The Inevitable Zombie Apocalypse

In an earlier post, I addressed the question of what makes a zombie. My preliminary conclusion was if it looks like a zombie, acts like a zombie and isn’t something else, it’s a zombie. Here, I’d like to help nail that down with a definition and a look at the key question of zombiedom: is it dead?

Zombie: a) a dead human that’s been reanimated to a state between life and death; b) a human in a death-like state that strips them of cognition, will and other mental or spiritual traits most considered unique to humanity, esp. the soul.

Many zombie fans would argue that the second definition is incorrect. To their point of view, if it isn’t dead, it isn’t a zombie; nothing else matters. It’s frequently the justification given to deny zombie status to the infected in 28 Days Later, for example. But it isn’t that simple. The zombie is all about blurring the lines between life and death. After all, in real life, dead people do not walk around, much less try to eat people’s faces off, right? So it seems a wee bit absolutist to argue, “If it isn’t dead, it isn’t a zombie.”

Is the zombie alive? Dead? Well, there’s a reason they created a word – undead – for it. It’s neither, really. Not technically alive, not technically dead, but in a third state. And again, since this state is largely imaginary, it’s impossible to definitively say what that means — at least until the real zombie apocalypse breaks out, which I expect any day now. But that’s another story.

To my way of thinking, the unlife/undeath of a zombie is all about the corruption or loss of humanity. This is frequently represented by the horde in zombie movies: i.e. the loss of individuality, subsumed into a mindless, unthinking mass. In this light, the Rage zombies of 28 Days Later are just as easily seen as zombies, despite being technically alive. Certainly, they’ve lost their cognitive functions, their identities and their ability to exercise free will. They act only on the impulse to kill and to infect. The heart beats, but something vital — the spark of humanity itself, whether you call it a soul or a mind — is gone. How is that not a zombie? (There’s also the fact that they are clearly in a zombie movie, but that’s a subject for another post entirely…)

There can’t be any absolute answer, since we’re talking primarily about fiction. What makes a zombie for me might not for you, and we could both be “right.” I do think that when trying to determine the validity of a potential zombie, the death question is absolutely key. If it isn’t dead, or in a death-like state that strips some essential component of its humanity from it, then no, it isn’t a zombie.

I’m sure you know all about Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (if you don’t you can visit the book’s web page). In honor of its release, my friend Scott Roeben, creator of Dribbleglass.com, the Internet’s Official Humor Site ™, came up with this awesome list of other classic novels that need the zombie treatment.

Is The Beyond a zombie movie? It certainly has plenty of zombies, but at its core it’s more of a haunted/cursed house movie with zombies instead of ghosts. Our story introduces us to unlucky Liza, who’s inherited a hotel from her rich, bachelor uncle. It seems as if her luck has turned, but alas the hotel is built over one of the seven gateways to hell (way, way worse than being built over an ancient Indian burial ground, as it turns out). Plagued by a series of accidents and unusual (not to mention unusually awesome) deaths, poor Liza’s plan to reopen the hotel and solve her money woes is quickly derailed. Soon, she’s met a mysterious blind girl who seems to know a lot about what’s going on, a skeptical doctor who refuses to believe any of it and a whole slew of zombies. Things process haphazardly to a slow climax that sees her entering the gateway to hell for a long and likely unpleasant stay.

This is a hard movie to judge. It’s the third of Lucio Fulci’s forays into the wild world of the walking dead and while it’s beautifully shot and nicely paced, it doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense. In some ways, it’s a precursor to the slasher film, concentrating most of its energy on a series of creative and outlandish death scenes. A man’s face gets eaten by tarantulas; a woman gets melted by acid into a frothy, bloody mess while her daughter looks on; a woman gets her neck torn out by a dog; a doctor gets a face full of glass; a woman gets her head impaled by a nail (complete with Fulci’s trademark eye-gouging action!). These are really the highlight of the film, and presumably the reason for its existence.

The zombies appear only intermittently until the last fifteen or twenty minutes, and then just kind of sway drunkenly while posing a vague, unconvincing threat. They look good, and there’s a definite air of menace to them when they are filling the halls of the hospital en masse, but the movie doesn’t do much with them. And the bits of movie between the death scenes and vague zombie menace are just bewildering and inexplicable. In a generous estimation, you could call it a surreal atmosphere reminiscent of a dream or drug trip. Less generously, you might call it an incoherent mess. And the characters? They exist solely to give the director some people to kill. They are not unlikable so much as unknown and unknowable.

Despite its shortcomings, it’s worth a watch. The gore is well done, if a little cheap looking in a few isolated instances. For all of its lack of a coherent storyline or decent characters, it’s remarkably entertaining. For the trainspotters out there, it’s sure to provide fodder for many a conversation about the films it’s influenced: Hellraiser in tone and, to some degree, story; every slasher flick ever in the pacing and buffet of clever death; probably others that didn’t occur to me. And hey, it’s Lucio Fulci and it’s got zombies.

This review was part of the Final Girl Film Club challenge for March. For more info and her takes on many other fine horror offerings, visit her invariably awesome blog early and often.

I was concerned that the recent bonanza of zombie movies was slowing to a trickle, but here are a handful of trailers arguing against that hypothesis. Admittedly, these look to be low budget, foreign and indie affairs, rather than the big-budget epics of the past few years (although World War Z is still on the horizon…). The best looking of the bunch is Zombies of Mass Destruction, but I refuse to get too excited about it. It’s as rare as hen’s teeth for a movie to be as good as the trailer and even though the trailer looks pretty good, you can see some rough acting and questionable humor in it. It’s another zombie comedy, this one poking a little fun at America’s terrorism hysteria. Okay, okay, they’re about six years too late for this to be really relevant, but there’s plenty of people who are still sure there’s a bioweapon under every bed just waiting to spread some kind of virus, zombie-making or otherwise. I just wish the movie’s web site had some real information, like a release date, whether it’s coming to theaters or straight to DVD or what. Oh well, I’m sure that will come presently. Until then, enjoy the trailer. Then, hit the jump for three more trailers.

Read the rest of this entry »

Apart from one of the best titles ever, Let Sleeping Corpses Lie has plenty going for it. It’s the story of a luckless, macho antiques dealer who gets sucked into a zombie murder-mystery. When a clumsy woman crashes into his parked motorcycle, he’s left the choice of being stranded or catching a ride with her. All things considered, he should have chosen to stay stranded. Before long, he’s being detained as a witness to a murder by an incredibly surly and spiteful police sergeant who seems more concerned with framing him for being a long hair than actually solving the crime. In the course of investigating the murder alongside with his ride/cause of all his troubles, he discovers not only the walking dead but what’s causing them to rise. Of course, no one believes him about either the zombies or what’s reanimating them, giving the dead a chance to wreak some serious havoc before the satisfying and unhappy ending.

The zombies are fairly original. They’re capable of working together and using tools, and while they don’t quite run, they can definitely shuffle at a good pace. Headshots do nothing but annoy them, but they do turn out to be roughly as flammable as kerosene. And strangely, they don’t show up in photos, a plot necessity that doesn’t make a lot of sense in context and is never explained. They look absolutely great, with realistically dead countenances and creepy-ass red irises. The zombie make up is unfailingly excellent, especially the autopsy zombie. The gore is nicely done too, apart from one fairly cheesy looking killing of a nurse.

Overall the acting is decent, but there is some silly overacting and clumsy delivery here and there. It’s not terrible, and it never derails the movie, but it’s definitely chuckle worthy. The story is strong, and in fine zombie tradition there’s even a heavy-handed message — pro-environment/back-to-nature in this case. The script is solid, if a little heavy on the talking and police procedural angle, which slows down the pace a bit. Still, everything is stylishly shot and the atmosphere is great, so the relatively languid speed at which it unfolds isn’t a problem. It also sounds incredible – the score and sound design, which intermingle in curious and effective ways, are top notch. All things considered, Let Sleeping Corpses Lie is well-deserving of its status as a minor classic.

The Japanese have done interesting zombie movies such as Stacy and JUNK. The forgettable Living Dead in Tokyo Bay, however, is not one of them. After a meteor causes the dead to come back to life, a badass Japanese woman in a tight, futuristic jumpsuit has to rip off the plot of Escape from New York and rescue her scientist father, only instead of gangs, she faces zombies. And some super zombie Power Ranger-esque villains created by a corrupt military dude. And right now, if you are imagining something cool, stop. It sucks. It could have been fun, given better direction and a slightly more coherent plot, but it’s really lifeless (ha!) and slow and pointless. The zombies don’t get enough screen time and manage to underwhelm even low expectations when they do. The gore is gutless, the super-zombie villains are ridiculous and even a hot girl in a skintight jumpsuit manages to bore. Apart from being the oldest Japanese zombie movie I know of (1992) I can’t think of a single reason to even acknowledge this film’s existence.

Sweet lord, is Zombie Lake bad. Bad. It’s one of the curious subgenre of  Nazi zombie movies. You’d think angry, dead, fascist Germans eating folks would be a can’t-miss proposition, but you’d be very, very wrong. I swear this subgenre is cursed. So far every Nazi zombie movie I have seen has been god-awful. Seriously, these are some of the worst of the worst in a genre teeming with terrible ideas, half-baked execution and incoherence.

Anyway, you’ve got some Nazi zombies living in a lake. Or not living, I guess. They came to be there after being slaughtered by some French folks at or near the end of WWII. For some reason they revive to eat the occasional swimmer in the titular lake. Then they come out to terrorize the town, or in the case of one zombie, to reconnect with his daughter. Curiously, his daughter doesn’t seem particularly concerned with the fact that her dead father is a rotting, shambling mess, despite never having met him before. Eventually the town folk formulate a plan to save the day. Hooray. None of this is explained and it all happens at a plodding, interminable pace. Long, long before this is over you will be begging it to end.

The make up and gore effects were, hands down, the worst I have ever seen. Seriously, I’ve seen little kids’ Halloween makeup that was much better done. The gore was limited to buckets of fake blood — they basically didn’t bother faking wounds for the most part. A zombie bites, fake blood is doused on the area and they call it a day. Add to the mix execrable writing, dull direction and terrible acting, and you have a big pile of vomit. It did have plenty of nudity, which honestly is one of the few things saving this from being the single worst zombie movie I’ve ever seen. Let’s face it, some attractive naked women help break up the monotony. There are two full frontal nude scenes, one of which featured like ten women. All hot. It was still not enough to lift this off the bottom of the barrel, but I’ve helpfully included a NSFW shot of a few them after the jump, to save you the trouble of actually watching the movie. Read the rest of this entry »

If you’ve ever wondered how superheroes would fare against the zombie menace, Marvel Zombies holds the answer, and the answer is: not too well. See, Earth’s superpowered, pajamas-clad best are no more immune to the zombie bug than anyone else. That means once the first heroes get turned, it’s all down hill for humanity.

The story is set on one of the many, many alternate universes within the Marvel multiverse and it follows the zombie plague from its beginnings as an evil supervillain plot through the ultimate destruction of just about everything in one of the most epic zombie apocalypses ever. It’s a convoluted, fairly dense story that unfolds over the course of lots and lots of comics, which have been bundled in a series of collections. There’s a couple of miniseries, a bunch of Marvel tie-ins, some limited one-offs and even a crossover with Army of Darkness.

When I heard of the series, my first thought was it was ridiculous, utter trash designed solely to cash in on the zombie craze. But after a friend loaned me pretty much everything up through the second miniseries, I had to revise my unfounded opinion. The authors do a good job, especially through the first miniseries and its tie-ins, of following through on the premise of superpowered zombies. See, the zombies retain most of their superpowers, losing only any healing abilities they might have (they are dead, after all). So as dangerous as a regular zombie is, these walking/flying/laser-beam-shooting dead are infinitely more dangerous. As you might imagine, it takes them almost no time to devour every normal human and most of the “special” humans on Earth, leaving them to seek sustenance elsewhere. I can’t reveal much more without going into major spoilers but it gets really wild in no time at all.

The enjoyment to be had from these books is predicated on the level of interest and/or knowledge you have in both individual subject matters. If you aren’t at least moderately interested in superhero comics and zombies, this isn’t going to do much for you. If the interest is there, no deep knowledge of comics is required. The story wisely features a cast of “heroes” that will be familiar to just about everyone: Spider-Man, Wolverine, Iron Man, the Fantastic Four and other heavyweights of the Marvel continuum. There are plenty of obscure characters for the hard-core fans, too, but if you’ve seen a summer blockbuster in the last decade, you should be able to “get” who most of these characters are well enough to follow everything.

If the interest level is there, it’s an entertaining, fun and slightly campy mash up, at least through the first series. Sure, the story is spread over enough different comics, tie-ins and special issues it gets a little hard to keep track of everything (though the collections may solve that issue), but it’s largely worth it. There are lots of gruesome ends met,  epic battles fought and clever plot twists revealed. By the end of the second miniseries, it’s devolved into a pretty standard superhero comic with zombies becoming just a minor element. It’s all supervillain this, secret plot that, so-and-so isn’t really dead, and so on and so on:  in short, all the stuff that killed my appetite for superhero shenanigans years ago. The should have quit while they were ahead; I certainly have no interest in reading further despite really enjoying the initial story.

One of my good artist friends who knows of my predilection for the walking dead gave me a print of the image above a few months ago and it’s been hanging in my house ever since. I really like it — the details in the picture are exquisite. Every time I look at it I seem to notice something new.

When I recently saw the woman who gave it to me I asked her if she knew the artist’s name who did it and she told me it was Stan Yan. I could have figured that out myself probably, but the signature was a little hard to read. Anyway, it turns out that not only is Yan a local Denver artist, I’ve actually interviewed him before regarding a non-zombie project of his. Small world, huh?

Among his many projects, Yan produces zombie caricatures, or zombicatures as he calls them, at conventions, or by commission via his web site. You can find information on how to get prints of this piece, or any of his other zombie works or your even very own zombicature here. And stay tuned, because I’ll have an interview with Yan about his work in the undead medium up sometime in the next week or so.

Even as an ardent, tireless fan of zombie cinema, I’ve never seen anything quite like Otto; or, Up With Dead People. Existing in some heretofore undiscovered common ground between the arthouse and the grindhouse, Otto is a tale of a young gay zombie in a cruel world that’s as dead in its own way as he is.

He wanders through a bleak, decayed city, adrift and lost, until he walks into a casting call for a zombie movie. As he becomes the lead in the director’s latest opus, he begins to recover memories of who he used to be, but it’s not clear that that’s a good thing. It’s not a film for everyone — even zombie lovers may have trouble sinking their teeth into this one’s flesh. The film moves at a zombie’s pace — slow, steady and nearly unvarying throughout. In its use of layers of meaning, film-within-a-film and other arty devices, it can be bewildering. In particular, it can often feel too self-consciously arty, but there’s also a sly sense of humor at work that disarms the pretentiousness to a large degree. There are a number of explicit but not hardcore gay zombie sex scenes — disturbing, perhaps, but no more so than the explicit torture-porn close-up of an eye being punctured in Lucio Fulci’s Zombie, if viewed objectively. I’d go as far as saying the gay sex scenes are part of the genius of this film. Director Bruce LaBruce is clearly using zombies to reflect on society’s distaste for and hatred of homosexuality — he explicitly states as much, through the words of one of his characters as it is explained that the recent plague of gay zombies are the most hated zombies of all. I can only imagine a large percentage of zombie fans, the same ones who might revel in the explicit, ultra-realistic gore in some zombie movies, blanching and walking out of Otto at the sight of a few erect penises — much less the wound fucking scene.

He doesn’t only deal with homosexuality here. No, this film dives headlong into the long tradition of using the zombie to represent or reflect themes of alienation, anti-consumerism, persecution and loneliness. It’s unclear if Otto is really a member of the walking dead, or merely a confused youth reacting to the hostility and emptiness of his world by embracing death, and the fact that ultimately it doesn’t matter is part of why this film works. It’s not an easy film by any means, and I can’t say that it is one that everyone will enjoy, much less “get,” but for its originality in a genre that all too often settles for rehashing favored old tropes with slightly new  make-up I really think it’s worthwhile. Director Bruce LaBruce has concocted something both strange and satisfying here by creating a zombie movie that may disturb even the most hardcore zombie fans.

Parts of this review originaly appeared as a much shorter version in the Westword. You can find the original piece here.