Horror Movie discussion: ZOMBIES

[supervike]

n107 started a fantastic thread about Horror movies, but it's a bit too broad for good discussion. So, my thought is to break the 'types' of horror movies down, and specifically discuss the movies of that genre.


Of course, we want to start with ZOMBIES!! Something we all obviously have an interest in.

So, what are your favorite Zombie related flicks?

Why do you like about Zombie movies?

Fast Zombies vs. Slow Zombies. Discuss.

[Sarku]

Dude... 28 Days Later... I ABSOLUTELY love it...

AND

Shaun of The Dead... another keeper... they are my two faves... I wanna watch it now... dang work getting in the way...

[supervike]

Given my current fetishness with All things Zombie....It's hard to believe that I'm a rookie at Zombie films.

I never cared for zombie films...or never paid them much heed, as I just thought they were all gore-fests. I really knew nothing about them. Even so much as to see George A. Romero and not even know who he was...

Then, I went to the theater with a buddy of mine to see the remake of the DAWN OF THE DEAD. I really wasn't wanting to see it, but I went anyhow. I just loved it. The tension, the helplessness, the survivors...just fantastic.

I'm slowly making my way through all the classics now. The original Night of the Living Dead is really well done, as is the remake.

Fast zombies are damn scary, but slow zombies really creep me out. Something terrifying about the slow, relentless advance of them. Probably some allegory for the fear of death that I don't properly comprehend.

So, my top three so far:

Dawn of the Dead 2004
Shaun of the Dead
Slither


My least favorite:

Zombie Nation
Zombie Nation
did I mention Zombie Nation?

But, again, I'm a relative newbie to Zombie flicks. I'd love to see a definitive 'must see' list.

[deadrabbit]

list of zombie flicks i loved, in order of awesomenessss!

dawn of the dead
dawn of the dead 2004
28days later
dairy of the dead
shawn of the dead
28 weeks later
dance of the dead ( very un known but very awesome, kinda
like shawn of the dead two
land of the dead.
and more i cant think of right now.

Never see these
zombie nation
zombies in the hood
zombie gangs
zombie dairys
automation transfusion
xxx zombies
....

SLOW zombies all the way, fast one are more intense but i enjoy slow ones better, if there wer fast ones it would be near impossible to survive.

when i grew up my mom worked at a movie rental place and id go to work ever day with her and watch movies sense i was like 2, i kinda grew up with chucky, aleins, zombies, fredy, and jason (yes i have bad parents haha). my mom told me the only way she could get me to sleep when i was really young is if she put on the terminator. would you geuss my first word was nator.

[zombie67]

deadrabbit Wrote:dairy of the dead

Sorry DR but I have to post this pic. I did a while back for another site, with mis-print film titles:



Don't drink the milk, man!!

[zombie67]

As promised SV, here are some of my recommendations. These are in no particular order and I have also not posted things like Dawn, Day, Shaun etc. that I am sure others have and will recommend. I have tried to post a few you may not have heard of:

LIVING DEAD AT THE MANCHESTER MORGUE aka LET SLEEPING CORPSES LIE



IMDB:

Quote:Brought about by the use of a new, radiation emitting device intended to destroy insect's nervous systems, the dead are brought back to life due to the jump start the radiation provides to their nervous systems. After the murder of a woman's estranged husband, police suspect the woman, her sister and a relative stranger (who was only along because the sister had run into his motorcycle only hours prior) of involvement in the murder, and as the bodies begin to accumulate the police chief becomes more and more convinced of their involvement.

Great Italian/Spanish co-production set in England, with some very memorable zombies:




ZOMBI 2 aka ZOMBIE FLESHEATERS



IMDB:

Quote:A sail boat arrives in New York without a living soul but a zombie that attacks two guards from the Coast Guard. The daughter of the owner of the ship, Anne Bowles (Tisa Farrow), requests information about her missing father that was in the Antilles to the detectives that are investigating the crime without success. She meets the journalist Peter West (Ian McCulloch) and they decide to investigate what might have happened to her father. They travel to Matul Island with Brian Hull (Al Cliver) and Susan Barrett (Auretta Gay) in their boat. Once in the tropical island, they meet Dr. David Menard (Richard Johnson), who is trying to find a cure to a disease that brings dead back to life, turning them into zombies that eat human flesh, increasing the menace against the group.

Italy had a trend of unofficially making sequels to US movies. Romero's Dawn of the Dead was released in Italy as Zombi and director Lucio Fulci made an unofficial sequel (story is actually more of a prequel) in Zombie Flesheaters (Zombi 2). Most famous for the notorious eyeball piercing scene, the film also contains an amazing underwater scene with a zombie fighting a shark

Fulci also went to make a further trilogy of "living dead" films with:

CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD AKA GATES OF HELL



IMDB:

Quote:In the small New England town of Dunwich, a priest commits suicide by hanging himself in the church cemetary which somehow opens the gates of hell allowing the dead to rise. Peter, a New York City reporter, teams up with a young psychic, named Mary, to travel to the town where they team up with another couple, psychiatrist Jerry and patient Sandra, to find a way to close the gates before All Saints Day or the dead all over the world will rise up and kill the living.

THE BEYOND aka SEVEN DOORS OF DEATH



IMDB:

Quote:The New Yorker Liza Merril (Katherine MacColl) inherits an old hotel in Louisiana, and invests her savings to reopen the place. While repairing the building, many people dies, and local Dr. John McCabe (David Warbeck) feels close to Liza and tries to help her to solve the mystery of the hotel. Meanwhile, Emily (Sarah Keller), a blind woman, advises Liza to leave the place as soon as possible. Later they realize that the place is one gate of hell and has been opened, permitting the dead walk on Earth.

HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY



AMAZON (imdb synopsis was rubbish):

Quote:A young family moves from their cramped New York City apartment to a spacious new home in New England. But this is no ordinary house in the country: the previous owner was the deranged Dr. Freudstein, whose monstrous human experiments have left a legacy of bloody mayhem. Now, someone - or something - is alive in the basement, and home sweet home is about to become a horrific hell on earth.

Another few I thought of to mention are for those who enjoy very, very over-the-top films:

NIGHTMARE CITY



IMDB:

Quote:TV news reporter Dean Miller waits at the airport for the arrival of a scientist that he is about to interview. There, an unmarked military plane makes an emergency landing. The plane doors open and dozens of zombies burst out stabbing and shooting military waiting outside. Miller tries to let the people know of this event, but General Murchison of Civil Defense will not allow it. Then, Miller tries to find his wife and escape from the blood-thirsty zombies that are all over the city.

Following on from zombies flying a plane is of course:

FLIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD aka PLANE DEAD



IMDB:

Quote:On a flight from Los Angeles to Paris, a mad scientist on the run from the CIA is transporting a coffin containing the body of a colleague infected with a genetically modified virus. While the 747 crosses a violent thunderstorm, the instability of the aircraft allows the corpse to get out of its container. The flesh-eating zombie quickly starts to spread the virus, infecting many of the passengers which now will have to fight for their lives stranded in the air with no way out...

Shaun of the Dead billed itself as a Rom Zom Com (Romantic Zombie Comedy) but before Shaun the original RomZomCom was

BRAINDEAD aka DEAD ALIVE



IMDB:

Quote:A poisonous Sumatran rat-monkey is taken from a desert island to a zoo in New Zealand. Lionel takes his new girlfriend Paquita there. His pain-in-the-ass mother follows him, probably suffering from some kind of reverse Oedipus complex. She is bitten by the monkey and gradually dies and turns into a zombie. Then she goes around hunting people, and everybody she bites also turn into zombies. Lionel has bigger and bigger problems fighting the zombies and hiding them from Paquita and the rest of the world. Finally, Lionel and Paquita get into a fight with hundreds of zombies during a party of unwanted guests at Lionel's home.

Directed by a certain Peter Jackson, years before he ventured into Middle Earth. Also, if you have seen Jackson's King Kong, the scene where Adrian Brody is taken into the hold of the ship to write and he walks past animal cages of all sizes. One of the cages is marked "Sumatran Rat-Monkey"!



Well, there is a bunch to be going on with.

I will be back with some films which take a different approach to Zombies/Living Dead and also my views on zombie flicks.

[supervike]

Ok, some of those look very promising!

I've heard that the italian zombie movies are very good, but I've been wary of that....but with your recommendation, I'll start adding these to my ever growing 'list'.

I did already see the FLIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. It was just like SNAKES ON A PLANE, but actually watchable.....LOL.


I'm looking in vain for that "Dairy of the Dead". Being a small town farm boy, it looks udderly fantastic. Sure, maybe I'm trying to butter you up, but I'll milk these jokes for all their worth....Talk about Mad Cow...


Much appreciative of the list! Keep them coming.

[supervike]

deadrabbit Wrote:when i grew up my mom worked at a movie rental place and id go to work ever day with her and watch movies sense i was like 2, i kinda grew up with chucky, aleins, zombies, fredy, and jason (yes i have bad parents haha). my mom told me the only way she could get me to sleep when i was really young is if she put on the terminator. would you geuss my first word was nator.

That's hilarious!

When I was just a little kid, there weren't as many of the 'gory' movies. But I'd stay up very late on Friday nights and watch CREATURE FEATURE, where they'd have the old Dracula or monster movies, of if I were lucky a Godzilla flick.

I guess I did this since I was about 3-4. My mom and dad would just let me stay up and watch them, my sisters and parents would all just go to bed, and I'd stay up until 2 in the morning rotting my brain!

[supervike]

The zombie fairy dropped off some movies for me to watch, so I finally got to see the original DAWN OF THE DEAD.


It's no where near the slick stylized version the remake is, but I can see how it has maintained it's cult classic status.

I was really impressed by the actor Ken Foree, he just made a great zombie survivor. Also, I love all the things that are considered 'cliche' in zombie flicks nowadays were because of this movie. He (Foree) looked slightly familar, and as I checked him out on the internet, I see why. He was in the kinky and weird FROM BEYOND movie I recently watched.

It looks to me that the cast and crew had a blast making the movie, and things must have really clicked well.

I have always heard about Romero's propensity to make some sort of social commentary in his films, but never really understood it. I still don't claim to understand it properly, but whether intentionally or not, he sold the point of 'consumerism' making us into zombies.

The scenes with the zombies wandering the mall, and the 'muzak' playing are certainly making a comment. I enjoyed that.

The most interesting line in the movie, to me however, was when Francine gets this disgusting look on her face and says "what have we done to ourselves?" (or something to that effect). She realizes this as they insulate themselves with all the creature comforts of a home, while outside the real world is literally tearing itself apart. I can't quite put my finger on it, but there is a deeper meaning there. Again, I'm not sure if Romero did this intentionally or it just sort of happened. Either way, I like it.

I also see on the internet that both Ken Foree, and the little maniacal SWAT guy (Roger?) made cameo's in the remake. I'm going to watch the remake again (my favorite zombie flick) with new eyes....maybe I can spot all the times that homage was paid to the original now.

Anyhow, I'm probably looking at this a bit too deeply, but I kinda crave more in depth discussion of these movies....hopefully somebody else will as well.

[zombie67]

Glad you enjoyed the original Dawn, SV.

Ken is wonderful as Peter and the most intelligent of the lot. Roger, the other SWAT guy is reckless and edgy, Flyboy is the personification of ego-centric, self importance and greed. Even Fran gives the impression throughout of a depression.

Peter seems to accept the situation and makes the best of it as he can. He seems to have strong moral fibre and rarely do the cracks show. Even when he seems to have given up all hope, at the last minute he can't just roll over, he fights back and makes it to the chopper.

I met Ken Foree about 6 or 7 years ago. He was in a shop in London where I used to work selling movie related stuff. I was introduced to him by an ex-colleague of mine and we spent the next hour or so just chatting about zombie film, Romero, Rob Zombie and life in general and he really was a friendly and funny guy.

I am a member of his site: Ken Foree

He calls himself Ken Foree WGZK - World's Greatest Zombie Killer

In fact, there was a thread in 2007 about the possibility of Ken being in a video game (he has provided voices for GTA: San Andreas) and I suggested:



Ken seemed to like it:

Quote:Yeah, I want to do a major video game with me doing my thing, if you know what I mean? I hear about games being produced here and there but no one has knocked on my door. I've got a few cards given to me from game producers, but it's hard to tell who has the juice to really put a good product on the market.

I don't want any Peter Washington look a likes doing their version of me. That may sound selfish, but that's how I feel

zombie 67 I love that, it should be featured on the home page. Give DC a shout and tell him to put it up. it's exactly what we're talking about.

Ken

As for homages in other films don't forget the company where Shaun works in Shaun of the Dead....Foree Electrics!

Also, I had to laugh when I saw the name of the fish resturant where Shaun fails to make a booking...Fulci's!