If you're like me, you love zombies. We're talking crazed, hungry undead reanimated corpses that roam the earth in search of human flesh--not the numb dullards you may see on a daily basis. Those are co-workers. We're talking actual zombies with their flesh rotting off. Zombies are the rage. They're hot! There are plenty of zombies movies out there, a zombie survival guide, and --believe it or not--a rewrite of Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" replete with zombies. Yawn. For my money, the original zombies are the best. Kudos to George Romero who spent about twelve bucks to produce the definitive zombie classic--the brilliant low budget 1968 masterpiece "Night of the Living Dead."
You can't beat these reanimated corpses, that's for sure. These slow moving creeps amble along after you while you try to escape...but the car won't start, or you break a heel, or you slip in the muddy graveyard. It's excruciating. They keep coming.
Along with the Austen parody, there are plenty of other attempts to breath life into the tired old zombie genre, including "serious literature" such as "World War Z," a tale of surviving an all-out zombie war, and "The Zombie Survival Guide," a how-to book with the same idea. There are new and improved zombies, such as the fast running bloodhounds of "28 Days Later," and the hilariously slow-moving ghouls of "Shaun of the Dead," but for my money the best zombie flick is the black and white gore-fest shown above. This is the bomb. Watch it with the lights down low.
Enough revisionist zombies! Why update, morph, and remix the original unless you can improve it? Zombies are in vogue, and while they may never be as popular and sexy as vampires--witness the "Twilight" phenomenon of teen bloodsuckers--they have a certain dignified stature among the undead. Let's keep it that way. Help the zombies survive the hacks.
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