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Night of the Living Dead [George A. Romero, 1968]
Original poster for the little black and white movie from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania that has had enormous impact on popular culture.
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On a scene still from his film, George gives me some good advice: “John—don’t ever let the bastards in!”
Zombies[ Book Contents]
Live and Let Die [Guy Hamilton, 1973]
Geoffrey Holder as Baron Samedi in this James Bond blaxploitation movie. The first time Roger Moore played Bond, James Bond.
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The Return of the Living Dead [Dan O’Bannon, 1985]
A very funny sequel to Romero’s Night of the Living Dead[1968] that puts the blame for a zombie outbreak directly on the military.
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I Walked With a Zombie [Jacques Tourneur, 1943]
Producer Val Lewton was given this title by RKO and told to make a movie out of it. What they got was a Voodoo version of Jane Eyre!
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The Omega Man [Boris Sagal, 1971]
The second film version of Richard Matheson’s novel I Am Legend. Charlton Heston battles albino zombie vampires.
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Shaun of the Dead [Edgar Wright, 2004]
Simon Pegg shines as he and a group of friends and loved ones deal with a zombie attack in contemporary London by seeking sanctuary at his favorite pub.
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I Walked With a Zombie [Jacques Tourneur, 1943]
Nurse Frances Dee with her patient and a zombie in the sugar cane field. I really don’t want to tell you more, go see the movie!
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Sugar Hill [Paul Maslansky, 1974]
Those white gangsters should never have fooled around with a Voodoo priestess in the first place! Another AIP blaxploitation picture.
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The Plague of the Zombies [John Gilling, 1966]
Gilling’s period Hammer film, with zombie slave labor being used by the upper class, is a zombie movie, of course, but like many British horror films, it is really about class.
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An American Werewolf in London [John Landis, 1981]
Griffin Dunne as Jack Goodman does not look his best, and it will get worse. Jack is not happy being one of “the undead.”
“Have you ever talked to a corpse? It’s boring.”
Jack Goodman (Griffin Dunne), An American Werewolf in London
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Dead Alive [aka Braindead, Peter Jackson, 1992]
Jackson’s uproarious movie about zombies in Auckland is so gory it becomes Dada. With a cameo from Forrest J Ackerman.
“They’re not dead exactly, they’re just … sort of rotting!”
Lionel Cosgrove (Timothy Balme), Dead Alive
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Cemetery Man [aka Dellamorte Dellamore, Michele Soavi, 1994]
Anna Falchi as Rupert Everett’s great love, only now she’s dead and returned from the grave. An interesting story about the caretaker of a small cemetery in a small Italian town and his mentally handicapped friend who try to deal with the dead who refuse to stay in the ground.
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Dawn of the Dead [Zack Snyder, 2004]
A remake of the Romero classic [1978]. The living dead overwhelms an escape vehicle.
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Resident Evil: Extinction [Russell Mulcahy, 2007]
An ugly lady zombie from the third movie in the Resident Evilfranchise. Every Resident Evilmovie is basically Milla Jovovich kicking zombie ass. You could take random scenes from each of these films and cut them together and I don’t think anyone would notice.
IN CONVERSATION
Sam Raimi
“I made Evil Dead just to break into the business…”
Sam Raimi on the set of Drag Me to Hell[2009].
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JL: Sam, how would you define a monster?
SR: Something that represents our deepest, darkest fears in a physical form—for the movies.
JL: Do you believe in ghosts or anything supernatural?
SR: No, but I believe there are many things that are even more fantastic, as proven by science, out in the cosmos with the Hubble telescope: How gravity and time works backwards and the sub-atomic worlds. There are so many fantastic things.
JL: But that’s a sense of wonder, not fear. Those aren’t physical things that can hit you on the head.
SR: No, I wish there were some good old-fashioned monsters walking around.
JL: What about human monsters, like in Psycho[Alfred Hitchcock, 1960] or The Silence of the Lambs[Jonathan Demme, 1991]?
SR: I definitely believe that they’re out there. And they make the subjects of terrifying movies. It’s too real for me to be involved in as a filmmaker. I get too freaked out. I think all horror moviemakers are cowards at heart, but that area really terrifies me and I don’t find it entertaining to work in, even though I do love Psycho.
JL: What about The Texas Chainsaw Massacre[Tobe Hooper, 1974]?
SR: That’s so brilliant.
JL: That’s about crazy people.
SR: I found it very upsetting. As a filmmaker, I couldn’t get involved in a project like that—but it was masterfully directed. In many ways it was like Psychobecause it dealt with the most disturbing and monstrous aspects of human behavior, yet it was handled by a superb storyteller. That’s a very unsettling combination.
JL: Deborah [my wife, Deborah Landis] can watch and enjoy your Evil Deadmovies [ Evil Dead, 1981, Evil Dead II, 1987, and Army of Darkness, 1992, all directed by Sam], she can see any movie with monsters. But she refuses to watch a movie like The Boston Strangler[Richard Fleischer, 1968], The Silence of the Lambs, or Psychobecause those people exist.