- Zombies are the monsters of the 21st century, and America's major contribution to horror. What set off zombie fever? All roads lead to George Romero, who made zombies a metaphor for social ills.
- Fast zombies, slow zombies, comedy zombies, teen zombies: zombies are everywhere. What set off this zombie fever?
Undead ghouls have been around for decades, but the debut of The Walking Dead in 2010 saw them explode into popular culture. To almost everyone's surprise, a horror series became the most popular show on television. But without George Romero and Night of the Living Dead (1968), there would be no Walking Dead. Night of the Living Dead lay the template for every zombie film that followed with its simple plot: six people trapped in a farmhouse, surrounded by the flesh-eating undead, fight zombies - and each other. The film pushed boundaries with its graphic depictions of gore and viscera, and also startled audiences with its potent social commentary about American racial tensions.
Every horror subgenre seems to go through cycles of popularity. In the 1990s and early 2000s, zombies had virtually disappeared from popular culture. Edgar Wright's Shaun of the Dead (2004) brought them back, bigger than ever. Shaun is hilarious and scary, using the zombie apocalypse as an allegory for young British people feeling lost in a changing society. Right down to its title, Shaun of the Dead is a tribute to what any horror fan will tell you is the greatest zombie movie of all time: Dawn of the Dead (1978). A potent mix of horror, satire, and groundbreaking special effects with a huge cast, Dawn of the Dead was the first depiction of a full-scale zombie apocalypse. And once again, Romero used horror to comment on American values: this time, by setting his protagonists against zombies wandering aimlessly through a mall, he took on capitalism.
Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later... (2002) revised Romero's influential model by letting fast-moving zombies loose on the fast moving 20th century. 28 Days Later... presented a disturbingly plausible scenario: an illness spreading like wildfire turns humans into rabid, homicidally angry zombies. Its scenes of a deserted London and violent military survivalists rang chillingly true in the post-9/11 world.
But there is one other class of zombie: the deliberately re-animated corpse. Frankenstein's Monster, the most famous member of the walking dead, stands in for society's outsiders: he is stigmatized, feared, yet sympathetic. Frankenstein's (1931) direct descendant is 1985's Re-Animator, which re-imagines the zombie film as a wildly transgressive horror comedy about medical students who create a serum that brings the dead back to life. Re-Animator had heads rolling around like bowling balls, but it was also a meditation on the human desire to conquer death. That same year, George Romero crafted what he hoped to be the zombie film to end all zombie films: Day of the Dead (1985). In Day of the Dead's military-ruled world, the protagonists hunker down and husband their resources, trying to shut out the world; things do not go well for them. The makeup effects pioneered by Tom Savini and Greg Nicotero in Day of the Dead led directly to the pioneering work that we see today on The Walking Dead, the show that brought realistic horror to the small screen. The Walking Dead premiered as the world dealt with the effects of the 2008 mortgage crisis: a time when people were forced out of their homes and cultural anxieties and divisiveness were at an all time high. The dread of societal collapse hasn't gone away, and The Walking Dead's popularity endures.
Interviewees include: Stephen King, Quentin Tarantino, Tom Savini, Greg Nicotero, Norman Reedus, Max Brooks, Edgar Wright, John Landis, Stuart Gordon, Ernest Dickerson, Josh Hartnett, Leonard Maltin, Jack Black, Rob Zombie, Bryan Fuller, Elijah Wood, Mick Garris, Diablo Cody, Joe Hill, Ryan Turek, and Tananarive Due.
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What is the broadcast (satellite or terrestrial TV) release date of Zombies (2018) in Australia?
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