Some time ago, when a person was numb from
exhaustion, he or she might say, "I feel like a zombie." No one would say that today for fear of
conjuring to mind a corpse-turned-cannibal rather than an automaton. A real zombie, or zonbi in Haitian Creole, is a person who only appears to be
lifeless due to the effect of a potent drug administered by a sorcerer who can
easily make his doped subject follow orders.
Yet as revolting as the latest fictional cannibal-zombies are, they've
been getting a lot of play. The prize-winning
TV series "The Walking Dead" has just invented new characters for its
fourth season, and more zombie videogames must be on the way. I feel sorry for children who are exposed to
the vision of these monsters, but older kids must love them, judging from the
early popularity of Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video (1983)
featuring dancing ghouls. The godfather
of the walking dead, American-Canadian screenwriter-director, George A. Romero,
says, "We seem to be saturated with zombie stuff, and vampires. I think it's videogames that did that. They're what primarily popularized
zombies." Romero is not involved in
the current wave of zombie TV, yet he started it all back in 1968 when he made
a b/w horror movie, "The Night of the Living Dead." Now a cult film, it marked a turning point in
the genre in the same way Hitchcock's "Psycho" did in 1960. Romero's original decaying cadavers went trudging
and limping across the screen, clumsily threatening to devour any warm-blooded
humans in their path. Their purpose was
to show how humans mishandle matters. In
the 1968 film, the dead had appparently been revived by the effects of radiation.
In today's stories they may have a virus. However, out of respect for historical fact, Romero
never called his extras "zombies."
Other people did. Romero's first "living
dead" film was shot near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, an area the director
knew well, having graduated in 1960 with a degree in Painting and Design from Carnegie
Mellon University. Back then, Romero simply
told the local extras, "Just do your best 'dead walk'." And they did.
Today the screenwriter-director is perplexed by the speed at which other
directors' zombies move, some of them even defying gravity. Says Romero, now in his 70's, "Dead guys
don't run. I work with the idea that you
can outrun them." The zombie theme
is not recent; it began as early as 1932 with "White Zombie" based on
the Haitian model. When asked about the
underlying message of his groundbreaking 1968 movie, still loved by Stephen
King, Romero quickly replies, "It's about ignoring the problem." Likely, the Cold War and the H-bomb. Romero, who detests the way Hollywood does
business, says that under the surface of his sometimes satirical "living
dead" movies, he has addressed politics, science and the military, consumerism,
the media, class conflict, pathological anger, and 
feuds between individuals which
make the human vs. zombie question seem much more manageable in contrast. Thanks to computer tricks, the gore in
Romero's later movies is much more detailed than it was in 1968, although
Romero would have tamed it down for aesthetic reasons, he has said, if he had had
complete control over the technicians. I've seen Romero's 1968 cult film mainly
because I'm familiar with the location, and am convinced that I don't need to
see the sequels. As if in defense of his
"living dead" series, Romero, a thinking man, has noted that the gore
of the war in Viet Nam was sheer horror but that the American public was not
adequately reviled by it. He has a
point. In order to persuade the public
to look at serious issues, one must get their attention first. Perhaps crazed zombies are an effective way to
do that. Yet considering today's horror
genre which is so far removed from the thoughtful context of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, we must wonder, are the
makers of horror films at all serious?
Do they consider their longterm effect on young people's minds? Is the viewing public not being increasingly
desensitized to increasingly violent content?
As the psychos and monsters and corpses pile up, are today's audiences
still capable of experiencing old-fashioned revulsion in the face of horror? Or are they only entertained by it? When the credits finally flash by at the
bitter end, who and what are the zombies? UN’AMERICANA A VENEZIA
feuds between individuals which
make the human vs. zombie question seem much more manageable in contrast. Thanks to computer tricks, the gore in
Romero's later movies is much more detailed than it was in 1968, although
Romero would have tamed it down for aesthetic reasons, he has said, if he had had
complete control over the technicians. I've seen Romero's 1968 cult film mainly
because I'm familiar with the location, and am convinced that I don't need to
see the sequels. As if in defense of his
"living dead" series, Romero, a thinking man, has noted that the gore
of the war in Viet Nam was sheer horror but that the American public was not
adequately reviled by it. He has a
point. In order to persuade the public
to look at serious issues, one must get their attention first. Perhaps crazed zombies are an effective way to
do that. Yet considering today's horror
genre which is so far removed from the thoughtful context of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, we must wonder, are the
makers of horror films at all serious?
Do they consider their longterm effect on young people's minds? Is the viewing public not being increasingly
desensitized to increasingly violent content?
As the psychos and monsters and corpses pile up, are today's audiences
still capable of experiencing old-fashioned revulsion in the face of horror? Or are they only entertained by it? When the credits finally flash by at the
bitter end, who and what are the zombies? UN’AMERICANA A VENEZIA
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