The Inevitable Zombie Apocalypse

Every zombie scholar needs reference books and Peter Dendle’s The Zombie Movie Encyclopedia is a solid work that deserves the consideration of any serious zombie researcher. Covering more than 200 movies, from the 1932 Bela Lugosi classic White Zombie through the 1998 body horror of I, Zombie: A Chronicle of Pain, Dendle does an admirable job of collecting nearly every significant zombie work in film (and a few from TV as well) within that time frame into one convenient, easy to read volume. He strikes a nice balance in tone between scholarly and enthusiast, admittedly leaning more toward the scholarly.

He starts with an introduction that provides a succinct history of the zombie in film, broken up into eras such as “The Early Film Zombie (1932-1952),” “The Golden Age (1968-1983)” and “The Mid-’80s Spoof Cycle.” Following that, he spends a couple of pages delving into the significance and meaning of the zombie before wrapping it up with an explanation of his definition of zombies and criteria for movie selection. These elements, especially the definition and selection criteria, are crucial to understanding which films are present and which are omitted. He does a good job setting his boundaries and stays within them for the most part, with a few exceptions. Notably, he says that reanimated humans that retain their personality are not zombies, then goes on to include several movies that feature zombies that retain personality. There are a few other minor “rule bendings” but nothing egregious. The biggest absence some might note is his exclusion of demon-zombies: no Evil Dead here! Wisely, he limits himself to movies he has actually seen. Luckily, this man has seen an awesome amount of zombie movies.

Dendle organizes the movies alphabetically, so it’s easy to find any given entry. Since so many of these movies have numerous alternate titles, he puts in entries referring to the location of a given film’s actual entry under the alternates. The write ups for each movie are fairly concise, although some of the more important movies (and some pretty minor stuff he seemed especially taken with) get several pages of their own. Many of the films’ entries are illustrated with crisp, black-and-white production stills, which helps the overall visual appeal of the book. He comes off even handed and knowledgeable without seeming stuffy for the most part: scholarly yet accessible. At the same time, he does offer what are more or less reviews for these movies, so they are subjective. And like anything subjective, sometimes you’ll agree and sometimes you’ll have to ask, “WTF is he on about?” I don’t want to call him out on too much, but I have to say: Shock Waves? Seriously? That movie was trash and I will never understand why anyone gives it any credit at all.

The book closes with a solid, usable index, a thorough bibliography and a couple of very handy appendices: one lists the movies of the book by country,  the other by year. These are all crucial to make this an actual reference work and they are well done here.

My only real problems with the book can’t be laid at Dendle’s feet. The first is that it cuts off before the 2000s, which turned out to be a crucial decade for zombie cinema. Of course, I recognize that every book has this problem to some degree, unless they are covering a dead art form — it’s not a real complaint, just a disappointment. The real issue is the binding, which split on my copy after relatively minor and careful use. For a work I plan to return to frequently, it’s a real bummer. I wish it had been released in trade paperback instead of hardcover, frankly. It would be cheaper and possibly less fragile to boot. Despite that issue, I have no problem recommending this book to anyone who wants a hard-copy reference work on zombie film. It’s easily one of the best available.

Edit: Added line to indicate book is ordered alphabetically.

I stumbled across Zombie Apocalypse while checking my own site in Google – a nice bit of serendipity! Let me say, the title pretty much spells it out for this film, for good or ill. It’s another SOV (shot on video) exploration of the classic zombie apocalypse. This one follows two college buddies, Mark and Tom, out for a night on the town. Unfortunately, town has been overrun by a horde of the undead as a result of a feud between two secret-agent types working for shadowy organization involved in zombie research. Before long, the two buddies have joined up with one of the secret agents (Dwight, the least badass secret agent name ever) and are thrust right into the middle of zombiegeddon. Along the way they join forces with a goth chick and an almost-survivor (she gets bit, forcing Tom to dispatch her), run into one of Mark’s rivals (who happens to head a paramilitary group of survivors) and kill a whole lot of zombies before all is said and done.

It’s a micro-budget effort by director/producer/main writer/etc. Ryan Thompson, a Michigan-based filmmaker, and it definitely shows its limitations. On the negative side, it isn’t wildly original. Clearly, the filmmakers have seen a lot of zombie movies and they’ve done little more than bake up their own twist on a familiar recipe, creating the zombie-film equivalent of home-cooked comfort food. The acting is generally mediocre to awful, it could have used a lot more gore and the score is bewildering, segueing seemingly at random between quasi-porn music, traditional horror-movie synthesizer minimalism and cheeseball, goofy hard rock.

Despite those problems, it actually works a hell of a lot better than most of its SOV, backyard-auteur-epic contemporaries. This is a film that realizes what its limitations are and works within them. It wisely casts its two best actors in the lead roles, the writing is surprisingly good and it neither takes itself too seriously, nor plays everything for a cheap laugh. The best scenes work really well, especially the zombie battle in the woods and a cheesy but quite enjoyable battle royal between the two agents. And hell, when one of the biggest complaints about a movie like this is an inconsistent score, it’s already way, way ahead of the game. I could nitpick on some other issues — the pacing lags in a few spots, there is some painfully bad acting here and there (particularly the bouncer in the bar) and a few scenes are awkward and unbelievable (the bar scene, again) — but as a whole, it’s hard to consider Zombie Apocalypse anything but a triumph for what it is. I’m curious what he’d do with a real budget and a few competent actors, even though I doubt he’ll ever get either. Regardless, I’m keeping an eye out for Thompson’s next flick.

You can find more info about the movie (and order your own copy, if you are so inclined) at the Zombie Apocalypse web site.

Here’s one of the more original ideas in the zombie milieu — Lost Zombies, a site that aims to create a community-generated zombie documentary via a MySpace/Facebook like social networking site. They’ve got a pretty clever back story, outlined via the timeline on the site and an innovative method of farming out the pieces (a grid of needed submissions, where anyone can take a hack at whatever piece interests them). They’re also getting a fair bit of attention, thanks to some SXSW exposure. It looks like thus far they aren’t particularly close to being done and I can’t find any indication of what the target date of completion for the finished project is, but in the meantime it seems like a good place to meet fellow zombie devotees. Naturally, I signed up for a membership and you can find my profile here. Supposing I can find the time and a project that suits my talents, I will even participate. I haven’t been able to find a contact link for the project’s leadership, but if I can, I intend to interview them for the site. Stay tuned.

I didn’t expect a whole lot from Flight of the Living Dead: Outbreak on a Plane, but maybe that’s why it was such a surprisingly enjoyable movie. I think its biggest strength was it knew exactly what it was: a well-funded b-movie without pretension. Plotwise, it was a pastiche of cliches from the zombie and plane movie genres, but it got a lot of mileage from its competent (albeit unremarkable) cast of vaguely recognizable character actors and generally high production values. The director kept things from getting too hammy and kept the pacing moving along nicely — why can’t more horror and b-movie directors do these two, simple things? These zombies were the fast type, which I generally disapprove of but am becoming more accustomed to, and the make-up and gore were nicely done. I especially liked the yellow eyes of the zombies, which are illogical but pretty cool looking.

The story is exactly what you’d expect: mad scientist dude illegally transports zombie on commercial flight, zombie busts lose on the plane and things get seriously negative for the crew and passengers from there. Everyone reacts pretty realistically, which is to say mortal terror, panic and selfish if ultimately stupid actions by most of the soon-to-be zombie chow.  The ending was awesome, too. I liked this one so much I bought it.

I had the zombie dream last night, and that seems as good a reason as any to address it here on the site. See, I’ve been having variations on the same zombie dream on and off for close to fifteen years now. I’m fairly certain it started shortly after I saw Dawn of the Dead, which was shortly before I turned twenty. It’s something I’ve discovered is remarkably common among my male friends, especially (but not exclusively) those who are deeply interested in zombies. I’m sure there are women that have the zombie dream, too, I just don’t know any of them.

The dream is usually some variation of the apocalyptic zombie scenario. Zombies run amok everywhere, and I am left alone, or nearly alone, to battle the undead hordes. These dreams are not nightmares, not for me at least. To the contrary, I find them both fascinating for their symbolism and entertaining for their sheer zombie awesomeness. Indeed, I have no doubt that they have played a major part in my obsession with all things zombie. For whatever reason, my brain has latched on to the image of the shambling, animated dead as a vehicle for any number of subconscious desires, fears and impulses.

In the dream, I am always fighting valiantly and unceasingly against the living dead, but there is always the grim certainty, just as in most zombie fiction, that eventually I will fall and be consumed. In my own analysis, I’ve determined that the zombies frequently play the part of inexorable external forces working against me. For example, while I was in college, I would have the dream with some frequency around the time of finals. I have also had it at tax time, before a big project at work is due, etc. At other times, the zombies themselves aren’t necessarily the focus, but simply acting as a foil for other impulses — for example, the last time before this most current time I had the dream, the main anxiety in it was about not being able to reach my daughter, who was on the other side of town during a major zombie outbreak.  Not coincidentally, this was right after she went to stay with her grandparents for a while. In other words, like many a filmmaker working genre Z, the zombies were but symbols of something else.

On the other hand, I occasionally have it at a time when I simply am thinking a lot about zombies. Last night, for example, I was thinking about them right before bed and actually hoping I’d have the dream. I was also trying out melatonin to see if it would aid my intermittent insomnia, and I’ve heard it can contribute to vivid dreams. In any case, I love the zombie dream and I hope I keep having it — honestly, the one thing that’s a bummer about immersing myself in zombie media is it tends to reduce the frequency of how often I dream zombies. If anyone cares to share, I’d love to hear about others’ zombie dreams, including what you think it might mean to you.

The entirely CGI-animated Resident Evil: Degeneration was, for my tastes, far better than the live-action Resident Evil. Admittedly, I have only seen the first RE movie – I was so disappointed I didn’t bother with the others, though I will eventually. In Resident Evil: Degeneration you have a typically (for the franchise) convoluted plot that centers around the efforts of another company to pick up the pieces of the Umbrella Corporation’s research and profit from it, even if that means their market is terrorists. The main event is a release of the zombie-making T-virus in an airport and pure zombie mayhem is the result. Franchise heavyweights Leon Kennedy and Claire Redfield are the main characters and they lead a rescue mission from inside the airport, before tangling with a corrupt corporate executive (is there any other kind?) who’s concocted an elaborate plot to test the G-virus, which creates a weird reptile/insectoid hybrid demonic-looking mutant that is all but unkillable. There’s also a romance sub-plot between Kennedy and a new character, and the new character’s brother is involved in the release of the G-Virus, as revenge. Oh, and he is being manipulated by the corporate executive who’s linked to the senator trapped in the airport and, uh, … did I mention it gets a little convoluted?

The movie looks great at times and horrible at others, depending on what the scene portrays.  The zombies themsleves and the action scenes typically look great, and the fires looked nothing short of amazing (the film makers knew this, and used the effect as much as possible). Unfortunately, any kind of  emotional scene or anything that required a facial close-up was way too much “Welcome to Uncanny Valley!” to be anything but off putting. The pacing is generally tight but it does drag at moments and the story is convoluted enough to be difficult to follow at times. Those two things conspired to make my attention wander at several points. Luckily the dialog is nowhere near as bad as the games’ famously bad writing — at its worse, it’s just kind of stiff and unrealistic, but no worse than many a live-action zombie epic I’ve sat through.

For fans of the RE games, this is definitely a worthy exercise, if only for the additional insight into the characters and back story of the games.  For fans of the RE live action movies it’s probably little more than a curiosity at best and utterly confusing at worst (“Uh, how does this relate to Alice now?”). For general zombiephiles, it’s an interesting, if flawed, work that’s worth a look (especially if you enjoy anime, which it strongly resembles in many ways: pacing, story and dialog in particular).

Resident Evil 5, the latest in the premier zombie franchise in the world of video games, hits retail today and I couldn’t be sadder. This is because there’s no way I can afford to play it (nor would I have the time to play it if I could, but that’s another matter). Hell, I haven’t even been able to afford picking up Left 4 Dead yet. Still, I couldn’t let such an important zombie event pass without noting it and still aspire to being the world’s best zombie blog. I’d have to turn in my zombie union card if I did.

In non-zombie related news, next time someone tells you video games are a recession-proof industry, smack them for me, preferably with a copy of either Left 4 Dead or Resident Evil 5. Also, I will have a review of Resident Evil: Degeneration up later today so I can stay in the spirit of RE:5 day. Anyone who’s playing RE:5, feel free to torment me with tales of how awesome it is in the comments section…

When zombies make zombie movies, bad things happen. The sole claim to fame offered by FleshEater is that it is the pet project of Bill Hinzman, who was the graveyard ghoul in the original Night of the Living Dead. He wrote, directed and starred in this turkey, which mashes up NotLD with any generic Friday the 13th inspired slasher film and ends up as a mess. A dumbass farmer unearths a zombie, who breeds more zombies in the usual, bitey way. This troupe of flesh-loving undead systematically kill a bunch of completely unappealing teens during a camp out. In a departure from completely generic zombiedom (but well in line with generic slasherdom), the zombies all use weapons — pitchforks, a hatchet, etc. — which gives a little bit of variety to the killings. Things are set to get all apocalyptic up in this bitch when the local townsfolk pull out the guns and wipe them all out — or do they? Then the end rips off NotLD‘s ending — what a surprise. Apart from being slow, dull and dumb, it wasn’t bad. Just kidding, it was bad.

As an aside, I am pretty certain this was filmed in rural Pennsylvania. Something about the scenery, the mullets and the ready availability of firearms and Iron City beer just reminds me of my time there.

Now you know where zombies fit into the food chain. Any questions?

Found here.

Mario Acevedo’s Jailbait Zombie is based on the can’t-miss premise of vampires versus zombies. You have Felix Gomez, a lecherous, snarky soldier turned vampire enforcer, facing off against an army of rotting, walking dead. Along the way, the plot is thickened by the addition of a precocious, troubled teenage girl with immense psychic powers and a burning need to become a vampire. She latches on to Gomez, occasionally aiding his search for the zombies’ creator but mostly just getting in the way. Her family are bush-league Mafioso, which adds another complication, as does the need to keep the existence of the supernatural — including vampires, zombies and psychic teenage girls — a secret from the mortal world.

The books starts strong with a fight between Gomez and a zombie and proceeds to go on a twisty, page-turning journey that reads like a contemporary detective yarn heavily laced with supernatural elements. In interviews, Acevedo has called his genre urban fantasy, and that works as well as any descriptor for the mix of familiar fictional tropes from horror, hard-boiled detective stories and the new wave of supernatural fiction. Acevedo does a good job of mixing things up with some original ideas about his creatures of the night while sticking closely enough to the classics to not upset anyone’s apple cart. His vampires suck blood, get burned by sunlight, can control the minds of mortals, are immortal themselves, etc. At the same time, they can operate in daylight with the aid of sunblock and makeup, eat food as well as blood and even have a sense of morality. Of course, given the nature of this blog, it’s the zombies we’re more interested in here. These are the work of a reanimator who comes off a bit like Herbert West of Re-Animator mixed with Dr. Frankenstein. They’re rotting, shambling messes but the “best made” can manage some pretty advanced tasks, like driving. They’re pretty much impossible to kill and share some kind of group consciousness. Oh, and they love brains.

It’s not great literature, but no one picks up a book called Jailbait Zombie looking for deep insight into the human condition, now, do they? The book delivers what it promises: an action-packed tale of the supernatural, laced with humor and gore. There’s never a dull moment and Acevedo knows how to pace a story. Characters such as Gomez and his teenaged stalker are well-developed and satisfying, but in a few cases, especially the Red Bull-swilling mad scientist reanimator, I felt like there was a good bit of potential left on the table and I wish he’d done more with them.  I also can’t help but wish there were more zombies in the book; the climactic battle between Gomez and the zombies was great but left me wanting more scenes like it. The bottom line is you pretty much get what’s advertised with Jailbait Zombie; if the concept of a vampire enforcer squaring off against an army of zombies sounds good to you, you’re not going to be disappointed.

For more info, visit MarioAcevedo.com