Movies
Pick our brains about why zombies kill at box office

By Mark Rahner
Seattle Times staff zombie

	MICHAEL GIBSON / UNIVERSAL STUDIOS A growing mob of undead chase quarry in the zombie-action remake “Dawn of the Dead,” which made $27.3 million on its debut weekend.
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It took a gory movie about the living dead to knock a gory movie about Jesus Christ out of first place at the box office. But zombies had already taken a bite out of pop culture.

The "Dawn of the Dead" remake gobbled up $27.3 million on its debut weekend, compared with $19.2 million for "The Passion of the Christ." But it's not as if audiences have been starved for carnivorous undead flicks between George A. Romero's revered 1978 shocker and the high-octane "reimagining" from director Zack Snyder and screenwriter James ("Scooby Doo") Gunn. Barricade yourself inside with this Primer of the Living Dead. And remember: You have limited ammo, so aim for the head.

The genre is surging. Recent zombie assaults on the big screen: Danny Boyle's genre-revitalizing British import "28 Days Later" (yeah, they're "infected" and not technically zombies, but that's a geek debate you can have on your own time); Japanese criminals facing off against a forest full of gut-munchers in the silly "Versus"; the nearly unwatchable video-game adaptation "House of the Dead"; and Milla Jovovich in the slicker "Resident Evil" game adaptation.

On the horizon of the dead: the sequel "Resident Evil: Apocalypse," a spoof "Shaun of the Dead," more "Resident Evil" games, and comic books of "Night of the Living Dead: Barbara's Zombie Chronicles" (Dead Dog, April or May) and "Dawn of the Dead" (IDW Publishing, April).

Add that to the steady flow of nada-budget video fodder, and there are more zombies these days than you can shake your stump at.

	ANCHOR BAY ENTERTAINMENT George A. Romero's revered 1978 shocker, "Dawn of the Dead," above, provided fodder for a remake by director Zack Snyder and screenwriter James Gunn. Romero's 1968 film, "Night of the Living Dead," codified the rules and made zombies into a genre.

Why? This ain't a Psych 101 primer, but we'll let you pick our brains: Zombies are easier for monster-jaded audiences to buy into than other types of overfamiliar or preposterous menaces. They're just people, and maybe people you know, turned into mindless, inexorable things who don't just want to kill you, but devour your flesh. There are subtler fears, such as being absorbed into a group, and the original "Dawn's" satiric warning of idiot consumerism. But take that folkloric fear of the undead which has always run through ghost stories, add the species-deep terror of being eaten, throw in a helping of apocalyptic dread, and you've got yourself a horror subgenre with legions of slack-jawed fans.

Pre-Romero zombie flicks included 1932's "White Zombie" with Bela Lugosi, producer Val Lewton's atmospheric "I Walked With a Zombie" in 1943, Hammer Studios' stately-slow "Plague of the Zombies" in 1966, and the awful-funny midnight-movie staple "The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies" in 1967.

But with the claustrophobic black-and-white "Night of the Living Dead" in 1968, Pittsburgh-based Romero codified the rules and made zombies into a genre. His genius: dispensing with voodoo lore and plunging, abrupt and unexplained, into a nightmare gone from spooky to horrific, where the zombies are ravenous cannibals besieging a farmhouse full of survivors.

	PETER MOUNTAIN / FOX SEARCHLIGHT PICTURES Danny Boyle's British import "28 Days Later" joins the surging genre of gore flicks.

The rules ever since — and pay attention, because your life may depend on it: 1) Reanimated corpses have a taste for people. 2) The people they kill get up and kill. 3) Even if you only get bitten, the infection will slowly kill you and turn you into a ghoul. 4) Shoot 'em in the chest or extremities and they just keep coming. Destroy the brain and you destroy the ghoul. Or, as author Max Brooks put it in last year's "Zombie Survival Guide," "Use your head: cut off theirs."

"Dawn" makeup wiz Tom Savini's 1990 remake of "Night" added little except color, but the original's classic status was cemented when the Library of Congress put it on the National Film Registry alongside "The Ten Commandments" and "A Streetcar Named Desire" in 1999. It was "Dawn of the Dead" a decade after "Night" that spawned legions of imitators — especially in sauce-drenched Italy, and later in gore-loving Japan. With much higher gut-spilling, adventure and satire quotients, it followed two SWAT troopers, a pregnant TV news producer and her helicopter-pilot boyfriend to the then-novel sanctuary of a huge shopping mall.

Romero followed his "Dawn" with "Day of the Dead" in 1985. Set in a huge underground bunker, it pitted scientists and the military against the dead and each other. Suffering from budget slashes and a scaled-down script, it's the least of the trilogy. Romero wasn't involved in "Dawn" 2004, and has been struggling for years to get funding for a fourth installment most recently dubbed "Dead Reckoning," which he's said will be about ignoring the problem of the zombies.

The essential undead films

Now that you're up to speed on the takeover, here's more to chew on: a short list of essential undead flicks which, like the new "Dawn," owe their existence to Romero. Remember, they're not for kids, and you may not want to go out for ribs afterward.

"Dead Alive" (1992, Vidmark, unrated): Before cuddly hobbits, director Peter Jackson created an over-the-top splatter-fest about a young man and his zombiefied mom. A lawnmower is used as a weapon.

"Zombie" (1980, Anchor Bay, R): Italian maestro Lucio Fulci's effective "Dawn" rip-off on a Caribbean island. Infamous for scenes involving a really long splinter and a shark-zombie battle.

"The Beyond" (1983, Anchor Bay, unrated): Fulci's incoherent gross-out masterpiece, about a hotel above a door to hell. Hero David Warbeck takes a really long time to figure out the head-shot rule.

"Cemetery Man" (1994, R): Michele Soave's (relatively) elegant dark comedy of a caretaker (Rupert Everett) who forcefully sends back the restless ones and falls for a beauty who's, ah, high-maintenance. Boffo ending.

"Burial Ground" (1980, Media Blasters, R): Zombies dine on guests at an Italian villa. Cheap, ultranasty, with a creepy-looking incestuous kid — but delivers the goods. Ugh.

"Let Sleeping Corpses Lie" (1974, Anchor Bay, R): A hippie and the girl who gives him a lift encounter flesh-eaters in the English countryside — created by a diabolical agricultural device!

"Shock Waves" (1977, Blue Underground, R): Underwater Nazi zombies. Mach schnell!

"Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things" (1972, VCI, PG): Acting troupe raises the dead on an island, and it's curtains. Dull, badly acted start; killer half-hour finale.

"Zombie Holocaust" aka "Doctor Butcher M.D." (1979, Media Blasters, R): That's "Medical Deviate," doing sicko experiments in the jungle. An outboard motor used as a weapon.

"The Return of the Living Dead" (1985, MGM, R): Well-loved gore-comedy with the immortal line, "But I don't care, darling, because I love you and you've got to let me eat your brains."

Mark Rahner: mrahner@seattletimes.com

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