Introduction to The Zombie Movie Encyclopedia

Introduction
"The evil that men do lives after them "
-Julills Caesar
.
I"
'ptj' sta[lng eyes.
~' l can't bear t Ilose e n ,
_\Vhite
Zombie
.
h monstrous things ... "
"It's hard to believe sue
_Ollflllga
)"
sec 1's a has-been .
"Don't bother me ." can Y -Killg of tl,e Zombies
't
Oll
· h me .. · con f use d '"
.
"Oh, the whole t h IIlg as
_ White Zombie
I he zombie remains, for the most parr, unappreciated. Zombie
"",,, .,re rclegated to the last page of every horror movie guide, saved
I,,,,,, litt e r obscurity only by the dubious ZOlltar, the Thillg from
I he re arc almost no serious studies of TV and movie zombies,
! Ih"It, .He for vampires in abundance.
Tevertheless, the sheer volUIII III IOl11 bic movies attests to their enduring cult popularity and
UI I I IlIPO CH )' relevance. The Zombie Movie Ellcyclopedia suggests
lUll 111111).; of this relevance. ·
I hI ... hook is not only about movies but also about a peculiar
lid III l ontcmporary s uburban \X/estern mythology. I am not as
III II 'Inl I II the qua lity of the films as in the attention and creativlit, \ dnol c to their particular treatment of the zombie. TechniII III I( 'l 1 IIlovics may feature unimaginative zombies, while even
I
II I tlu' worst somctimes have glimpses of genius, deliberate or
I. III II I h.t YC simply tried to be an objective zombie ethologist,
"1~ IlI t' l1I in th cir natural habitat, and recording their nature
\ I ""'.
1.1\1 111.
11/'d /m ('I1ls of ::.om/)ie (tInts includ e Pierre Cires' detailed overview
;). Rose Loudoll's Zombie: The Living Dead (19 76), and
"
II . 1',lllIa "" NU lr WI Zombies" (1986, The Dead Th ar Walk). Also
\
II. "".1\ '" ,'S Aiorts- Vi/ lfl lll s" (I9 77), Steve TIJrower's entry {or "ZOI11I 1\11 ( 111111'.1111011 III Ilur ror (ed. Kim Newmall. 1996), and the catalogue
II
11./ \I In/." ./ \ A / III Ilurror Films (I99 fi). Allan Hr)'ce's excellellt coin .. " olll /,w 'IIIII 'It'S (:' IIII/,J), .tllIed Zomhic. 2000) gi/lcs bTief CUlries
111.1 //11/"'/"\ t /'<11'1/" ~ WI kl'" dlTt'C IoTS dlul film Q.des,
11111.
II
I
1111 '>.11'111(' flW~
2
Introduction
History and Evolution
+
Early Caribbean travel literature occasionally mentioned voodoo
rites and transmitted snippets of zombie lore, but even as late as 1928
folklorist Elsie Parsons mentioned that the "zombi" was virtually
unknown outside of Haiti. William Seabrook carapulted them to
instant fame with his 1929 rravel book The Magic Isla lid, and afrer
Kennerh Webb's 1932 ew York stage producrion Zombie the crearure fell irrevocably under the auspices of the entertainment industry. A month after the play opened, the Halperin brothers began work
on a film adaptation, White Zombie, and despite a su it brought
against them by Webb, the movie opened in the summer of 1932.
Bcla Lugosi was still riding on the wave of his ground-breaking
performance in Dracula (1930), which had stunned audiences still
not fully used to talkies, and his presence in White Zombie graced
rhat film with a reflected brilliance it might not have enjoyed had
rhere been no such film as Dracula first. The zombie didn't immediarely gain the popularity of the other undead monsrers to spring up
afrer Dracula-Frallkensteill ~ 1931) and The Mummy (1932)-or 0>
other fiends such as The Illvisible Mall (1933) and the bela red Wolfmall (1941). However, while rhe occasional filmmaker risked a zombiecentered movie thar generally flopped , the creature was ro some extent
kept current after its original fifreen years or so of independent ex istence by its presence in vampire movies, as the subordinate minions
of the main vampire.
Though derivative in some respects, the zombie has nonetheless
survived as an II1dependent mythological creature in its own right.
Moreover, zombies have organically given rise to a number of recognizable sub-species, such as azi zombies, underwater zombies,
and zombie monks. ' After all, rheir roots are to be found in African
and African-Caribbean folklore, and so they are one of rhe few screen
crearures in the Hollywood menagerie nor of European origin. Zom. U"derwater zombies: Zombies of Mora-Tau (J957), Shock Waves (l977), The Fog
(19791, Zombie Lake (1980), The Alien Dead (1980), Creep,how (1982); see also
Erotic Nights of the Living Dead (1979) mId Zombie (I979) . Nazi zombies: ~illg ~f
the Zombies (I941), Revenge of the Zombies (1943), Shock Waves (I977), Zomblc
Lake (1980), Gamma 693 (1981) , Oasis of thc Zombies (I982). li ard Rock Zombies
(l984). Ginseng King (1989). Zombie monks: Tombs of the Blind series (197 1- 1975),
Cross of the Devil (I975). Burial Ground (1980). M;:all sion of the Li\'ing Dc;:ad (Ic)S2).
Olln'r ltolCllIorliJy subspecies ",cllld(' n,dl/eel.. ~(jmlm~s. \' /I/J/Ill' z.wlIl)f('s . IImlt ll(' "IT('
Imt {-I'llfll'dillt.1! dock wurk er ;,ombie.
Introduction
3
bies are, furthermore, the only creature to pass direcrly from folk lore
to the screen, without first having an established literary tradition.
The Early Film Zombie (1932-1952)
The film zombie of the '30s and '40s is essentially a backdrop
figure, an armospheric detail added to supplement a more dramatic
human villain . Though continuously menacing and potentially fierce,
ea rly zombies are seldom exploired for violence. This is true to their
folkloric roots: as Wade Davis and Maya Deren make clear, the fear
"' Haiti is nor of being harmed by a zombie, but of becoming one.
Farly Hollywood zombies are primarily objecrs of visual horror rather
,han genuine threars to rhe proragonisrs-the camera focuses on them
lor a moment while rhunderingly eerie music plays. If they kill anyone of importance, it's their own master, the villain, at the movie's
climax.
~ \;1Ia. ~1.4 {'is'''''''' of -tIM.. Q,.:>\o~-\on ...
Early film zombies are roboric. There is grace in their unwaverIng pace and fluidity of motion. When rhey walk in a group their gait
" perfectly synchronized, and if rhey ralk at all, it's in a monotone.
I hey exhibir no passions or drives, bearing little resemblance to rhe
Illcreasingly an imal istic zombies of recent decades. In fact, their utter
I.ock of concern fo r humans, or for anyrhing at all, was whar origin.oIly made zombies frightening. 0 zombie movie since the early
"ecades has sustained the complete depersonalization rhar is rhe
,morce of fear in Haitian folk lore.
Early zombie movies are most obviously concerned wirh rhe
.I"propriation of female bodies, and the annihilation of female minds,
h), male captors. Time and again the villains learn rhat to possess rhe
wo man's mindless body is unsatisfying. This relarively safe-almosr
. . .IL:charinc-theme pales next to the charged racial tensions that perIIlc~He these films at a less explicit level, however. The earliest zomh,e movie, White Zombie (1932), draws attention by its title to the
l.'LI that rhe hypnotized heroine is a white woman, and not one of
d,e native dead who form Legendre'S zombie army. OI/OIlga (1935)
1\ p.ltcnrl y racist in its prcsentation of natives as monsters, and conIIIIII.oIly plays on a symbolic identification of black with ignorance
.llHlcvi i, and white with light and purity. These relatively simplistic
I .,co.l l dynamics a rc redeemed by rhe powerful I Walked with a Zom·
/,,1' (1943), which susrain s a rhoughrful juxraposition of black and
Wlll ll' irn~lgl."r)' ill a \cuing frallghf with racial tension. Thc woodcn
H -Ud
4
Introduction
figurehead from a slave sh ip erected in front of the plantation house
looms over the dominant European aristocracy 'thar originally brough t
the native population'S ancestors to the island in shackles. More
recently, movies such as Sligar Hill (1974) and Demoni 3 (1991) have
shown a rekindled interest in the slave substratum of zombie folklore, featuring reanimated slave zombies that still wear the ir chains
and manacles.
The '50s and '60s:
Tension and Transition (1952-1966)
The '50s and early '60s represent a strange rransitional time fo~
the screen zombie, as though the concept were ready to move beyolld
its stagnant, two-decade-old paradigm, but experienced some confusion in exactly which direction to go. People stayed fascinated with
the word long after they had tired of the o rigina). referent, and it's
interesting to observe the range of creatures and alrered stares o(consciousness that passed under the term "zombie~' in this period. Zombies of the Stratosphere (1952), for instance, insists on calling
human-looking Martian invaders ."zombies," though they think, feel,
talk, and plot to take over the earth . Zombies of Mora-Tall ("1957)
returns to the classic zombie conceptua li zatioll, but curiously resituates the zombies under water. In Teenage Zombies (1957) the term
refers to the wholesome, middle-class, (un-loving protagonists, who
are simply under the effect of a hypnotizing drug. Ray Denni s Steckler's suspect The II/credibly Strange Creatllres Who Stopped Living
and Became Mixed-Up Zombies (1964) cheekily offers as "zombies"
the embittered and ferocious ex-lovers of Madame Estrella, now
crazed, homicidal fiends horribly disfigured by acid and deranged by
imprisonment (but who, for all that, have not stopped living and are
not zombies). The Astro-Zombies (1968) peddles synthetic cybernetic
androids as zombies. Most outrageous of all, perhaps, is Del Tenney's
delightful The Horror of Party Beach (1963), which freely attaches
the term "zombie" to its irradiated, humanoid, mutated fish antagonists. But even in this conceptua l porpourri , certain coherent threads
of exploration and development are discernible.
The '50s were preoccupied with individuality, the privacy of
human consciousness, and the potential for depersonali zation. lvlovies
such as Pial/ Nine frolll aliter Space (1958) and l' II'isi!J/e In vaders
( 1959) share a COlll 1l10n anxiety in in ... i ... lillg Ih.1I the rt'vlvcd de.H.I an..:
Introduction
5
not sentient in any way, and that the ambulatory loved ones are not
really themselves (space aliens are the culprits in both of those pictures). The animated bodies are kept radically distinct from any conception of mind or soul. The issues of human dignity and family
relations that inherently arise from images of the mindless, walking
dead are suppressed, though clearly rippling beneath the surface, in
these and other ostensibly safe and sanitized movies of the period .
With The Last Mall 011 Earth (1964), issues such as the disposai of
bodies and the residual feelings for the deceased reach the surface,
paving the way for the genuinely distu rbing themes that emerge in
the late '60s.
Though Halliwell calls "The Incredible Doktor Markesan" (a
1962 episode of the TV series Thriller hosted by Boris Karloff) "pos. ibly the last of the old-style zombies to ema~ate fro m Hollywood "
(246), what it in fact represents is a taste of the new-style zombie that
would come into its own increasingly in the '60s: the visibly rotting
cadaver. This trend actually took root in Mexico in advance of other
countries, especially in such gems as Rafae! Portillo's The Aztec
Mummy series (starting in 1957). England decisively established the
convention, however, with Doctor Blood's Coffill (1960) and especia lly Nague of the Zombies (1966) . Though deformed and disfigured
villains, monstrous aliens, and radiared creatures are commonplace
lIuoughout marion picture history, there was clearly some unspoken
taboo against portraying human cadavers as visibly decomposing.
Early Hollywood features revive the dead often enough even those
many centuries dead- but, always rest content with making them
" ,lien and gaunt. The '60s thus mark a transitional period in the evolution of the conceprion of human dignity, a transformation whose
completion is perhaps signaled most decisively by the graveyard art
III the opening scene of The Texas Chail1saw Massacre (1974).
1hrough this period, scrcen zombies thus serve as key symbolic gauges
lor the rrivialization of humans as individuals and for the declining
IIl ... istcncc that life is sacred.
1+ ; \, ;""pcr-\cu.-\ 4"",,", _ ~CMpor.., 'I -z_W; ..~ .u<:~'f on SI:fUJI •
The Stabilizing of the Contemporary
Zombie Mythos (1966-present)
I he protean zombic concept crystallized into its currently rectlgni/.lhk form with two lnovics in the lare '6 0s, one in England and
Wit' III Alllt' ncl: ' 11)(! Plasm!
Ih e Z ombies ( 1966) and Night of tb e
or
6
Livillg Dead (1968). Plaglle established the zombie's decaying appearance and nasty temper, while Night established its motives and lImItations. In earlier presentations, the zombie was a derivative creature,
always under the control of some other more intelligent being (voodoo
master, mad scientist, vampire). Romero liberated rhe zombIe from
the shackles of a master, and invested his zombies not with a function (a job or task such as zombies were standardly given by voodoo
priests), but rather a drive (eating Aesh) . He conAated the "zom~ie"
with the "ghoul," a cannibal creature that (despite a couple of 30s
movies) had never really caught on by itself. Zombies thus become
endowed with a highly physical, biological craving; they are no longer
robotic machines, but Illuttonous organism~ demanding .repr~senta­
tion in the food chain . More t han 60 movIes follow NIght 111 presenting zombies as cannibals.
.
..
Night of the Livillg Dead's most peculiar zombie mnovanon IS
the idea that zombies can be destroyed only by being shot in the head
or by otherwise deactivating the brain core." This is consist~nt with
the implied physicalism of the trilogy: however aberrant, the life force
inhabiting the errant bodies is intrinsically connected WIth the physical brain processes. Day of the Dead (1985) provides more detaIl :
the brain is slowly rotting, and when the decomposition consumes
the brain core entirciy, the zombie wil1 cease functioning . Two to
three dozen movies follow Night in making the head the zombie's
only vulnerable part.
W hat stands out most about pOSt 1960s zombie cinema is not so
much the violence or the horror as the ~ore. T he gore in Night
shocked Roger Ebert when he first saw the movIe at a Saturday matinee, surrounded by horrified children: " They had seen horror before,
but this was something else. This was ghouls eatmg people-you could
actually see what they were eating." Blood and gutS were coming into
their own in the '60s with Herschell Gordon Lewis' free-for-alls, and
though the visceral element was rela ti vely subdued in the '70s,. horror movies in the '80s were often little more than two-dimensional
slaughterhouses.U his development particularly complemenred the
essentially corporeal and blOloglcal theme~ of the zombIe mythos,
in which the living organism is unceremoniously revealed to be a
•
Ti,e ided dclllflll)' d/J/Jeared cllrl,,,, i" Revcnge of Ihe Zomhie') (l94~) tm~ Crc:Hure
\\'llh thc /\WIll I\r.liu (1,),5) - tlmttgll III etlcl! of IllO se movies " S (11 /)' mclttlmted
,till' -,Hit!
til
Dr. ().htll \ ~ l olI .. tcr ('W\·I). II'IWrl' lI I ~ Iml IfillII' /('51.
Introduction
.r
Introduction
CdSU-
7
'->h;~ 'ZotoIc>iL -C\,fQh ",,",'1. 0Cl\\ ~"""'f I ~ s-\lIl C!.lil\~
tempOrary and convement accumulation of cell clusters. which subsists for a time and then deteriorates when the individual cells no
Fonger derive benefit from the arrangement. A major concern of zombie movies is the stripping away of sutface ornament, such that the
insides are out, in body no less than in mind. The skin is unable to
confine the otgans, just as the cerebral cortex is no longer capable of
controlling the reptile brain]
The Golden Age (1968-1983)
With the Romero paradigm in place, zombie film entered its
golden age, the classical period of zombie invasions. Night of the Livillg Dead appeared in 1968 and slowly gained notoriety on the midnight movie circuit. More than 30 zombie movies appeared between
1969 and 1977 in Spain, Mexico, Italy, England, and the States, tepresenting the first post-Romero wave. Horror favorites such as Peter
Cushing, Christopher Lee, and Paul Naschy suddenly found themselves pitted against zombies rather than the more conventional '60s
monsters (e .g., the mummies and vampires of Hammer or Amicus).
This first wave is characterized by a wide variety of zombie types and
settings : the dream zombies of A Virgill Amollg the Livillg Dead
(1971), the skeletal monks of de Ossorio's Tombs of the Bli1ld Dead
>eries (1971-75), the African-American slave zombies in the blaxploitation Sugar Hill (1974), the remote-control family members in
Sba llks (1974), and the slick techno-zombies of Shock Waves (1977) .
In general, these movies are pensive and cloaked in a delirious-almost
narcotic-surrealism. The initial enthusiasm waned somewhat between
1975 and 1978, but the mid-'70s zombie recession ended with an
explosion in 1979 following Romero's DawlI of (be Dead. The decade
that followed (1979 to 1989) boasted an average of six zombie movies
per year, or about one every eight weeks.
When zombie movies began reappearing in 1979. however, they
110 lonser exhlbtted the scattered range of topics thar the initial wave
~The stories aren't isolated yarns about a small group of people
ovcrcoming a localized monster attack, but focus specifically on the
I.trger theme of litter apocalypse. Zombies carry a powerful and
lI11holy contagion th at spreads With dizzying speed, and the undead
threaten nothing less than globa l Armageddon . Italy secured a posilion a t thc forefront :1.t thi ~ rime, quickly produci ng an abundance of
,I POC1iYPlic IOlllhic invo.l,>ioll'> "ouc h <1'" Hurial Ground ( 1 980)~ City of
C1...04("~l,,;o..
.fi\r~ 20~;~ -C';\""~ '\1:> l>orl.Lo~
"'~c.M\p9L .,,, 1Mc.c c;\""~ ...
or
~
8
Introduction
lntroduction
the lValkillg Dead (1980), The Gates of Hell (1980), and Night of the
Zombies (1981) . Romero 's Dawll of the Dead initiated this trend, just
~s Night initiated the first wave, but Lucio Fulci's Zombie (1979)made and released within a matter of months after Dawn-is on the
whole more representative of the second wave. Some notable contributions came from France and Spain as well, such as Zombie Lake
(1980) and Oasis of the Zombies (198.2), but America 's offerings at
this time were few and unimpressive .
These Southern European movies are generally characterized by
exotic settings, often a tropical island inhabited by natives of illdefined ethnicity. There is sometimes an unfortunate colonial brutality implicit in the endless scenes of European s urvivalists gunning
down native zombies, but on the whole these movies concentrate their
energies precisely on those aspects of zombie film that have proven
the most aesthetically powerful: provocative settings, the restrained
appearance and blocking of the zombies, a mounting sense of claustrophobia and helplessness, and the careful pacing and rhythm of the
escalating apocalypse. Uncomplicated but engaging synthesizer scoring lends the best of these invasions a hypnotic, dream-like ambience.
To my mind, it is perhaps these second-wave French , Spanish, and
especially Italian movies-low-budget, badly acted, but resolutely sincere-that represent the apex of the zombie film golden age. What
zombie movies do well, these mov ies do best, pushing the themes
inherent in the genre to their logical conclusions. They are parables
of entropy, presenting global devastation with maddening patience
and relentlessness. Zombie movies after this time are sometimes excellent, but rarely recapture the na"ive charm that makes these Mediterranean visions of apocalypse fascinating . \'(then America at last
appropriated the genre in 1983 with Thriller and in 1985 with ReAllimator and Return of the Livillg Dead, the shoddy sets were
replaced with slick, fully funded stu dios, the synthesizer scores were
supplanted by rock and pop, and the sincerity gave way to camp.
The Mid-'80s Spoof Cycle
The final crossover from cult to mainstream popularit), came with
Michael Jackso n's T/;riller video (\ 983) . Following that point, zombie invasion motifs were familiar enough to allow for the zombie
. . poof <.:)Iclc. The very (-idco;, ~lIgge ... ( ~1 dctached , tongue in ·chcek ~lIti ·
tll tit-: HIr}(ul " lf(k ('r~ frolll ()uJer S/JtIU' (ItJX4),
Iltlnl Nod: Zo mbies
9
(1984), I lVas a Teellage Zombie (1986), Redneck Zombies (1987),
an d Chopper Chicks ill Zombietoum (1989). From low-budget backya rd mOVies to professional productions, the interest in the mid- to
late-'80s was in applyi ng the accepted body of zombie lore to unique
and bizarre SituatIOns, or occasiona ll y in expanding the mythology
Itself III light-hearted ways. Thus, whereas in Night there's only a
remote hlllt that the ghouls feast on non-human flesh (one woman
I.ombie picks a bug from a tree and eats it), the spoof cycle picks up
Ihe ball and runs with it: a zombie eats a lamb in the bucolic Blood.
Slickers from Ollter Space, another eats a pig in the equally rustic RedJleck Zombies, one zombified dwarf eats a live cow and another eats
himself (!) in Hard Rock Zombies, and the undead ravage an entire
pet Store filled with poodles and cute furry animals in Retllm of the
I.iving Dead Part II (1987).
. The year 1985 was a capital one for zombies. Romero completed
IllS trilogy with the excellent Day of tbe Dead, but his slower, more
contemplative brand of horror was no longer in fashion, and Day
co uldn't hope to spark off a third zombie wave as Night and DawJl
had done. Jnstead, two other movies of the same year, Re-Allimator
.lIld ~etllrn of the Living Dead, moved to the fore by satisfying
rnrd- 80s horror expectatIOns suc h as high -impact gore, frequent
. . hocks, memorable one-liners, and above all, a sense that none of it
,I'ould be taken too seriously.
Return 0 the LiviJl Dead in arti dar exerted a tremendous
mfluence on the genera l stock of zombie lore. Return is the obvious
lII~piration, for instance, behind the zombie conceptualization in the
h ehy Kitchen song "Corpse Rock" (1985), the third Simpsons Halloween specia l (1992), and the first-season South Park Halloween
l"J) i.ode (1997). Most importantly, whereas Romero's zombies only
l".11 the flesh of victims in a general way, the zombies of Return
' I'ccincally ear the brains. T~e undead don't view the living simply
.1 .... undlHerenrrated meat samples, but specifically target the intellectual
ll' lIIef. itscl~. Thus the zombies crave the consciousness (metonymi,.Iil y 11Ie ralized as rhe bra in) that they so sorely lack.
The spoof cycle ran its course quickly, but the popularity of the
IOlll hle- parlicularly the zombie invasion-weathered the comic sideIr.lck. I~)' the late '80s there was a notable tendency to incorporate
I Ill' .I<.:cepted lombic motifs into larger productions whose main con.
,rr " ' . . 11 ·1 the 10m hie or zombie invasion itself. Thus the zombie inva.... . 4111 h'·UH IH..' ''' .1 .... Orl o( dcta c hable ~lIhp lot, kept hovering on the
10
Introduction
periphery throughout mosr of the film but only coming to the forefront at the climax (Curse of the Blue Lights, The Villeyard, The Dead
Pit ). Throughout the spoof cycle, however, the zombies are generally
presented as serious, even when the rest of the movie is tongue-incheek. Zombies are, understandably, the ideal " straight men."
There were few major studio attempts after the mid-'80s to center an entire movie around a zombie invasion. Peter Jackson 's Dead
Alive (1992) is one successful venture, but this splarrerpunk epic is
quite far in spirit from the subdued and shadowy tropical chases of
the zombie invasion golden age. The zombie romantic-comedy-an
unlikely combination , one would think-proved one of the more
enduring off-shoots in the late '80s and early '90s (Deadly Frielld, I
Was a Teellage Zombie, My Zombie Lover, My Boyfrielld's Back,
Relllm of the Livillg Dead Part Ill).
Local filmmakers, however) took up the zombie invasion with a
vengeance in the early '90s, which saw the appearance of a number
of no-budget apocalypses (such as the ditect-to-video releases from
Troma, Suburban Tempe, and Trustinus Productions), many only
videographed. Though these are sometimes clever and arrest to the
zombie's enduring cult popularity, they have lirrle to offer the broader
movie-watching public. At the time of rhis writing, a movie is in production based on the video game Residellt Evil, Rob Cohen is negotiating a remake of I Walked with a Zombie with Dimension Films,
and Todd Sheets is still grinding out his assembly line home-movie
zombie invasions in Kansas City, Missouri ,
Significance
Zombies arc an unashamed mockery of humankind's most universally cherished idea l: life after death.
.
By way of comparison, consider Dracula: a bemg of supernormal
intelligence and pathos, whose complicated psychological gears embody
conflicts between animalistic impulses on the one hand (thirst for blood,
repressed sex ual crav ings, etc.), and on the other, an arisrocratic
breeding and politeness associated with only the most polished of literature's great vi llains, The vampire is dashing, smooth-complexioned,
sexy, and erudite with centuries of selective reading. Painfully sclfreflective of the tragedy of his condition, he is poised at the threshold between all id and a superego, both of exaggerated proportions,
Introduction
t1
.
The zombie-the ragged, unkempt, rorring corpse sorely lacking
m psychologICal machmery and social presentability-is the antitheSIS of this aristocratic figure . Domestically set vampire movies (that
IS, those not set in exotic foreign forests or Eastern European villages)
are usually urban-cosmopolitan efforts, taking place in high-profile
centers such as Los Angeles or New York. Dom estically set zombie
movies, b~ contrast, are from the heartland: Louisiana (Revenge of
the Zombies, The Beyond); Louisville, Kentucky (Retl/m of the LivIIIg Dead); Akron, Ohio (The Dead Next Door); backwoods Alabama
(The Supematl/rals) and Tennessee (Toxic Zombies); rural Pennsylvanta (Night, Dawn) and Maryland (Redneck Zombies); Florida
,wamplands (Day, Alien Dead); and Kansas City, Missouri (The Chilling, Zombie Bloodbath). Zombies are blue-collar undead, banding
together 10 loose mobs and endeavoring to compensate in sheer numbers for what they lack in individual speed or strategy. From the plantation and mine slaves in White Zombie (1932) and The Plagl/e of
/he Zombies (1966) to the shopping mall slaves of declining Western
elvlhzatlon 111 Dawn (1979), zombies embody the ultimate Marxist
working-class society. Finally, with Shatter Dead (1993), even the
/ombie's role as the oppressed worker is deromanticized: here zombies are simply another disenfranchised and marginalized sector of
Ihe population, threatening to unionize but mostly just panhandling.
Pretty much everyone has commented that Night of the Living
Dead documents middle-class America's eating of itself and the death
of the nuclear familv an
11
the Dead ex o ses the vacuollsn~s~ of contemp~rary consumer society. Caputi sees Night's apoc.tlyptlClsm as atomIC-age disquierude, and compares the " psychic
lIumbing" assoc.iared w ith the victims of Hiroshima with screen porIrayals of zombIes (103). Higashi discusses such recurring motifs as
1l1lhrary organization, media involvement, and particular images such
." helicopters in the context of the Vietnam War (178-86), while
Ilo"erman and Rosenbaum also point out other late '60s social con<erns such as racial tension in Night (112). Ed Lowry and Louis Black
'l't' in Dawn a '70s parable of environmental deteriorarion and the
" "o"industria l catastrophe" (17), and Beard reads zombie films in
I.., "" of Ford-cra labor economics and the obsolescence of the Amer..... 111 workcr (30). In an age of increasing life expectancy and decreasIng L'lllploYlllel1l poss ibilities, the fear !Jf aging indefinitely and
p.II,lhl!.!, of ovcrpo Plllation reso und ,·hroughout zombie movies
(l1..,.lrd 27, II"" l 'i ·10). Fin.III)" I i"d.I llad ley rea ds fi lms sllch as
12
Introduction
Introduction
Re-A llimator as explorations of late twentieth-century biomedical
and health care worries such as the commoditization of the human
body, the fragmentation of the individual into organs and body parts,
and other forbidding issues raised by medical and genetic technology:
" bur as the language and iconography revealed most dramarically in
the 1980s, the horror and the real monster had become the body
itself" (73-4) .
.
'
Underlying these cultural strata, deeper, more tllneless tenSIOns
between the living and rhe dead simmer as well. Throughout the
world, pre-modern societies exhibit an acute anxiety of the dea ~,
envisioned variously as spirits, ghosts, or physical revenants. (~Ir
James Frazer's Fear of the Dead is still the most comprehensIve
overview.) T he primordial fear of the dead even forms a part of ce.rtain pre-modern initiation rites, as in the following account from FIJI:
Beginning with puberty, boys were taken at night to an area where
rhe adult men had placed a group of bloody supposedly dead and
decaying bodies covered with intestines. The boys ~vere force~ t?,
crawl through the "dead" bodies. which suddenl.y . cal:nc t? hf~.
Boys who ~howed fear were denied manhood IMIller, Cited 111 Zlilmann and Gibson 231·
In zombie movies since Romero, these fears are compounded with
archerypal fears of contagion and of uncleanness in the abstract.
Plague anxiery comes in many forms, from the claSSIcal and bIblIcal
revulsion against leprosy to the modern media fa scinatIOn wlt~l invasive-A streptococcus, the. " flesh eating disease"; screen ~ombles fin.d
themselves connected with a range of ailments includmg bubOniC
plague (Terror Creatures from the Grave), cancer (After Death), AIDS
(Zo mbie '90: Extreme Pestilence ), and e,'en teen ac ne (I Was a
Teenage Zombie, My Boyfriend's Back). This pestilence anxIety IS
a lmost always non-spccific, however, beca use ultimately it isn't leprosy or plague or ! IDS, but death itself that is the disease. Death is
a comma in the midst of a cursed eXistenCe, gone from medIOcre to
horrible, rather than a period ar the end of it.
.
Zombies are people reduced to the lowest common ~enom !1B ­
tor. The zombie is simply the hulk, the rude stuff of genenc hllman it , the bare canvas,; assion, an, and intellect are by impli~ation
reduced to mere ornamcnt. There is an existentia component II1hcrcnrly built into the gc nre if it's read with even a minimum of :-t1lq.;ory.
Th e I.omh!..: ill ..... I .....
13
Definition, Scope, and Principles of Selection
The substantial overlap among the various movie monsters precludes rhe possibility of an all-encompassing definition of a zombie.
The soulless, reanimated corpse under the control of a voodoo maslcr from Caribbean lore serves as a useful starting point, since that~s
where the zombie film finds its own beginning (White Zombie, 1932),
hut complications arise quickly: how much soul or personality is permissible in the resurrected person? What if there is no voodoo maslef, as in the Romero trilogy? Once the zombie becomes a famil iar
. . creen monster with certain fixed features, what are we to make of
. . ll11ilar movies, whose creatures exhibit most of the familiar traits but
.lfe not actually reanimated corpses' The irradiated or diseased hordes
"I Cronen berg's Rabid (1977), Rollin 's The Grapes of Death (1978),
!'herheardt's Night of the Comet (1984), and others fa ll within the
hroader zombie genre, in a loose sense, but th is book wil l limit covn.lgc to movies in which the creatures are actua ll y revived corpses,
IIf .He explicitly referred to as zombies.
The zombie first appeared as the revived corpse of vodou reli'~I OI1, and most of the early zombie films sustain a religious connec1!till. "'" But screen zombies have evolved to something quite different
III Iheir long and varied hisrory, and have largely left their voodoo
"'I~II1S behind. In the late '60s and early '705, The Plague of the Z01l/I,,, ·, ( 1966) and Night of the Livillg Dead (1968) redefined thei r
Ippl'.lrancc and behavior entirely. The zombie today is a limping,
.h.lll1hling, decaying ghoul in search of human flesh, utterly distinct
"""I rhe robotic, deadpan zombie of early voodoo thrillers. The basic
Ild ll1l1iol1 of a revived corpse with diminished mental faculties gen, l.oIl y holds true through this evolution, though, and uni tes zombies
1111111 hefore the Iate- '60s metamorphosis with those after it,
Du e to the volume of material, I have not attempted to cover
I ""', "IIIlmr,,,,, pr"etiC(! employs the spelli"g vodou or vodoun illslead of voodoo, a
I""" /1.,' 11,.,1 III IMrt rl'/Iccts" morc accurate linguistic rellder;lIg of the word, but more
I '1'",I, III'Iv, :, /'I/'('S 10 d,stil/gift:," the living religion from the mockery Hollywood has
j " ' , /' " "I ,I" It I S (, 5. 1l1 trull, of uur subject that ill oversimplifY;'lg. dccolltextualizing.
1'1,1 , /'lIIflllI""ut.t:, \udull rllt'S dlU/ln'lIefs, pupular books alld (rIms throughout the
\\
I. ,,, ".wld b.II'" {'III."I}ltr'I.~{'d 19l10TilltCC "'1(1 fo stered m;scollcel,t;o"s about the
111/, ,III ,Hid ( lI/ Ihhc.1II rd,glt"" 11,,0; book uses 'he ' erm voodoo, howcver, because
I .," ,/'1 · 11"111/ /,,,,ttl,,,," Irllll1 tl,,· 1II00'tt'S Iht'IIISi'lI't's. mI(l usc of the term emp""si::es
II, ,.1"
II 1\ ,".' l'II II,'",,,,ul (,Inn/lm"t', r"tlll'r ,11,," Ib(' delllal rl'l,,~irm, 'hal is (It
''',1/
I
/I,
14
Introduction
Introduction
"zombie" in the broader colloquial sense of "willless, obedient person," e.g., a living person simply hypnotized or possessed (unless the
film title specifically identifies such persons as zombies). Though an
important thread of zombie genealogy, such classIcs as Vtllage of the
Damned (1960), Invaders from Mars (1953), and Invas;on of the Body
Snatchers (1956) are beyond the scope of the present work, which considers the physical death and (partial) resurrection of the body mte.
.
gral to the core definition .
Resurrected bodies that retain all prevIOus personahty and mental ability don't constitute zombies. Zombies are dim-witted, with
ideally no more than the thinnest shred of continUity connectmg the
present animating principle (mind, soul, etc.) with the former. As
Ecclesiastes 9:5 states, "The dead know not anything." Ghost movies
that deny the gross corporeality of the corpse aren't zombie mOVies,
either. Though the maimed soldiers of the early French j'AcClIse!
(1938) provide excellent zombie analogues, for example, the superimposed photography of the hordes of rISen dead doesn't really ehclt
the same tensions as resurrecred, phYSical hulks . In ghost mOVleS,
editing room nonsense is often paraded as psychological horror, the
facile camera trickery and disrupted narrative logic representmg mternal fragmentation. Zombie movies, in contrast, gen,er~lly adhere to
strict narrative logic of time and space; if the zom~le IS to get, from
point A to B, the story must provide for the phYSical traversmg of
points in between.
,
Mummies are close cousins; in fact, a mummy IS arguably only
a zombie with bandages. Mexican mummies, which never had bandages to begin with, form obvious parallels with the Hollywood zombie. But the Egyptian mummy, noble and timeless, IS altogether
different. It is supported by, and vestigially defends, the hieratic CIVilization of the ancient Egyptians, whose stately gods stili empower
the mummy, and whose long-dead priests have woven into th,e sar.cophagus their laments and curses. Nothing could be more antithetica l
to the anonymous zombie, chosen at random from workmg-c1ass
corpses for menial ends by two-bit witch doctors.
.
This book does not cover demon-zombies, such as those of ~
Dead (1982), DelllOn; (1985), or Delllo" W;"d (1989), since they
exhibit enhanced rather than impaired mental facultIes, and cnJ~Y a
wide range of other po\Vcr~ incommen'iuratc with C?I,llmOn notIons
of::1 zomhic. Demon ... :1rc :1UIOIlOI1H1I1'" "'piJ'III1.11 CIlIIrIC\ from other
pI.HH.... or world .. ,
,1
de,II' (11 .. 11111..11011 IWlIl g
III ,I IIII.Ill1 l,d
1ll'lwcc n them
15
"nd the bodies they inhabit. If the zombie suffers from a lack of soul
or spirit, the demon suffers from an overabundance,
Zombies share certain features with robots and androids-slow
.1 1ld relentless pursuit, for instance, and immunity from many
weapons. Although both zombies and robots evoke the terror of a
Illlndiess foe who shows no regard for self-preservation, pre-cybernetic mechamca l foes such as 1950s robots are biologically antiseplie: they don't dangle before us the rotten carcasses that we inhabit
.1Ild don't allow for the exploration of peeled-away levels of body tis~
'lie alongside the peeled-away levels of intellect and consciousness.
(he obstmate corporeality of zombies audaciously flaunts what
loseph Campbell has called "the fullness of that pushing ... malodorous, carmvorous, lecherous fever which is the very nature of the
organic cell" (121) .
I have tried to cover full-length zombie feature films as exhausHvely as possible, as well as TV movies and (when available) sig::Iflcanr ~,PlSodes of TV serials . Movies explicitly advertising
I.ombles III the orrgmal title, alternate title, or in an English-Iangl~agc release title are also included, even when the term is applied
WIth the most wanton license and the film has nothing to do with
.Ictual zomb Ies, so that the work can serve effectively as a reference
looi. The history of the term "zombie" and the evolution of its
IIloaning through different generations is itself telling and worthy
01 documentation .
As the zombie mania trickled down into backyard film operations
III Ihe late '80s and early '90s, a profusion of very low-budget films
.ll'pcared, mcludmg vldeographed features and film school projects, many
.. I whICh are virtually (and mercifully) unobtainable. This book includes
I ho ...c that have come to my attention; doubtless there are others.
The list of titles is compiled from horror movie guide books arti~ k .. <Ind reviews, video catalogues, on-line databases and fan 'sites
.•IId consllitation with other zombie hounds. Only movies that I hav~
!ltTII able to track down and see are included, to ensure that a con·.... It'IlI, pcrs~llal read,ing of the genre as a whole emerges. Literal Eng("h lron,\ollons of tItles are provided for foreign movies that have
! H ' Vl'!, heen dubbed or subtitfed into English; otherwise movies are
("Icd hy Iheir most com monly recognized English language ritle. (An
j'\U'PI IOIl 1.. La, Cage Aux Zombies; to render this title in English is
10 lo . . t: Ih l' Oh V IOll <'.i reference 10 the popular cross-dressing comedy
I" ( ·".~ c AIIX I·o//,'s.)