living Dead" (1968), directed by George Romero, can be seen in its entirety.

No one can conceive the variety of feelings which bore me onwards, like a hurricane, in the first enthusiasm of success. Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world. A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me. No father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve theirs. Pursuing these reflections, I thought, that if I could bestow animation upon lifeless matter, I might in process of time (although I now found it impossible) renew life where death had apparently devoted the body to corruption. ~

Mary Shelley
"Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818)

In 1968 the film "Night of the Living Dead", directed by George A. Romero changed the primitive Afro-Caribbean Vodou story of the 'zombi' slave and gave it a twist unlike any horror film before it. This low budget tale spawned a new sub-genre of horror and macabre and brought forth countless imitators and parodies and has inspired many authors to expand more on the fictional and futurist version of the 'zombie apocalypse'. Today we have with us literature, video games, television series, comics, games, musical artists, fan based meeting groups on surviving a potential zombie apocalypse, and the list goes on and on. It cannot be denied that George Romero has the credit for giving us our friendly neighborhood walking dead, but when you begin to look deeper into history around the world, we can see a common theme in religion, folklore and legend. In fact, the dead returning to life is the most fundamental part of Christianity and other world religions. This fact could be the reason why we find the zombies or precisely, the 'living dead' so intriguing and why the zombie is never going away.

The first living dead film by Romero was co-written by John Russo who later branches off with his own series of films based on a zombie style apocalypse. Romero went on to create five more films loosely based on the first with the first sequel titled, "Dawn of the Dead"(1978). This story written by Romero continues with the original scenario but with the plot centering its heroes and heroines in a shopping mall. Much like the first, this Alamo style holdout by the survivors sets up a definitive future theme to most zombie films of the film industry lending credit to Romero's genius. "Dawn of the Dead", is genuinely agreed upon by most (including myself) as the best Romero film to date. For zombie fans, it might be interesting to know that the term 'zombie' for Romero's living dead was never used by him. In fact, the only reference to the dead in the film was the term, "ghoul" used by a newscaster on the television. The household word, 'zombie' or sometimes spelled, 'zombi', used until the rights for "Dawn of the Dead" was purchased for international distribution by Italian film producer, Claudio Argento. Argento had the film renamed "Zombi" for audiences in Europe to help better promote the premise of the film. The name stuck and soon became synonymous with the sub-genre we know and love today.
All the earlier Hollywood zombie films before Romero were based on the Afro-Caribbean folklore of the 'zombi' slave, which were believed to be the dead re-animated or oftentimes the living in some trance state doing the bidding of some evil, stereotyped caribbean witch-doctor. All the early and popular occult themed zombie films lasted from the 1930s into the late 1960s until the release of Romero's independently made first living dead film. Interestingly, the original zombie stories were comparable in popularity to the string of Egyptian themed Mummy films coming out of Hollywood; for example,the theme of all mummy films are based on the living dead being reanimated as the result of some ancient curse. The first film being "The Mummy"(1932) and starring Boris Karloff which premiered the same year as the first official zombie film. Today the Mummy theme has enjoyed a great success with no less than three big budget Mummy movies starring Brandon Fraser and two other related Egyptian themed films ("The Scorpion King") very loosely based on the Protodynastic period Egyptian character,King Scorpion, I and II and starring Dwayne Johnson, formally known to WWE fans as, "The Rock".

Brief history of Zombie films:

The first zombie film in movie history is credited to "White Zombie" (1932), by the Halperin brothers, and starring Bela Lugosi who was most famous for his portrayal of Count Dracula (and did it without sparkling!). Many zombie films soon followed, but all remained true to the primitive occult theme. In 1966 the film, "Plague of the Zombies",directed by John Gilling ventured into a more gruesome and bloody style of zombie film but still stayed true to the occult like theme with Voodou as the main culprit. The late 1960s into the 70s were a real developing time in the horror film industry and each director was continually trying to outdo another with how much gore he or she could get away with. Countless low budget, cheesy horror films were so gratuitous at times that some trailers gave warnings to the potential audiences that this particular movie was the most gruesome movie of all. Of course the warnings weren't to keep away ticket sales, but to drive them up and folks just couldn't get enough of it.

With "Night Of The Living Dead", Romero threw out the occult theme of the living dead and gave this his tale a more pseudo-scientific reason for the dead returning to life. By catching news clips throughout the movie, the viewer learns that the living dead which were referred to as "ghouls" by news reports, were reanimated by radiation from an NASA deep space exploration probe that exploded during an earth reentry. Romero's vision with this film is a genuine paradox of sorts because his first film is often refereed to as a revisionist style to the zombie occult theme of those previous. However, his move with the pseudo-science in the story line has given movie watchers the classic zombie we all know today. Kyle W. Bishop's book, "American Zombie Gothic: the Rise and Fall (and Rise) of the Walking Dead in Popular Culture" brings up these facts with the zombie genre history and how it has changed. Bishop writes,

For example, big-screen zombie narratives have proven increasingly popular since their inception in the early 1930s, and in the years following September 11, the number of both studio and independent zombie movies has risen dramatically. Although interest in the subgenre had noticeably decreased during the halcyon days of American in the 1990s, Holly has since embraced the genre with revisionist films such as 28 Days later (2002), video game inspired action movies such as Resident Evil (2002), big-budget remakes such as "Dawn of the Dead" (2004), an even romantic comedies such as "Shaun of the Dead" (2004). Even now the zombie craze shows no signs of slowing down, with 2007 seeing the theatrical releases of "Planet Terror", "28 Weeks later", and "Resident Evil: Extinction" - the Sundance Film Festival even featured two zombie films that season - and with the remake of Day of the Dead, George A. Romero's own "Diary of the Dead" and "Zombie Strippers" all coming out in 2008. (Bishop P. 10)

Inspiration For The Living Dead Films:

Some historians debate on what was the inspiration behind the modern living dead films but Romero himself in an 2008 interview with cinemablend.com is quite clear. When asked he stated that Richard Matheson's 1954 novel, "I Am Legend" was his original inspiration to his films. Romero explains,

I didn’t call them zombies. When I did Night of the Living Dead I called them ghouls, flesh eaters. To me back then, zombies were just those boys in Caribbean doing the wet-work for Bela Lugosi. So I never thought of them as zombies. I thought they were just back from the dead. I ripped off the idea for the first film from a Richard Matheson novel called Am Legend, which is now back with us after a couple of incarnations prior. I thought Am Legend was about revolution. I said if you’re going to do something about revolution you should start at the beginning. (Cinema)

So, it seems to be pretty clear that the birth of our modern zombie evolved by inspiration from Matheson's novel. Nevertheless, If you read Matheson's novel, or watch any movie version of it, you'll quickly see that the novel wasn't based zombies at all, but a vampire like plague spread by a virus. Oddly enough, this virus theme has now come to dominate the zombie world lending a better explanation to how zombies propagate in the first place. Matheson's novel "I am Legend", has spawned no less than three highly profitable U.S. films along with three very big name actors in all of them. The first of the "Legend" films movie based on Matheson's novel was "The Last Man on Earth"(1964), starring famous horror actor, Vincent Price. Following this film was the 1971, "Omega Man" with Charlton Heston in the lead role and then the huge box office hit, "I am Legend"(2007), starring will Smith, who is fastly becoming quite the movie legend himself. Smith's take on the Matheson novel grossed over half a billion dollars.

Zombies In Popular Culture:

The idea of the flesh eating zombie has become so popular that hundreds of films have been made on the premise of Romero's first zombie film alone. Today many leading movie critics have gone far as saying that zombies are new Vampire. In fact, one can buy books, comics, graphic novels, magazines, video games, clothing, candy,popular on-line comics,party favors and even adult toys for the genre. Popular personas imitate or reflect the zombie culture such as the popular heavy metal musician,film director, screen writer and movie producer, Rob Zombie. Rob Zombie is also crediting for establish the band, "White Zombie" before he went solo, lending to the popularity of the zombie fan culture. If you are daring enough an on-line site said to be a zombie insurance offers you peace of mind for the potential customer just in case we see the unlikely event of the dead walking around. Zombie items such as your board games and the countless Halloween items are a big part of the American consumer driven market, - we even have poetry on zombies! . In Atlanta, Georgia the annual Dragon*Con (Dragon*con -an annual Sci-fi and fantasy convention) draws thousands of fans from around the world that have an annual parade with the traditional fans portrayed and walking as zombies (amongst other genres of horror and sci-fi). More recently, the network station AMC decided on experimenting with a weekly horror/drama series titled, "The Dead" based on a comic written by a Robert Kirkman filmed and based in Atlanta, Georgia and the surrounding countryside. The original for the series was in late 2010 only had six episodes but the critics cheered it, the fans loved it and the ratings of the show were phenomenal. AMC stated it would extend it for full season since it became one of their highest rated programs. [Walking...] Romero was interviewed and asked if he would guest direct an episode of the series but graciously turned down the offer stating that he had his own franchise to deal with.

Even though it has been over 40 years since the first Romero film, those following the lead haven't strayed much from the story line other than a few twists to the plot here and there but almost always ending with some Alamo like standoff. Occasionally zombies are given some basic intelligence or the ability to run (that's just too scary, zombies shouldn't run) as in the British film, "28 Days Later" directed by Danny Boyle or the "Resident Evil" series of films first directed by Paul Anderson which take the genre to new levels focusing more on the crisis as a bone fide man-made plague. However, more often than not, most zombie films stay true to the rules for fighting and killing zombies. The act of killing a zombie usually takes a simple shot or hard blow to the head. Next, if you get bit by a zombie and live (or die), you get to join the zombies as one of their cohorts, which in turn creates a bona fide pandemic, In turn that pandemic is fought off by the U.S. Army, but we all know the army never beats them, and soon you have zombies wearing camouflage and toting carbines. Simply put, everyone succumbs to the zombie hoard of drooling college students who need a paycheck.

Living Dead Satirical And Parodic Films:

"Return Of The Living Dead" is the first film to introduce zombies as brain eating monsters and not the typical flesh eating kind of walking dead. Romero shuns the idea of brain eating zombies and was quoted in a Vanity Fair magazine interview by saying, "First of all, why does everybody say that zombies eat brains?...I've never had a zombie eat a brain." The 2004 film, "Shaun Of The Dead", directed by Edgar Wright was a British zombie parody poking fun at zombies by asking the many questions we all have about them such as, "How do zombies know whom to chase?" or the "What if we act like zombies, will they chase us too or count us as their own?" The most recent parody of a zombie film was the 2009 film, "Zombie Land" directed by Ruben Fleischer. In the film which stars Woody Harrelson with his role as the depressive, yet exuberant personality who enjoys killing zombies, answered the question how zombies congregate, and that it is a herding instinct like with deer or bison. While not a comedy or parody, the TV series "The Walking Dead" mentioned previously, answers the question by saying the dead know the difference between the living and dead by smell alone.

Religious Undertones Associated With The Living Dead:

Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust: for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead ~ Isaiah 26:19

I guess the real question is why the thought of the zombies or the thought of the dead coming back to life intrigue us so much? Is it because we live in a mortal body and a finite world? When you think about the subject of vampires, they're really not much different than the zombies. Vampires like zombies are often called the living dead, keeping their mortality in check by drinking the blood of the living. Furthermore, most stories do show that getting bit by a vampire makes you one as well, which is very similar to a zombie pandemic. Mary Shelley's, "Frankenstein, or modern Prometheus", could in some eyes be construed as the first zombie ever imagined by a writer but that is not without some mild debate. Nevertheless, Shelley's classic tale still brings up the same imagination and obsession of having the dead returning to life in some form or another, which is something mankind has been obsessed with since the beginning. The ancient world has many stories passed down in reference to the living dead such as the Norse belief in beings called 'Aptrgangr' or the 'Draugr', which were living dead creatures that possessed strange magical powers. (Simpson) Most major religions today and especially the beliefs of any Judea-Christian or Muslim community may explain why the ancient vampire stories of the living dead returning to life is such a big topic. In my very own family, the story of the monster, "Bloody Bones and raw head" does resemble a zombie in a lot of ways. I never really understood what he is supposed to be exactly but I guess you could say he's your typical, 'boogie man' for bad kids or maybe a way for my father to scare the pee out of me. Devout Christians believe that one day the dead shall rise again, and be reborn and of course judged by the Lord Jesus Christ, - that same God in man who rose from the dead after three days in the tomb. In fact, one of the gospels mentions that when Jesus died on the cross, some of the dead did rise up and walk amongst the living (Book of Matthew). Muslims share the same belief as Christians in regards to the resurrection of the dead, along with orthodox Jewish sects. So, perhaps man's fixation on the living dead really isn't so foreign to us after all but some subliminal reminder of the culture we belong to. Anyone who is from Mexico or shares that heritage is quite familair with El dia de los muertos (Day of the Dead). On this day, the dead walk the earth in spirit, whiile the family of the departed celebrate by leaving out gifts of sorts for the dead with prayers recited so that the souls can be at peace.

And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. ~ Revelation 20:13

From its primitive state to the parodic, it is quite apparent that the zombie theme has taken its place among the many sub-genres of classic horror. Yes, it may lose its popularity from time to time but its never going to die out and will continue to keep coming back, time and time again. In fact, the annual "Zombie Day" that started on the LSU campus a few years ago is gaining momentum and may have contributed to the 'Zombie Walk' gathering that takes place in cities all across the U.S. and abroad. Quite frankly, this author is a bit bored with the mundane and unimaginative vampire saga. I look forward to the new twists and story lines in the world of zombiedom.

*In 1999, the original "Night of the Living Dead"(1968)attained the honor as an inductee into the Library of Congress National Film Registry.(Films...)

**"Night of the Living Dead" is in the public domain due to a copyright filing error made by the distributor when it was introduced. The movie is free for you to watch in its entirety at the conclusion of the sources list.

Sources:

Films selected to National Film Registry, Library of Congress, 1989-2009. Library of Congress. 09 Dec. 2010.(http://www.loc.gov/film/nfrchron.html)

Kyle, William Bishop. American Zombie Gothic: the Rise and Fall (and rise) of the Walking dead in Popular Culture. North Carolina: McFArland and Co. Inc. 2010

Book of Matthew, Holy Bible. Chapter 27:50-53

Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft. Frankenstein or, The Modern Prometheus. London. 1818

Simpson, Jacquline, and Árnason, Jón. Icelandic Folktales and Legends.Los Angeles, CA. Berkely Press. 1972

Spratznagel, Eric. "George A. Romero: "Who Says Zombies Eat Brains?". Vanity Fair. 27 May 2010

The Walking Dead – Blogs. Caroyln Koo. 9 DEC 2010. AMC. 09 Dec. 2010.(http://blogs.amctv.com/the-walking-dead/ )