A Change of Pace – Zombie Night
I just re-watched Shaun of the Dead and I thought, with all the Twilight – New Moon excitement, we should turn our attention to another undead issue. That’s right people, zombies.
So, in honor of the undead becoming so interesting to this crazy world of ours – I want to dedicate a post to interesting and fun books/music/movies/podcasts/etc that have to do with zombies.
First of all, zombies truely terrify me. So much so that I actually couldn’t read the book World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, even though I’ve read little bits and pieces and found it riveting. It gave me nightmares for days, so I had to stop. But, a friend of mine who is very picky about books, loved it, so I’m recommending the book here. It’s a post-apocalyptic look at what the world would look like after zombies re-animated. It is a reflection on the past by war heroes and survivalists alike who experienced first-hand a full-out zombie war. Creepy, creepy stuff.
There is a fan site dedicated to the zombie apocolypse world as inspired by world war z called Tales of World War Z. There are some brilliant and terrifying stories in there. Check them out.
Next we have a less serious look at the walking dead issue – The Takeover, a podiobook/podcast presented by Mur Lafferty. This is a hilarious look at what it would be like to have your company taken over by Zombinc – a company run by zombies which provides low wage zombie labor to other companies. The only way to be promoted in the ranks of Zombinc is to, well, become a zombie.
When I listened to The Takeover, I was entranced by the amazing zombie theme songs Mur put on there – specifically a song called Re: Your Brains by Jonathan Coulton. Check it out, pretty darn hilarious.
Last but not least, zombie movies. These really doll out the nightmares for me – yes, even the funny ones like Shaun of the Dead. The only one that didn’t give me nightmares was Zombieland . I’m not sure why. Maybe (and this IS a spoiler folks, so skip to the next paragraph if you don’t want to be spoiled) it’s because of the zombie clown. I’ve always wanted to see one. A friend of mine and I had a joke that a zombie clown would be the ultimate worst nightmare scenario. Also, the number (or lack thereof) of zombies made the movie slightly more comforting.
The two movies above are funny, but the following are not funny, but extremely scary movies. I’m going to categorize them by speed of zombie:
- Dawn of the Dead – Super fast zombies with no explanation of how they came to be. The dead started rising one day. Freaky.
- Resident Evil- all three movies feature fast zombies, but the last two feature fast, mutant and possibly intelligent zombies. There is, however, a reason for the undead-ness. The t-virus which has spread to so many people continuously re-animates the dead body.
- 28 Days Later- fast and ferocious zombies. The movie is about a particularly horrible strain of rabies, called “Rage” getting loose in England. It’s extremely scary. I couldn’t watch the whole movie in the middle of a bright, SoCal afternoon.
One more movie which is funny because it’s so cheesy is The Return of the Living Dead. Extremely campy and awesome. Also, it was released the year I was born, so it’s gotta be good, right?
Finally, I will give you some authors with non-infectious zombies – zombies which may turn against you, but they mostly just fight or stand there and moulder:
- Terry Pratchett’s Making Money , along with several other of his Discworld Novels. His zombies have personality and character.
- Piers Anthony’s Xanth Series. These are fighting zombies, reanimated corpses and such.
- Laurell K. Hamilton in Strange Candy. This is the traditional zombie, raised by a spell and not really so friendly.
I’m sure there are others, but those are the main ones I can come up with. Do you have any recommendations for zombie books/movies/podiobooks/podcasts?
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