Ok.
A few of us banter back and forth from time to time about the Zombie flicks we like, but have never really gotten around to a thread before, so…
What’s your favorite zombie film and why?
My fav is, of course, the original black and white version (though the colorized version is cool) of Night of the Living Dead. The remake (1990) was good, but lacked the sense of closed in claustrophobic madness that the original Romero film produced.
After that, I have to draw a tie between the original Dawn of the Dead and the 2004 remake; they’re both excellent in their own right.
Next has to be Shaun of the Dead, which I thought was a total scream, no pun intended.
I really have enjoyed the “new-age” zombie films like 28 Days Later and the Resident Evil movies because of their technological/biological/scientific twist on zombies.
I think I’ve only seen one zombie film-I Walked with a Zombie. I saw it when I was very youg and it scared me halfway to being a zombie myself. At one time my wife and I got into vampire films and we saw some pretty horrible pictures but Blood and Roses was pretty good.
I was about to say I’d never seen one other than Thriller…but I’ve seen Plan 9 also, and, according to JB, it counts.
And we still sometimes use the spaceship peoples’ salute around our house–the one where you cross your arms and slap your shoulders.
I don’t know why, but zombies and vampires have never done it for me. In fact, they bore me to tears. If you you don’t buy into the premise that these things are horrible scary, then the rest of the films fall flat on their faces. A good performance by an actor can still move me (e.g. Sigourney Weaver at the end of the first Alien flick), but a mere situation is not enough to get me going.
a reanimated flesh eating corpse isn’t enough to get ya going eh? Ok, maybe not one reanimated flesh eating corpse, but a whole whorde of em?
They bite!!! with human teeth!!!
Human teeth are dull, they hurt more!!!
And you get infected!!!
And if you lived in the USA your HMO wouldn’t cover that kind of injury!!!
Now if that’s not horror, I don’t know what is!
I suppose they treat zombie bites every day in Canada now, no wonder you’re not scared of zombies! You just walk into a treatment center and get cured! Universal healthcare is a wonderful thing; there’s no way my HMO would cover de-zombification! And considering that 60% of all Americans are uninsured, is it any wonder that zombies are so scary here?
Are you still buying into that old myth? What health care? I can’t even get a doctor. The big to-do now is that major American clinics and hospitals are setting up offices in various cities here to “help” Canadians get down to the US easily for more timely/advanced treatment. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20051125.wxcancer25/BNStory/National/
No, zombies don’t bother me. After you have worked for large government and large corporations for decades, zombies just sort of roll off the shoulder. Now, Shaun of the Dead is a totally different matter.
Hmmm…in my experience, the zombies tend to work in the hospitals. They wind up in an office driving a desk; for some reason, hospitals won’t fire an idiot, while good nurses come and go…
Oh, wait…I see…you mean flesh-eating zombies. Gotcha.
I love zombie films! Not sure what my favorite is…28 Days Later is definitely a good one. And along those lines, the Omega Man is one of my favorites, too.
My favorite is probably Redneck Zombies. It starts out with a military guy transporting “toxic chemical nuclear waste” and smoking a joint. A barrel of the stuff falls off his Jeep and becomes a still. The town just got a satellite dish, so a bunch of people have re-named themselves after characteris in the Beverly Hillbillies, including one big, bearded guy who insists on being called Ellie Mae. The moonshine from the toxic chemical nuclear still infects the populous. The cover of the tape included the line, “The last half-hour of this movie makes Dawn of the Dead look like Mary Poppins.”
Another good one with a sense of humor is Return of the Living Dead. I just love the scenes with all the zombies chanting “Brains! Brains!”
And if we’re considering movies with minimal zombie content, my vote would be for Evil Dead II: Dead by Dawn. The scene with the re-animated girlfriend, who decomposed very quickly, dancing for Ash has to be one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen in a movie.
The original Dawn of the Dead is still closest to my heart. Anything by Romero is good, I only wish he had more support over years and didn’t have to fight the whole time just to make a good movie.
There’s nothing like seeing a Lucio Fulci zombie movie in a theatre. Shared laughter at an awful flick is a great thing.
There were actually two sequel to Return of the Living Dead running on Sci-Fi recently but I just didn’t have the time to catch them. Number 3 was suprisingly good (for a zombie movie) and starred Melinda Clarke, woof.
feadogin mentioned “Omega Man”. Great observation. Omega Man was based on an older movie with Vincent Price which was based on the short story, “I Am Legend” by Richard Matheson. Romero was also inspired by “I Am Legend” when he came up with NOLD.
chas, was “Redneck Zombies” the movie with The Tobacco Man? Wasn’t that the one where one of the “victims” took a hit of acid and did an autopsey on one of the zombies?
I liked the first Return of the Living Dead best of that series. “Send more cops.”
I always wondered how the skeletal lady zombie was able to say the word “pain” or “brain” without any lips.
I don’t remember that, but it’s been awhile. Another scene I remember from it was the woman topping up her toddler’s bottle with moonshine while giving him a bath in the washing machine.
A classic.
