The Tombs of the Blind Dead

This Spanish Zombie classic is known for its slow pace and beautiful settings.  It is also known for its gratuitous half naked girls and bikini shots.  There are lots of screaming women having their clothes torn from their bodies in this 1971 zombie, cult classic.   It is not a brilliant film, but it is worth seeing at least once.  The plot for this is wonderful.

A young couple is vacationing when they meet a bikini clad beauty that the boyfriend finds attractive and the girlfriend had a lesbian affair with years ago.  The boyfriend invites the bikini, bisexual beauty with them on their train trip and the girlfriend becomes crazy with jealousy.  She eventually leaps from a moving train to escape her boyfriend's flirtation with her ex-lesbian lover.  As unwise as this may sound,  it is actually much stupider than it sounds.  She jumps from a moving train in an isolated nowhere somewhere between hell and France.   She finds a ruined old castle and ,as there are no people anywhere, she decides to get undressed and camp out in it.  She plays the radio and relaxes as the blind dead rise from their graves to devour her.  This describes every vacation I've ever had.

The blind dead are Knights Templar that were hung for their satanic crimes while birds ate out their eyes.  They rise from the dead nightly in the exact castle where our young heroine is camping.   She is eaten and her bisexual friend and boyfriend come looking for her.   Blind, zombie madness follows.   The most interesting parts of this movie use the combination of atmosphere and silence to create fear.  The zombies hunt by sound so there are many scenes where protagonists try to stay quiet.

Overall this is not my favorite zombie film.   It is silly and the characters are beyond stupid, but it is unique in its campy 70's charm so I have to say that I still enjoyed watching it. 

Plants vs. Zombies

This has become my latest time killing device.  I love this game for several reasons.  I like zombies and it is simple enough to play on my iphone while I wait for labs in the ER or while my children are playing at the science museum.  It is the best short term zombie distraction I have ever found.    Plants vs. Zombies is a simple game in many ways, but the graphics are good and there are many types of zombies to battle.  The zombie animation is great and the dialogue between the crazy shop keeper is hilarious.  The zombies send silly note encouraging you to give up your brains.

Plants vs. Zombie is a tower defense game and has only one or two difficult levels.  If you are a veteran of tower defense games you may find this easy.  However, it hardly matters because the game is so much fun.  If you continue pass the adventure mode and try to complete all of the achievements you can have even more fun.  My only complaint is that there wasn't enough of this game.

Zombie Mania

If you really want to understand zombies and their history, this documentary is a good place to start. It puts together all the important people in the world of the living dead and lets them discuss the evolution of the zombie. Romero, Max Brooks, Rue Morgue editors, and make-up wizards discuss the humble beginning of zombies and the new obsession with these flesh eating ghouls.


Zombies were taken from Haitian Voodoo Mythology and originally were people who were killed and brought back to life by magical means to become the slaves of the living. White Zombie is the classic film example of this original zombie form. The Serpent and the Rainbow is a more modern look at this type of zombie. Of course, Romero changed all of this. In Zombie Mania, Romero explains that he stole his idea for Night of the Living Dead from the 1964 book I am Legend. In the original I am Legend, Vampires were hounding the protagonist, but Romero took this idea and created a different kind of monster to terrorize his protagonists and thus the modern zombie was born.
Zombie Mania continues along these lines discussing the many controversies in the world of zombies. For example, can zombies be fast? Do fast moving zombies suck? How do you survive the zombie apocalypse? Are we all really brain dead zombies?
It explores the many films and books that now exist and give the zombie lover an in depth look at the undead. I love this documentary and it is on netflix instant watch.

Return of the Living Dead: Rave to the Grave

OK.  So this movie is obviously not a Classic.  Not even close.  However,  if you enjoy the Return of the Living Dead movies this is definately worth a watch.  Return of the Living Dead and it's offspring represent a significant departure from standard zombie movies.   Most zombie movies try to make you think.  They comment on society and the nature of good and evil within the living.  Return of the Living Dead  does nothing like this.  These movies are light hearted and silly.  They are full of gags, laughs, and stupid teenagers doing stupid things.  The zombies are funny and cry out for "brains!"   They trick the living into bringing more brains.

Return of the Living Dead:  Rave to the Grave stuck to the Return of the Living Dead formula.  It was packed full of stupid one liners and silly jokes.   There are hitch hiking zombies and male interpole police men dressed as Valkries slaying the undead with rocket launchers.  There are stupid teenagers and plenty of zombies crying out for brains.  The plot of this movie is pretty simple.  Two teens find their dead uncles stash of zombie filled canisters in the attic.  They take the cannisters to a friend who is a chemistry major for analysis.   The chemistry major thinks it would be a wonderful idea to turn the goo the zombie is floating in into some kind of x like drug.   He and his friends sell it to everyone at a Rave.   Zombie madness and silliness follows.   If you are in a silly mood and you want something ridiculous to watch,  this is the zombie movie to complete your evening.

What Kind of Zombie Scenario is Best For You?

The Night of the Creeps

It has been busy lately and my zombie passion was pushed aside.  However,  I have been watching zombie movies while I have been running.   My latest pick,  Night of the Creeps.   Night of the Creeps  is a brilliant homage to old b-movie classics.  

Night of the Creeps is about an alien experiment that is accidentally lost on Earth.    Brain eating slugs infest the brains of the living and the dead and turn them into zombies.  These slugs end up in a sorority house and this leads to all kinds of chaos and screaming girls and nerd love stories.   Interlaced with this amazing plot,  are subtle references to the b-movie classics that have inspired the movie.  A police man, in the middle of all this madness, stops to smell a single yellow in a salute to Plan 9 From Outer Space.   A woman watches Plan 9 From Outer Space right before she's killed by an axe carrying zombie.

The movie is also packed with wonderful one liners like "I've got good news and bads news.  The good news is your dates are here.  The bad news is their dead."

Dellamorte Dellamore

Released in the states as Cemetery Man, Dellamorte Dellamore is a deliciously funny and well written zombie classic. This movie is a work of art.  It is the grand ending to a wonderous time in which Italian film ruled the world of the zombies, and what an ending.  Staring Rupert Everett as the keeper of a cemetery in which the dead wake nightly, this film is so beautiful and so strange I rewatch it on a regular basis just to sink myself back into it's disorienting mists.

Rupert Everett's primary duties as the keeper of a gothic cemetery in which the dead rise nightly is to prevent the living dead from escaping from the cemetery and feasting on the flesh of the living.  He is assisted in his job by his endearingly simple friend Gnaghi.  Gnaghi is Everett's antithesis.   Everett's character is a bored apathetic loner who seems unaware that killing the living dead for a profession is in any way odd.  He is quick witted and funny and lives only to mock the small self centered world of the living that surrounds the cemetery until he falls madly in love with a beautiful unnamed woman played by the exquisitely beautiful Anna Falchi.  After Falchi is killed while having sex with Everett,  Everett's grip on reality begins to weaken.  Everett attempt to keep Falchi's zombi as a love toy, but is thwarted by the good meaning Gnaghi.  When Gnaghi falls in love with a zombi head,  Everett's grip on reality completely slips and he begins killing the living as well as the dead as he mutters, "The living dead and the dying living are all the same."   Every woman Everett meets becomes his lost love and every female part is played by the lovely Falchi.  This strangeness is compacted by the fact that no one seems to notice that Everett has become an insane serial killer that shoots people for no reason at all.   The plot unwinds from here into a disorienting and surreal ending that leaves you wishing for more.

Technically speaking, this film is perfect.  It is beautifully shot and the director, Michele Soavi uses noteable close up photography and 360 degree camera shots through the cemetery to create an atmospheric zombie master piece.  The zombies have an unique, earthy look that seems to connect them to nature.  Roots protrude from their skulls and vines climb out of their bodies. 

Some might say this movie isn't for everyone.  It is cryptic and philosophical and somes times outrageously nonsensical, but it is a gem of a zombie film that stands alone amongst others.  This film is a must see for any zombie film fanatic.

Dead Snow

Wow.  I have to say that this movie is one of the must blood filled, intestine covered, dismemberingly violent Nazi zombie movies I've seen.  The movie starts when a group of young people go to an isolated cabin in an isolated Norwegian forest.  Did I mention this film is Norwegian?  Once the young people have arrived they engage in the typical activies young people engage in during horror films.  They drink beer, make fun of the locals, and have sex while taking a crap in the outhouse.  Far more vile to me is the scene in which a young woman licks her partner's fingers after he's crapped and not washed his hands.  Give me a good disemboweling any day,  this made me sick.  

The plot is pushed a long by one young man's missing girlfriend.  After a disturbing and wierd local stops by to tell the young victims about a group of Nazis that were lost in the mountains,  one young man goes off to find his missing girlfriend taking the only vehicle with him.  While he is gone, his friends play loud music, drink more beer, and some get completely eviscerated.  The eviscerations are fun and the first girl to die is pulled into the poop hole and has to climb out with her intestines in her hands completely covered in feces.  It is all down hill from here.  There is a brilliant scene in which one young man catches hold of zombie intestines and uses them as a rope to cling onto while climbing a cliff.  There's another scene in which two of the characters go crazy with a machete and a chain saw. 

After the only character I cared at all about was dismembered,  I lost a little interest, but that was OK because the zombies kept on coming and their relentless pursuit of these young people was a little satisfying for me because I really wanted to kill most of them myself in the first few scenes.  Overall, this is a fun zombie film.  It has some great zombie kill scenes and Nazi zombies are wonderful.  It has all the elements that make a b-grade zombie movie enjoyable.  They just should have held onto that one character that actually seemed to be worth saving a little longer so I wouldn't start cheering for the zombies so early in the film.

Zombie Nation

This movie falls into the avoid at all costs category.   I decided to watch this movie even though I had never heard of it because it had good cover art and the back made it seem interesting.  However,  the movie had no scenes that resembled anything from the cover and the back was probably about some other movie the director liked because it couldn't have been about this movie.

This movie was about a serial killer who kills women who then come back to life to make a zombie nation and take revenge.  The acting is bad.  Not funny bad, but porn star bad.  The script is ridiculous and the movie has the feel of something made for less than five dollars.  Some zombie movies are so bad they are good.  They make you laugh and this is wonderful.  Zombie nation is not one of these movies.   It was flat and dead.  I fell asleep a coulple times during this movie and I'm someone who can make through all three Lord of the Rings played back to back.  It was a struggle to watch this movie and there wasn't even any good zombie action.   The zombie were hot chicks that had been brough back to find revenge while acting poorly.   There were no drippy, oozy, wonderful zombies. 

In short if you have a choice between spending your evening beating yourself upside the head with a two by four and watching this movie, beat yourself upside the head.   It will kill less brain cells and do less damage to your intellect.