Zombie CSU (3 page)

In terms of film, the strongest obvious influence was Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 film
The Birds
,
⁸
one of the most significant entries in the “revenge of nature” subgenre in which a normal part of the natural world suddenly changes and becomes deliberately threatening. Hitchcock used birds, but the genre explored a lot of variations of this theme with decidedly mixed results. We had some exceptional entries beginning with an onslaught of giant ants in
Them!
(1954) and one really pissed-off shark in
Jaws
(1974); a few decent chillers like the rat-infested
Willard
(1971) and
Ben
(1972); a mixed bag of so-so flicks like the killer-whale gonna get you
Orca
(1977) and the weirdly wormy
Squirm
(1976); and some truly appalling pieces o’ crap like
Night of the Lepus
(1972), in which a southwestern town is attacked by flesh-eating killer bunnies (I’m not making this up!). In each of these films nature decides to stop being passive and takes a bite out of mankind. All great inspiration for George Romero.

The revenge of nature subgenre overlaps with “disaster films,” which typically pit a dwindling group of people against a natural (or in some cases man-made) catastrophe. Typical of the later zombie genre, it’s often the infighting among the struggling survivors that leads to their high mortality rate. Disaster films have been a staple of cinema since the industry’s earliest days, with early outstanding examples like
Fire
(1901),
San Francisco
(a 1936 earthquake movie),
In Old Chicago
(1937 story of that city’s great fire), and continuing on into the twenty-first century with
The Day After Tomorrow
(a global warming/new ice age cautionary tale inspired by the nonfiction book
The Coming Global Superstorm
by Whitley Strieber and Art Bell).

A fourth archetype that helped stir the pot for
Night of the Living Dead
was the apocalyptic thriller in which we see civilization as we know it crumble, often taking with it morality, compassion, and basic humanity. The novel
I Am Legend
also fits into this genre and has been adapted three times (so far) to films of this kind, beginning with
The Last Man on Earth
(1964) starring Vincent Price,
The Omega Man
(1971) with Charlton Heston, and most recently
I Am Legend
(2007) starring Will Smith. Oddly, both the Heston and Smith versions change the nature of the plague so that instead of vampires the bulk of humanity is transformed into mutated humans—though they did have an aversion to sunlight. As a purist and huge fan of Matheson’s original story, I disagree with this choice. Vampires are scarier than albino humans with sunglasses. Much, much scarier. At least with the Will Smith version, there was a fairly obvious attempt to riff off of the success of movies like
28 Days Later
(2002) and its sequel
28 Weeks Later
(2007), which used the zombie film model but with diseased humans rather than living dead.

28 Days Later
is largely credited with rebuilding the zombie genre and, along with the comedy
Shaun of the Dead
(2004), bringing it to the moneymaking cinema mainstream. But without
Night of the Living Dead
there would have been no
28 Days Later
; but without the book
I Am Legend
there almost certainly would never have been a
Night of the Living Dead
. So…
Legend
influenced
Dead
, which in turn influenced
28
, which then influenced the newest film version of
Legend
. There’s something curiously inbred about all that, or is that just me?

T
HE
R
OMERO
E
FFECT

This was the pool from which Romero dipped to create the basis of his new horror film; but Romero was an innovator in his own right and wanted to tweak the model to fit his own dystopian vision and to carry his own brand of wry social commentary. He changed the vampires to flesh-eating ghouls and, instead of starting his tale after the fall of man, he chronicles the actual plummet by focusing on a small group of survivors holding out against an undead invasion.

Shot for pocket change ($114,000),
Night of the Living Dead
⁹
revolutionized horror forever, created a new monster paradigm, launched a lot of careers (actors, effects people, other directors, etc.), inspired many a sleepless night, and influenced film, TV, fiction, art, poetry, music, and even toys. The full impact of the “Romero Effect” cannot be calculated.

In his films, Romero does not make any direct reference to religion or organic chemistry, and we’re always left wondering just how exactly these zombies came into being. In
Night
he suggests that a space probe (never seen and only obliquely mentioned) has returned to earth contaminated with an unknown form of radiation. Is this why the dead have risen? The talking heads seen on TV screens in some of the scenes float this as a theory, but no definitive statement is ever made. No attempt is made to explain the process, but the cause is less the point than how society reacts to this new threat. They rise, we fall…and one way or another it’s all our fault. Romero is not known for his enthusiastic optimism for humanity’s higher values.

In
Dawn
, Romero only lightly touches on religion and vodoun, and even then it’s clear this is not his message. The SWAT officer Peter (Ken Foree) makes the comment: “When there’s no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth.” He says that it was one of his grandfather’s sayings, from
Macumba
, which is a Brazilian slang name for vodoun/voodoo based on the Bantu word for magic.
¹⁰
The issue is not explored and is never mentioned again.

With the rise of the living dead, we suddenly have a new kind of horror storytelling. Instead of the thinking monster (vampires, demons), or the semi-intelligent but equally threatening supernatural beast (werewolves, mummies), or radioactive giants (
Them!, Godzilla
), we have something that borrows the best elements of each. We have a horde of nearly unstoppable, flesh-hungry dead who are, by their new nature, both fearless and relentless.

This new horror prototype became instantly successful, and this little indie flick raked in 30 million worldwide. Thirty million may sound like chump change considering the amounts pulled in by modern summer blockbusters, but when you consider that it made back its production costs
214 times over
you can see why even the jaded film moguls started paying attention. Since 1968 there have been hundreds of zombie films, both big budget and total backyard camcorder junk. Even the junk is popular (and some of it is good).

In his nonfiction book on the horror culture,
Danse Macabre,
¹¹
Stephen King suggests that zombies have become a new horror paradigm, as complete and valid as vampires, ghosts, demons, and the rest. Fantasy author C. J. Henderson, who has penned a number of zombie short stories, agrees: “In his last film, Romero moved the zombie to the same status of any other monster icon. In
Land of the Dead
, he completely reverses the audience’s sympathy. Let’s face it—it’s the first zombie film ever where the audience rooted for the zombies to kick everyone’s ass. Look at the story—poor zombies just want to go through the motions of being human. Not good enough for the rich—they have to descend from their ivory towers and steal and disrupt the wretched zombies’ way of life because, as usual, the rich are parasites who always victimize those less financially fortunate rather than put their wealth to good use. Screw ’em, said the audience. Let’s face it, we all wanted Dennis Hopper dead in that film, the same way we want to see these scum-sucking CEOs who feel they’re perfectly justified in stealing the retirement programs of their employees because the billion-freaking dollars they already have salted away for their retirement just doesn’t look big enough.”