When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth!

Before I start on the films, I should mention that it's been a while since i've seen these movies, not since I first saw them for free when I worked at Video Ezy which was about 2 years ago, so you'll have to forgive me for any unfactual errors or misnomers that I put on this page. Then again, seeing as i'm the only person I know who's seen any of these movies, I think it's a pretty safe bet that I could write any old crap and nobody would be the wiser. But anyway, i'll try to do my best. *WARNING! Contains spoilers*

Night of the Living Dead (1968)

Some might say this is the grandaddy of all zombie flicks. I don't know if that's true, but it's definitely one of the first to deal with the issue of zombies seriously. I mean really, the living dead are a very grave matter (pun intended). Filmed entirely in black and white, the version I watched was a horrible artificially colourised version. Needless to say I turned all the colour down on my tv so I could enjoy it the way it was originally intended.

According to my recollection, the film starts with a young couple travelling to a countryside graveyard to visit the resting place of a dead parent. As you would expect, the dead start rising from their graves and the lady runs to a farmhouse for protection, while her husband valiantly gets eaten by the zombies.

The country hicks inside the house aren't happy about this hysterical lady barging in, but they don't have much time to protest as another middle-aged couple, whose car has broken down, stumble in. And somehow, a cool black guy called Ben is there too. He's cool.

As the living dead start converging on the farmhouse, the small group do their best to barricade themselves in. A long nerve wracking section of the film commences as the group fend off attacks by the shambling zombies. One cool moment, although it's only cool if you've played Resident Evil 2, is when there's a great (tasteful) shot of a naked zombie shuffling towards the farmhouse. During this portion of the film, the reason why the dead have decided to wander around the countryside is kind of explained. A meteor, you see, has passed above the earth and the radiation trail that this left behind is why the dead are doing the funky slow shuffle. Not just across the countryside, but across the whole world! Simple really. This portion of the film also has some extremely cool TV News reports. It looks like George gathered up all the yokels he could find, and then interviewed them without telling them the small fact that the dead weren't really walking the earth. It's all very realistic, with much slow talking and brandishing of shot-guns as the yokels prepare to go on a merry jaunt to exterminate the zombies. I'd like to say these sections were the inspiration for the Blair Witch documentaries, but they probably weren't.

Anywho, back at the farmhouse things are heating up. The group are starting to slowly lose their sanity as the dead relentlessly try to break into the farmhouse. This is why Ben is cool. He keeps it together, like a good hero should. I can't quite remember, but I think at some stage the middle aged couple barricade themselves in the basement, leaving the rest to fend for themselves. Leading up to the end of the film, shit goes down and Ben ends up getting killed and turning into a zombie. He then gets properly killed by being shot in the head by one of the people (you see, by this stage it has been discovered that the only way to kill a zombie is to shoot it in the head, or decapitate it.) So, this ends the film. Nothing's resolved, and it's all rather depressing. Just the way I like it.

A damn fine film. Genuinely creepy and well shot, and the performances are good. Especially the hicks.
Flash forward ten years to....

Dawn of the Dead (1978)

The George A. Romero Zombie Trilogy....a Tribute

I love zombie movies. And not just movies, I like the idea of zombies themselves. I'm not quite sure when this fascination started, but looking back I think it might have been when my older brother Bruce rather naughtily let me watch his copy of Evil Dead 2 ( I will cover the Evil Dead movies in an upcoming article) when I was about nine.

The following article is a tribute to what I consider to be three of the finest zombie movies ever made; 'Night of the Living Dead', 'Dawn of the Dead' and 'Day of the Dead'. The man responsible for these films? None other than George A. Romero. I know you probably haven't heard of him, but trust me, he was a trendsetter in his field. I may be completely wrong, but I'll go ahead and say that he was the first guy to start the legend that zombies naturally have to eat brains and flesh. I mean c'mon, what else would they eat? If nothing else, his films were the inspiration for the Resident Evil series of games which is an achievement in itself. For those of you who dont know who George A. Romero is, then thou shalt learn something about him in this article....maybe. It's definately not going to be the most in-depth article on the man and his works, but hey, i'm not a very deep guy. Before I begin, here's a picture of the man himself..

Although you can't make it out on the picture above, the tagline for this movie is "When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth."....how cool is that? Although it was filmed ten years after the first film, it is set, due to the magic of cinema, only a week or so after it. It starts with a city being overrun by zombies. A couple of SWAT team members, whose job it is to exterminate the zombies, decide to make a run for it while they're evacuating a news building. A reporter couple decide to leg it as well, and the four of them nick off in the company hellicopter.

After a couple of mishaps along the way, none fatal, they spot an abandoned shopping mall from the air and decide to set down. There are a few zombies inside, but they're quickly disposed of with the help of bullets shot from guns into their heads. The group barricade themselves in the mall, and settle in by doing some looting. They go mad with consumerism, a theme which is prevalent in this movie. Forming their own little luxury pad up in one of the executive offices, they settle in and chill out. Little do they know that a roving band of hoodlums, armed with various weapons, have spotted the shopping mall and foolishly decide to break in. This leads to the zombies, as well as the hoodlums, pouring inside. Shit happens, and our group of heroes have to fend off these badly dressed 70's thugs while simultaneously shooting any zombie they see in the head. Eventually, all the thugs are killed and our heroes retreat from the zombies back up to the office. There's quite a disturbing moment of the film round here when one of the SWAT guys, who has been bitten by a zombie, slowly dies. Moments after he dies however, he comes back as a zombie and the survivors have to shoot him. Somewhere along the way, the male reporter has been killed as well. Our two survivors, a cool black guy with a huge affro and the reporter chick, decide that a hastry retreat is in order and head up to the helicopter. Just as they're climbing up the ladder though, a zombie breaks into their pad and the cool black guy has to sacrifice himself to allow the woman to escape. Right on! The film ends with her flying away into the distance....

This is my favourite film of the series. Really well done, with both scary moments and touches of wry humour. There's an interesting theme of the almighty force of consumerism running through the film, which culminates in a scene which is both amusing and disturbing where the zombies begin to mindlessly play around with the products in the mall.

Top effort from George, but he wasn't finished yet....

Day of the Dead (1985)

This film picks up pretty soon after 'Dawn'. Before I start, this is my least favourite film of the series so my facts in this synopsis will probably be way off. As long as I dont start going on about giraffes though, I should be fine.
Set on a large island somewhere, if my memory serves me correctly, this plot deals with a research station, surrounded by an impenetrable fence, where a small group of scientists are running tests on any zombies that they manage to capture. One zombie in particular is their favourite guinea pig (the guy you see in the poster above). The head scientist is trying to teach him to operate basic equipment, and basically trying to make him more human. This is an interesting theme of the movie, the arrogance of humans in thinking we're all powerful and are the pinacle of what all creatures should strive to achieve. Who's to say that zombies aren't perfectly happy shuffling around eating brains and moaning? I know some live people who do less.

Anyway, the plot of this film is a bit more simple and gung-ho than the other ones. It's basically this. Guinea-pig zombie breaks out and eats it's master, and then somehow the rest of the zombies break into the compound and fuck everyone's shit up. Film ends with a couple of the scientists managing to escape in a plane to a deserted island where I assume they lived happily ever after while the world around them went to hell.

The goriest of all three films, this one didn't quite sit right with me when I first saw it. It had all the quality zombie action of the others, but the story was a bit weak. Still a good film though, just not up to the standard of the first two.

In Conclusion

There you have it. Three of the best zombie movies ever made, in my humble opinion. And in researching this article, I learnt that George is busy writing the fourth installment! I almost wet my kecks with glee. Go here to his official website to read about it if you so desire: www.georgearomero.com. There you can also learn about how he was jipped out of directing the upcoming Resident Evil feature film. Stupid god-damned Hollywood bigshots! George is the master of zombie movies. How the hell could he not be picked to direct a movie based on a game that he himself inspired! Goodness, I really must stop getting so horrified. I keep breaking my monacle.
Anyway, see the movies now. Although i've probably ruined them all for you by giving away the storylines. Oh well.

- Pete (Keep an eye out for my next zombie themed installment, dealing with the Evil Dead Trilogy)