Check it out, and then add your own entries below.
The Beyond (1981)
Lucio Fulci’s gory, surreal and silly zombie masterpiece is a Marmite movie. Like the classic British spread, you either love it or hate it. But whichever side you’re on, it’s impossible to deny its weirdness. Set in Louisiana, its Southern Gothic zombie apocalypse unfolds with Lovecraftian menace before literally falling apart in a jumble of demented editing, ropey SFX sequences (tarantulas eating eyeballs!) and portentous cod-philosophical muttering. Fulci cobbled it together cheaply – even hiring winos off the streets to play zombies. For me, no matter how silly it gets, it retains a nightmarish terror that’s borderline avant garde. It unfolds in a surreal universe where the logic of time and space has collapsed and the dead shuffle with incomprehensible menace. Not everyone saw it that way. Actor David Warbeck was particularly unimpressed – check out the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it shot in the hospital lift where he jokingly reloads his revolver by trying to insert a bullet down the barrel!
Pontypool (2008)
One of my favourite zombie movies of the last decade, Pontypool only features one zombie… Inspired by Orson Welles’ infamous, 1938 War of the Worlds radio broadcast, Pontypool also draws on William S. Burroughs and Roland Barthes. It pivots on a bonkers premise: The English language contains a virus that’s suddenly turning people into zombie-like chatterers. Unable to find meaning in words, the infected start spouting random gibberish, before biting the lips off their victims. Reporting on the chaos unfolding off-screen is Stephen McHattie’s cynical shock jock DJ, who slowly realises that the death of words = the death of the self. A horror movie full of creeping dread and incredible weirdness, Pontypool delivers a semiotic apocalypse of nonsense/no-sense – a tale of linguistics and the living dead that will leave you feeling truly scared… scarred… scored… scorched. Rightly described by New York Times Magazine as “the Finnegan’s Wake of zombie movies.”
Otto; Or Up With Dead People (2008)
The production company behind this high-minded German-Canadian zombie porno-philosophy flick is called Existential Crisis Productions, which tells you all you need to know about its pretentiousness. Canadian director Bruce LaBruce, who describes himself as a “reluctant pornographer,” delivers a politicised queer zombie movie that alternates between Marxist swipes at capitalist culture and sex orgies where a zombie penetrates a stomach wound with his manhood. It’s ambitious and weird; sometimes startling, often boring and largely a mess… but its hoodie-wearing, emo-kid protagonist Otto (Jey Crisfar), dubbed “the gay Che Guevara of the undead,” has a poignant sadness about him that’s hard to forget. If Jean-Luc Godard made a queer zombie movie, it might look a bit like this. La Bruce returned to living dead cinema with the more extreme L.A. Zombie Hardcore in 2010, which featured French porn stud François Sagat wandering through Los Angeles sporting blue alien-zombie makeup and a raging hard-on.
Flick (2007)
Little known Flick deserves a lot more love. Shot in Wales, it opens in the ‘50s where a stuttering teddy boy (Hugh O’Conor) is hounded by a bunch of bullies and drives his car off the road into a watery grave. Years later, when his now-vintage car is dragged from the depths, the pissed off Elvis fan stumbles back to life wearing an algae-covered slim coat and brothel creepers. Hungry for revenge, he tracks down the now middle-aged rockers who wronged him, slicing them up with his flick knife. On the trail is local detective Sergeant Miller (Mark Benton, from British TV’s “Waterloo Road”), who’s partnered with Lt. McKenzie, a one-armed cop on exchange from Memphis, Tennessee, played by Faye Dunaway. Yes, Faye Dunaway… Back projection, CG and an array of Dutch camera angles help make Flick look like a no-budget, Wales-set zombie version of Sin City.
Zombie Babies (2011)
A grubby, shoddy and totally outrageous DIY effort from West Virginia, Zombie Babies revolves around a backwoods abortionist (Brian Gunnoe) whose alleged pain-free, late-term termination technique inevitably leads to an outbreak of baby foetuses. As a group of up-the-duff patrons and their partners find themselves besieged by tiny tot ghouls, filmmaker Eamon Hardiman crafts OTT sequences that would make John Waters blush. It’s a toxic moonshine of redneck horror, cheapo filmmaking, sleazy nudity and extreme bad taste. The poster features an ultrasound of an in utero baby ghoul, but the grossest moment involves a crawling baby zombie who sits on the face of a man who’s been tied up and blindfolded on a bed, waiting for kinky sex. Mistaking the zombie baby sitting on him for his girlfriend, the man proceeds to entertain it with his tongue… Stay classy, Eamon.
Rape Zombie: Lust of the Dead (2012)
Male zombies run around Tokyo with their trousers round their ankles raping women indiscriminately… Feminists arm themselves with assault rifles… North Korea prepares its nukes, blaming Japan’s porn industry for the apocalypse… Welcome to the world of Rape Zombie, a living dead rape-pocalypse that sets out to prove that “all men are beasts.” As the city is overrun, lesbian nurse Nozomi (adult actress Arisu Ozawa) grabs a katana and takes refuge in a rural house with a few other capable women. They’re determined not to let the doku-otoko (“poison men”) inseminate them with their toxic sperm. Any hope this might be a Swiftian satire is undermined by the title song’s cheerleading lyrics “Rape Zombie! Rape Zombie! Rape Zombie! Rape!” and much salacious lingering over its actresses in various states of undress. An Eastern curio to be filed alongside eyeball licking and vending machines selling schoolgirl panties.
Frankenstein’s Army (2013)
What’s scarier than a zombie? A Nazi zombie, of course! But what’s scarier than a Nazi zombie…? Dutch commercials director Richard Raaphorst reengineers the classic Fascist ghoul into a crazy man/machine mash-up in this bonkers found footage WWII horror. When a Soviet platoon stumble across a secret factory, they discover Nazi scientist Viktor Frankenstein (Karel Roden), grandson of the infamous Baron, creating “zombots” – weird, steampunk living dead cyborgs that look like they’ve escaped from an Otto Dix painting. One walks on stilts like a human spider; another wears a huge diving helmet like a Big Daddy from videogame BioShock; a third has an aircraft propeller in lieu of a head. By the time Dr. F goes truly nuts – trying to meld Fascist and Communist brains together, crying, “I can end the war by creating a new being!” – Frankenstein’s Army delivers on its midnight movie promise.
The Frozen Dead (1966)
More Nazi zombie mayhem: This time Dana Andrews plays German scientist Dr. Norberg, who’s hiding in England and experimenting with an “instant freeze” technique to resurrect frozen Nazi corpses. As the Third Reich fell, 1,500 of the Nazi Party elite where cryogenically frozen and stashed in caves in Germany, France and even Egypt, waiting to be resurrected. Fortunately for us, Dr. Norberg’s technique leaves a little to be desired. All he’s revived so far are lobotomised automatons in Nazi uniforms: One constantly bounces an imaginary ball, another repeatedly combs his hair. The most dangerous is the doctor’s own brother (played by Edward Fox; yes, that Edward Fox), who exhibits a desire to strangle anyone who gets too close. It adds up to not a lot, although there’s fun to be had with a wall of severed zombie arms and a decapitated head in a box. Take that, Gwyneth Paltrow.
Zombie A-Hole (2011)
“There’s a good-for-nothing bastard out there with a face like hell and a smell to match.” Ohio auteur Dustin Mills made this “blood and boobs B-movie” between his debut Puppet Monster Massacre and the delirious Bath Salt Zombies. It’s grungy and rough around the edges, yet shot through with fun bad taste and inventive verve. In other words, it’s a fantastic antidote to the deluge of brainless micro-budget ghoul flicks that lazily cannibalise Romero. Frank Fulci (Josh Eal) and mysterious one-eyed, one-handed Mercy (Jessica Daniels) are on the trail of the eponymous pinstripe-suited ghoul who’s slaughtering twin sisters – usually when they’re buck naked. Riffing on ‘70s exploitation flicks, Mills delivers a punk DIY treat. High points include miniature Haitian voodoo puppets, slithering intestines and energy beam welders. The director has a bit part as Voodoo Bob, a hawker of magic artifacts with terrible negotiation skills.
The Necro Files (1997)
A crazed and crazy low-budget “erotic” horror movie, The Necro Files redefines bad taste. When serial rapist Logan (Isaac Cooper) is shot and killed by the shambolic cops on his trail, everyone thinks his reign of terror is over. They’re mistaken. After he’s resurrected by some clumsy Satanists, zombie Logan escapes from the local graveyard and continues his rape spree as a zombie with a decaying face and over-sized penis. The Necro Files features some of the worst acting ever committed to celluloid, lots of sex and bondage, a blow-up sex toy (which the zombie hilariously takes a shine to) and several living dead rape scenes. It also has a flying zombie baby – clearly just a kids’ plastic doll on a string – which zips through the air attacking people at random. The Necro Files defies film criticism. It’s also about as “erotic” as cholera.
With over 300 new movies added since its original April 2005 publication date, Book of the Dead charts the history of the walking dead from the monster’s origins in Haitian voodoo through its cinematic debut in 1932’s White Zombie up to blockbuster World War Z and beyond.
Synopsis
Covering hundreds of movies from America, Europe, Asia, and even the Middle East, Jamie Russell examines zombies’ on-screen evolution from Caribbean bogeymen to flesh-eating corpses and apocalyptic plague carriers. With an exhaustive filmography covering the history of the zombie genre, Book of the Dead explains our ongoing fascination with the living dead and how this shambolic monster has become a stumbling, moaning metaphor for our age.
The ultimate resource for zombie fans everywhere, Book of the Dead includes an exclusive interview with “Don of the Dead” George A. Romero.
