Zombies, those flesh-eating, worm-chewed cadavers, have come full circle.
“Now, there’s zombie studies at university campuses and people talking about zombies at academic conferences,” says Rob Weiner, pop culture guru and humanities librarian at Texas Tech University.
“While that’s all well and good, the zombies’ purpose is to scare the daylights out of you,” Weiner says.
Mission accomplished, even with less than serious fare like “Return of the Living Dead.”
Weiner is a bit of a zombie expert, noting that while most pinpoint the birth of the zombie genre to George A. Romero’s 1968 classic “Night of the Living Dead,” some say the first zombie movie was 1919’s “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.”
Weiner, the author of “Marvel Graphic Novels and Related Publications: An Annotated Guide,” says it and films like 1943‘s “I Walked with a Zombie,” used voodoo trickery to bring back the dead.
Romero’s films started the radiation zombie era.
Vampire and werewolf films may come and go, but the nature of the zombie movie explains their steady appeal, he says.
“There’s nothing more terrifying, especially with today’s ’rage’ zombies. All they wanna do is bite you,” he says. “With werewolves and vampires, there’s a sexy element to it. Zombies are more or less machines.”
Tomorrow: Weiner shares some sleeper zombie films with WWTW.
ALSO CHECK OUT
My interview with Zombie auteur George A. Romero
(Photo: The OZs – Original Zombies – from “Night of the Living Dead.”)
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