The Zombie Apocalypse is coming? There are those who really believe that. I’m not so sure but, in movies, it feels like the undead has been around munching on flesh and brains forever. For the bulk of the past 15 years, the culture has been obsessed with zombies and their existential significance, thanks in large part to Danny Boyle and 28 Days Later.
But, contrary to popular belief, millennials didn’t discover everything — sorry, guys. In actuality, the craze goes back to Hollywood’s Golden Age in the 30s and 40s and classics such as White Zombie starring Bela Lugosi and I Walked with a Zombie produced by Val Lewton. Where they really took off, however, as a creature genre unto themselves, was the release of George Romero’s penultimate low-budget cult masterpiece, Night of the Living Dead, 50 years ago.
Since then, every take and reimagining of the dead rising from the grave to chomp on the living you can think of has been done — some more auspiciously than others. Romero did his due diligence to keep the fire going while the likes of Lucio Fulci and David Cronenberg grabbed a piece of the moribund meat pie and made their names in the process. Besides them, a good number of ingenious efforts from over the years are overlooked that could find recognition these days now that The Walking Dead is running its course.
Before we begin, for this list I am making it a point to mention films you either haven’t heard of or should give a second thought. Honorable mentions go to Night of the Comet, Night of the Creeps, Return of the Living Dead (all of which garner considerable word-of-mouth on the Internet) and Rabid. Also, more of a modern-day patient-zero riff on vampires, if you don’t know the visceral Cronenberg classic yet, thanks to the gruesome duo Jen & Sylvia Soska, you will very soon. Now, onto business.
Night of the Living Dead (1990)
We’re all familiar with Zack Snyder’s balls-to-the-wall remake of Dawn of the Dead. Fewer people recall this sleek color 90s update of the original that, virtually, serves as the new Dawn’s prequel. The scenario is the same: people holed up in a farmhouse trying to survive are at each other’s throats.
But there are some new twists; director Tom Savini (yes, the Tom Savini) fixes some of the flaws from Romero’s version. Barbara (Patricia Tallman) is now a strong, resolute final woman and the main character. Ben, played by none other than Tony Todd, has a fate less sudden and tragic. Night of the Living Dead has been remade a couple times but this — hands down — is the best.
The Beyond (1981)
A woman — not named Buffy, unfortunately — inherits a hotel in Louisiana built over a doorway to Hell a warlock was killed trying to open. Predictably, all you-guessed-it breaks loose. Luciano Fulci is a man credited with doing as much for zombies in cinema as Romero. His preoccupation with gore, ghouls, and the supernatural are so notorious he made Britain’s Video Nasties list because of his own living dead cycle, the “Gates of Hell” trilogy.
The Beyond, preceded by City of the Living Dead a year before and eclipsed by the international phenomenon Zombie, was not Fulci’s first crack at zombies but it is one of his more underappreciated ones. It takes the apocalyptic when-the-dead-rise-it-will-be-hell-on-Earth concept literally, placing the proceedings in a modern setting but firmly in the context of their preternatural roots. The narrative is also less of a mess than its predecessor’s.
Messiah of Evil (1973)
Researching her family history, Arletty (Mariana Hill) and some friends arrive in a community infested with zombies who are in the thrall of a preacher beyond the grave. This one comes to us from Willard Huyck (director of Howard the Duck and a George Lucas disciple) and his collaborator wife Gloria.
You might find it in a dollar bin, on YouTube, or billed with cheap exploitation on a box-set collection of thrillers, but don’t let that dissuade you. Flashes of brilliant shot compositions and creativity set Messiah of Evil apart from the pack. Mood and atmospherics abound thanks to very high contrast lighting and the undead aren’t so one-dimensional or untalkative. They invade a quiet supermarket, jump through skylights, and can’t help but be creepy. One particular unsettling scene shows a truckload of zombies pick up a girl and the driver offers her a dead mouse which he promptly eats (“You mean…you don’t want it?”). Yikes!
Let Sleeping Corpses Lie (1974)
A sonic machine being used for pest control in the English countryside has a major side effect: it raises the dead. One couple knows what’s going on but they are chased by a cop who thinks they are Manson copycats responsible for killings that start. Also known as The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue, from Jorge Grau, Let Sleeping Corpses Lie was one of the earliest stabs at the Romero formula by Italian producers. It’s also one of the first to take the new zombie tropes out of the US and give them an environmental overtone.
Much like Messiah of Evil, Sleeping Corpses got the jump on old Georgie’s continuation by several years and is an interesting precursor that arguably pushed the genre in the direction it eventually headed.
Land of the Dead (2005)
Dennis Hopper is a rich fat cat living in a skyscraper while everyone else has to fend for themselves below. They comprise the last hope and redoubt for humanity now that the living dead have overrun the globe. But, some of the zombies are becoming smarter and one rallies them to the gates of man’s oasis, threatening the status quo.
Romero already had a trilogy but finished off his series with a fourth installment after persistent rumors he would. Always one to use monsters as conveyances for social and political commentary, he doesn’t disappoint, presciently broaching the topic of class warfare. Land of the Dead depicted the struggle between the One Percent versus the 99, years before people marched on Washington or occupied Wall St. And it’s an entertaining, well-acted film to boot.
Despite that, the picture’s reputation is overshadowed by Romero’s found-footage reboot of the franchise, Diary of the Dead. Then there is the raising-up of Walking Dead as the end-all-be-all of things hungry for human flesh. Do yourself a favor and give Land a rewatch. The zombie zeitgeist didn’t begin with Walking Dead and won’t end with it. Dead Reckoning deserves some love.
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