Zombies!

[mousme]

Okay, a more lighthearted entry now.

I need input from all of you about zombies. Take a minute to think about this, please, even if you're not hugely into zombies, or even if you think the whole thing is a silly waste of time. If the latter, I'd be interested to know why the whole thing doesn't interest you. Obviously, there is no need to answer *all* of the questions. These are just things I'd like to know in general, so if you're so inclined, I'd appreciate answers to as many of the questions as possible. :)



1- So what does "zombie" mean to you?

2- What exactly is a zombie, accoriding to your definition?

3- What causes someone to become a zombie?

4- How did you learn about zombies?

5- Recommend some good zombie movies to me. Tell me why you're recommending them.

6- Recommend some *bad* zombie movies. Tell me why you think they're bad.

7- Tell me your favourite stereotype from zombie flicks. Why do you like it? Why does it work?

8- What's your favourite "stock character" in zombie movies? Why?

9- What stereotype would you most like to see turned on its head? Why?

10- What's your favourite setting for a zombie story?

11- What's the most common "mistake" committed by characters in a zombie story?

12- What sort of "mistake" do you think a modern, zombie-savvy character might make?

13- What do you feel zombie stories have neglected or underdeveloped in terms of plot or characters elements?

14 - Recommend some good zombie-related books. Fiction and "documentary."

15- Recommend some good internet sites about zombies.

Thank you!

Comments

[elanya.livejournal.com]

I'll fill this out when i get a chance later, but I'm lending you someone else for now :)

[miseri.livejournal.com]

1) Animated corpses, sans intellect, sans soul, sans will; though possibly with the barest shred of remnant personality.

2) An animated corpse; the target of the animation is the flesh, with the bones providing structure for the muscle movement. This distinguishes the zombie from the animated skeleton.

3) A voodoo curse.

4) Reading about the folklore of the West Indies.

5 & 6) Unfortunately, I have seen far too few zombie flicks to comment. I do get the impression that zombie flicks tend to involve a fair bit of psychodrama surrounding the survivors, with perhaps a bit of morality-examining thrown in.

7) The slow, shambling masses. Granted, you could outrun them easily, but there are so many, and where do you run to? One could think of it as a metaphor for the slow, steady and inexorable decay of morality that turns man into monster.

8) I don't know. I guess I like the character who has to deal with a close loved one becoming (or about to become) a zombie. Oh the pathos, oh the angst. But that's more a situation than a character.

9) Not exactly a stereotype, I guess, but I'd like to see that "zombie disease caused by being bitten" thing changed around completely.

10) The Caribbean! Pirate ships and slave plantations galore! Fields of towering sugar cane, hiding predator and prey from each other!

11) Antagonising or otherwise alienating the other survivors. Acting like a prize jackass is never a good idea.

12) Assuming there's a scientific explanation?

13) They never really talk about how the whole thing started in the first place.

14) I hear "The Serpent And The Rainbow" is good, though I've never read it.

15) Um, don't know of any....

[fritzleonhardt.livejournal.com]

I am the person that elanya is lending to you :)

1. "Zombie" means to me a revivified corpse who feeds upon the living. They are typically slow moving and non-intelligent. They can be stopped by massive injuries to the head.

2. My definition is the same as above.

3. A person becomes a zombie by dying. Most people consider it the bite from a zombie which makes the person a zombie. Why the dead rise can be for various reasons from a virus to a "curse" - I prefer the idea that Hell is full posited in the original "Dawn of the Dead".

4. I learned about zombies from watching lots of zombie movies. To me the canon of what makes a zombie comes from the George Romero zombie movies.

5. "Night of the Living Dead" (1968) - The originator of the idea where reanimated corpses eat people. Also interesting because the hero of the movie is black which for the time was unique for a B-movie.
"Dawn of the Dead" (1978) - The ultimate zombie movie. Every zombie movie after this takes its cue from this movie and it is against this movie that other zombie movies are judged.

6. "City of the Living Dead" (1980) - A non-sensical zombie movie where zombies have the ability to appear and disappear plus an ending which makes even less sense than the first 80 minutes of the movie.
"Virus" aka "Zombie Creeping Flesh" (1980) - a totally pointless zombie movie that tries to cash in on the zombie craze that occured in the early 80's. The characters make no sense and the production values are pretty horrid.

7. My favourite stereotype is the idea of the heroes being drastically outnumbered by the zombies. The threat and fear from zombies comes from their numbers. One by itself isn't threatening because you can outrun them or easily avoid them.

8. My favourite stock character is the "loud-mouthed idiot". Without this character the situations in zombie movies could not go from bad to worse. What fun would it be if everyone were cooperative and agreeable.

9. I honestly can't say what stereotype I would like to see turned on its head. I think that at one point or another all of the stereotypes have been turned on their head.

10. My favourite setting is the siege where the characters are trapped within a building whether that building is a mall or an army base.

11. The most common mistake made in movies is panicking.

12. The most common mistake I think a zombie-savvy person might make is panicking. Most people are not trained to deal with stressful situations and so there is a natural inclination to panic and to give in to that panic.

13. I think that zombie movies have underplayed the religious elements of zombies. It is Christian belief that during the Apocalypse the dead will rise. How would the dead coming to life affect the beliefs of the religious? How would the religious beliefs be affected when the dead are attacking the living?

14. The best book I can recommend is a short-story collection called "The Book of the Dead". It has some very original stories from various writers about what a world where the dead came to life would be like. I would also recommend the two zombie books written by Max Brooks - "The Zombie Survial Guide" and "World War Z" - and a comic book called "Walking Dead".

15. When it comes to internet sites I can't really recommend any because I don't know any. I don't search around for any. I know they exist but I have never searched for any.

There is a lot more that I could discuss but I find that this format is rather constraining. If you have any more questions for me let me know.

I have a question for you - Why are you asking these questions?

Zombies and other revenants

[jteethy.livejournal.com]

I'll just make a few quick recommendations, but I'm no zombie expert.

Books:

- I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson (actually a vampire story, though it inspired George Romero's Night of the Living Dead)

- Pet Sematary, by Stephen King (scared the living crap out of me, even more so now that I can directly relate to the main character's obsession with reanimating his child)

- Monster Island
- Monster Nation
- Monster Planet, a trilogy by David Wellington (originally published here on the net, now being published in paperback and optioned for film. I haven't read 'em, but I've heard good things about 'em.)

Comics:

- The Walking Dead, by Robert Kirkman (excellent ongoing series following one group trying to survive the plague)

Films:

- Night of the Living Dead
- Dawn of the Dead (I'm even okay with the recent remake)
- Day of the Dead

- 28 Days Later (zombies are rabid and FAST)

- The Serpent and the Rainbow

- Shaun of the Dead (basically one extended gag, but its a good one)

and let's not forget the Ed Wood classic:

- Plan 9 from Outer Space (I'm not sure what plans 1-8 might have entailed, but Plan 9 has the aliens trying to conquer the Earth by reanimating three corpses from a rural cemetary.)

[mousme.livejournal.com]

The answer to your question is simple: National Novel Writing Month is coming up. I had no idea what to write about until this weekend when a lightbulb went off in my head: "Hey, what about zombies?"

So I've decided to write a book about a zombie infestation.

That's when I realized I don't know *all* that much about them. My flist, however, is filled with people who either know about zombies or (case in point) know other people who know about zombies. I want to know what people think works and doesn't work in zombie movies and books, to give me a starting point.

Please don't feel compelled to stick to the format I used in this post. Those are just questions that came to me off the top of my head. Anything you want to write about zombies is welcome and relevant. :)

[shenlo.livejournal.com]

1- So what does "zombie" mean to you?

A reanimated corpse.

2- What exactly is a zombie, according to your definition?

In the truest sense of the word: The voodoo practice of paralyzing a victim with drugs (one of the ingredients is a "zombie root"), burying them alive, then digging them up and releasing them with their wills destroyed as punishment for some crime.

In the modern media sense, a reanimated corpse in a film. The current default zombie that the mainstream think of is that created by George Romero for his "Living Dead" series (which are referred to as zombies only once by a voodoo priest's grandson) combined with the silly pseudo sequel "Return of the Living Dead" in which the reanimated corpses had a more sophisticated intelligence and fed only on BRAAAAAAAAAINS!

Personally I include just about any reanimated corpse into the broad definition because there are a whole lot of variations in the film world.

3- What causes someone to become a zombie?

Usual answer: "Depends what movie they're in."
I've seen: Voodoo magic, radiation, experimental insecticide, toxic waste, viral infection, ancient curse, remote control, vengeance boyond the grave, 'no more room in hell', no explanation whatsoever, alien parasites, The Stuff, etc. etc.

4- How did you learn about zombies?

When I was only... erm.. 9 or 10? A friend had a movie magazine with photographs from various horror movies, including the famous Dawn of the Dead head explosion, which he tried not to show me. But curiosity drove me and I insisted and finally he showed me. I was both disgusted and driven to find out how and why this guy's head exploded. Years later, my sister and I rented a VHS machine and rented a bunch of movies, and I found that movie amongst them. She wasn't impressed at all ("That was the three worse movies I've ever seen!"), but I was fascinated with the concept, and after discovering that there was not only a first in that series, but a sequel came out in the early 80's, I was driven to watch every zombie movie ever made.

I still haven't, but I've seen a lot of 'em!

[shenlo.livejournal.com]

5- Recommend some good zombie movies to me. Tell me why you're recommending them.

Well, I enjoy the genre, and if you do too, I recommend watching any and all zombie films you can get your hands on. As have I. My favorites, though, are:

All of George Romero's "Living Dead" movies.
Night of the Living Dead -'68
Dawn of the Dead -'78
Day of the Dead
Night of the Living Dead -'90
Land of the Dead

They're all of various qualities of goodness, but these are the films that have defined the modern concept of zombies. Romero invented the modern zombie movie, and people have forgotten what they were before hand.

Plague of the Zombies is a Pre-Romero, british zombie film done by the famous Hammer studios. I really enjoy the feel and atmosphere of the Hammer flicks and this one is one of the earliest to use elaborate makeup on the zombies. The story is a sort of monster/murder mystery too, which is what most of the old Hammer films were like.

Return of the Living Dead the sequel made by John Russo, co writer of the original Night. Well, he wrote it and Dan O'Bannon (of Alien rewrote it because it was crap. It's funny and scarey (if a bit screamy) and contains the zombies that made the world scream "BRAAAINS!"

Return of the Living Dead 3 is the only sequel in the series that doesn't suck rocks. Actually takes the above concept a little seriously and has some great zombie horror moments. And a hot babe who pushing things through her flesh to fight off the brain hunger.

Resident Evil -Which I know you've seen already. Takes its zombies directly from Romero's concept but adds a little explanation to it. Not to be confused with Resident Evil 2, see next question.

Shawn of the Dead -A fun and hilarious tribute to Romero. (Shawn also appears as a zombie in Land of the Dead!

Chopper Chicks in Zombietown -Sexy butch lesbian biker babes fightin' zombies! Silly, but what's not to like with THAT content?

And many, many more...

[shenlo.livejournal.com]

6- Recommend some *bad* zombie movies. Tell me why you think they're bad.

Return of the Living Dead part 2 is a crappy remake/sequel to the first one of the series. Goes out of humourous wit and into three-stooges slapstick, has a child hero a la Gamera films, much much more shrill screaming, and seems to have been made JUST so they can electrocute a zombie that looks like Michael Jackson (after that incident where he caught his hair on fire making a Pepsi commercial). Contains actors playing characters similar to, but not the same as, characters in the first one, who even deliver some of the same lines and make a meta reference to having been through all this before.

Return of the Living Dead part 4 - Necropolis and part 5 - Rave to the Grave Have obviously forgotten their origins. The zombies are now like Romero's zombies where you drop them by shooting them in the head, destroying any continuity with the Return zombies which were invincible. But yet, they also eat brains when they can get it. Which leads to idiotically confusing situations like: If they need brains to reanimate, and they eat brains, how to they make more zombies??? And some zombies attack and bite bits of characters that have nothing to do with brains arbitrarily. So you can predict who's going to survive if they don't get their head bitten. And on top of all that, they crappily written, with irritating characters. Part 5, incidently, revives the tradition of casting all the same characters, but having no continuity with the previous one. So it's not a sequel. They don't remember the incidents of part 4. It's simply another movie with the same characters in it. VERY irritating!!!!

Resident Evil 2 Was a piece of macho CRAP. Action and adventure with no logic or continuity. Villains popping in an out of convenient locations, super uber action heroes who can predict explosions with pinpoint accuracy. Zombies who remain immobile until needed for maximum dramatic effect. I HATED THIS FILM!!!!

28 Days Later had its moments, but was largely a boring remake of Day of the Triffids with zombie-like people infected with a virus that made them angry. Often confused with Zombie movies.

Children of the Living Dead was another Russo attempt to make a sequel to Night while making it impossible for Romero's films to have taken place at all. He has the action start off with the end of Night and then goes into some crappy film about one zombie who was intelligent and lurches around biting corpses on the hand in their coffins to revive his army of the undead again. Obviously cast are family and friends who aren't actors, and the lead zombie has big rubber gloves that fold and bend alarmingly.

Night of the Living Dead, 30th Anniversary Our old pal Russo decides to tackle the original film and add NEW FOOTAGE to it! Including a new ending that shows that it's all over and Romero's sequels couldn't possibly have happened. New footage includes a couple of dumb hicks who constantly refer to BEEKMAN'S DINER! I've got a girlfriend who works at BEEKMAN'S DINER. Let's go to BEEKMAN'S DINER! I have to get to BEEKMAN'S DINER! Because this particular location is referred to obliquely by the main character in the original footage. SEE! SAME MOVIE! SEE??? Also appearing are a really awful shaved-headed, goateed, 1990's chique "Reverand" who talks like Lovejoy and spouts pseudo religious garbage. And the original zombie in new makeup who looks NOTHING AT ALL like he did 30+ years earlier when the original film was made. Idiot.

There are others.

[shenlo.livejournal.com]

7- Tell me your favourite stereotype from zombie flicks. Why do you like it? Why does it work?

I like zombies that stagger and do not talk. It takes the humanity out of them. Give them eyes that focus or emote, or voices, personality, bodies that can run and jump and climb, and they become human. They become people in makeup. The reanimated corpse thing includes, to me, a sense of a broken machine. That it can balance upright is amazing, let alone shuffle awkwardly foreward. This concept is more horrifying to me than a guy who just looks like he woke up. Slow zombies are less difficult to fight off, perhaps, but its the numbers that give them their strength. You can only push over a good 40 or 50 in a mob before you wear out, and these guys don't get tired.

My exception is Bub from Day of the Dead. He was brilliantly acted so that he still looked dead and broken, but that he was able to access just enough memory to emote believably.

8- What's your favourite "stock character" in zombie movies? Why?

I've seen too many to have stock characters.

9- What stereotype would you most like to see turned on its head? Why?

Well, my only ideas for this are things that were done already at the moment. I, Zombie takes the zombie's point of view as the sympathetic, and sadly, I haven't seen it yet.

10- What's your favourite setting for a zombie story?

Modern, ordinary places. Shopping malls, suburbia, schools. The horror of the global zombie invasion is that it happens in broad daylight, right where we are! The scientific or military complex is cool, but takes it away from the familiar.

11- What's the most common "mistake" committed by characters in a zombie story?

Underestimating the danger. They get cocky when they figure out how to fend off a few of them.

12- What sort of "mistake" do you think a modern, zombie-savvy character might make?

Assuming too much. A modern mainstream person would assume, for example, that zombies think, will give up, or will try to eat their brains. If someone locks themselves in their house, the zombies (at least, certain types of zombies, depends on what's invading!), will station themselves outdoors. One guy told me that he'd be safe in a zombie invation, he'd just wear a helmet to protect his brain. I envisioned a helmet with a perfectly safe and protected head in it lying forgotten in a bush while a bunch of zombies munched happily on the warm flesh they actually were after in the first place.

[shenlo.livejournal.com]

13- What do you feel zombie stories have neglected or underdeveloped in terms of plot or characters elements?

When I ran a zombie RPG in Montreal, t! had a character who was a closet necrophiliac. That was an interesting twist.

In these things, it's important to focus on the story of the people, since the zombies really are pretty simple. They just want to eat. A film that focusses mainly on the zombies and their development would probably be pretty boring. People care less about why and how. It's more about how not to get eaten.

14 - Recommend some good zombie-related books. Fiction and "documentary."

I'm guessing you've heard of Max Brook's Zombie Survival Guide It's good. Creates a whole new type of zombie, however. A movie set in the guide's universe would be entertaining.

The All Flesh Must be Eaten RPG books are great fun!

There's a few books of short stories about zombies that I've read that I quite enjoyed. Including The Book of All Flesh put out by the RPG gang mentioned above, and the sequel The Book of More Flesh.

I've also got one called The Ultimate Zombie which is a series of short stories that take the reanimated corpse concept in VERY radical directions.

15- Recommend some good internet sites about zombies.

Homepage of the Dead is a good fairly complete tribute to the Romero films.

All Things Zombie

..erm... and various others.

Thank you!

You're welcome! Sorry about clogging you with new entries, but I have a lot to say on the subject and it wouldn't let me post it all at once. :(

[chibipunkdemon.livejournal.com]

Best internet site for Zombies: http://www.brains4zombies.com/

I have the Book of the Dead short stories anthologies, which are set in / inspired by Romero's Dead universe. You can borrow them if you'd like. They have zombie sex in them!

[ai731.livejournal.com]

I'm going to second/third/whatever the recommendation of Shaun of the Dead, 'cause it's a great movie, and second Shenlo's assertion that 28 Days Later is not a zombie movie; it's a film version of Day of the Triffids featuring virus-infected humans that share a few (very few) characteristics with zombies.

[pasley.livejournal.com]

I agree that 28 Day Later is not technically a zombie movie (because the infected people are not, in fact, dead); I do not at all agree that it is "boring," however. Actually, I think it's one of the more intelligent, gripping, suspenseful and moving SF(read speculative as much or more than science fiction)films to have come out in recent years. (It was originally--and stupidly--advertised as a zombie/horror flick, which had a lot of zombie/horror fans complaining about it.)

That said, I think it can fit in with any zombie research on a basic humans versus once-human-now-ravening-people-attacking-and-devouring-monsters level.

[pasley.livejournal.com]

Shenlo sez: In these things, it's important to focus on the story of the people, since the zombies really are pretty simple. They just want to eat. A film that focusses mainly on the zombies and their development would probably be pretty boring. People care less about why and how. It's more about how not to get eaten.

I sez: Yes, but it's not really that simple, is it, since the zombies in question were once people themselves? Focussing on the people also should mean focussing on the issue that that zombie over there eating brains or trying to kill/eat you was/is your wife or husband or child. That human bond of love and trust is suddenly and irreparably and terrifyingly severed, that person you knew and loved is, to put it mildly, not the same. I love zombie stories/movies that have people trying (often failing) to come to terms with this, even as they are trying to not get eaten, which is one of the reasons why 28 Days Later (I know, not technically zombies) and Pet Semetary really work for me. Whatever the zombies are now, they were, very recently, humans. That's what I think is most interesting and disturbing.

[baronscartop.livejournal.com]

Fire! The untamed element!

Yes, it is rumoured that Romero zombies are afraid of fire!

I would love to see some shmuck try that on a Haitian zombie.

Enact the age-old drama of self-preservation.

t!

[baronscartop.livejournal.com]

My 11cents on 28 Days Later:

I cannot comment as to similarities with Day Of The Triffids, which I have not seen. But I can tell you it's damn close to the Romeros anyway. Indeed, I remember exactly *one* moment in this movie which neither Dawn~ nor Day~ did better.

The baddies are fast. They might as well just be insane (and indeed this is one theory). For my money this makes it more of an action film.

A badly-directed action film. If being able to follow events is important to you, leave this turkey on the shelves. Key things like somebody being fatally shot, another character getting scratched by a baddie. Confuso-Cam. Awful.

And I am placing this as a reply to Shenlo so I can convey to him my sincere belief that Shawn's assertion "contrary to some modern theories, zombies are not very fast" is aimed squarely at this movie and the Dawn remake.

t!

Hm...

[fearsclave.livejournal.com]

1) A reanimated mindless corpse staggering around in quest of live human flesh to eat, as best portrayed in the George A. Romero zombie documentaries and the ZSG/WWZ books.

2) A human turned into a zombie as a result of the zombie contagion.

3) Solanum infection as described in the ZSG.

4) The 1978 version of Dawn of the Dead, widely considered to be the best of the George A. Romero zombie documentaries.

5) We watched a number of good zombie documentaries this weekend. The first Resident Evil documentary, about the perils of corporations experimenting with the zombie virus, isn't too bad either.

6) The 1980's Return of the Living Dead movies. Their portrayal of zombies as articulate and nigh-invulnerable is wildly inaccurate. The second Resident Evil was pretty lame, largely because it posits genetic enhancement via zombie-virus experimentation.

7) The redneck zombie hunter, because it's so true.

8) The redneck zombie hunter, because when the zombocalyypse comes I'll simply pulls a super-hero-like transformation and discard my mild-mannered corporate lawyer alter ego, load up Alice, and don the camouflage ballcap and blaze orange shooting vest of the heroic redneck zombie hunter.

9) The idiotic soldier. In many documentaries we see them blazing away at advancing zombies with automatic fire from the hip, hysterically panicking as it fails to take effect. In actual zombat, I suspect that they'd cooly flip to semi-auto and start plugging them in the head with aimed fire.

10) The Mall; properly fortified, with an adequate garrison, they make ideal refuges.

11) Poor tactics. You see them blazing away from the hip on full auto, splitting up, turning their back on potential zombie lurking places, and generally being really dumb. After a few weeks of chaos, and the message got out, people would really start being more tactful.

12) Overconfidence. Carrying too much gear. Over-reliance on high tech.

13) The redneck zombie hunter: although they always seem to crop up, there hasn't been a documentary focusing on them to date.

14) Max Brooks' The Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z.

15) http://www.zombiehunters.org is worth a visit.