Horror A Zombie is a Zombie Right?

Which is a true Zombie movie?

  • The Night of the Living Dead

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Zombieland

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Resident Evil

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    4

Tom

An Old Friend
ZOMBIE - Back in the early days of cinema a Zombie was someone with no control of their own minds. They could be easily influenced and controlled but were very slow moving and trance-like. The controller usually staged their deaths to allow for seclusion and enough time for the zombification process to take hold. When people saw the zombie they assumed the creature had returned from the dead. They did not eat brains but would bite if instructed to do so. Zombification was not a spreadable disease.

UNDEAD - there have been many creations of people coming back from death. Most had full faculties and looked normal while some had slight decay and could be controlled.
Vampires, Mummies, Ghouls and Frankenstein are some examples of Undeads.
-Vampires pursued humans to consume their blood. They plotted and reasoned and had full societies in their quest.
-Mummies are awakened preserved corpses that are slow moving and kill for vengeance.
-Ghouls consumed the flesh of living things. Not just brains and not just humans. They were fairly quick with reflexes and some have been depicted as being hidden within society.
-Frankenstein was an undead composition with limited brain power and great strength. A misunderstood monstrosity.
Most Undead have characteristics that mimic Zombies.

INFECTED - Fairly recent on the scene is the Infected. These are often living people that have contracted a viral disease usually by blood-borne pathogen. Some Infected die and return to an animated state. Infected are very often depicted as being violent and cannibalistic often attacking in groups. They can be depicted as slow moving or fast moving. They can have little self control or actually plan and execute complex maneuvers.

What most people term as Zombies are really Infected Ghouls.
 
The Undead are Room Temperature

Dead things do not generate heat. Anything that is dead is at ambient temperature.

Tell me why Vampires and such do not freeze solid when exposed to freezing weather?

30 Days of Night takes place in Alaska. Everything is frozen but the vampires are moving like they are hot dynamos. I can forgive the fact that you can see the vampires breathing in the cold because there are limits to acting abilities and breathing is something all actors must do.

I would think that the easiest way to escape a living dead outbreak would be to just move to where it is cold.
 
It's a fascinating topic.

I wrote a light-hearted essay on this a few years ago, looking at the author who has the best claim to being the originator of the zombie.

The first use of the English word Zombie (spelled zombi at the time) was nearly 200 years ago in a poem about Brazil by British poet Robert Southey. Needless to say it didn't really catch on. It wasn't until 1929 that the Haitian Zombie came to prominence in a sensationalist style by an American occultist, all round weirdo and one time follower of Alistair Crowley, William Seabrook. Seabrook is widely recognised as the individual who brought the Haitian zombie to modern prominence.

But... voodoo (or vodou) adherents - yep, it's a religion - would not recognise the reanimation of dead people as a voodoo practice. Most voodoo followers would see zombies as witchcraft or a particular type of necromancy called bokor. However in Haitian vodou there is a belief in spirit/flesh dualism (originally a Zoroastrian belief that was subsumed into Judaism following their exodus from Egypt and eventually Christianity and Islam). This dualism is particularly African in origin. We take it for granted that there is a soul (or spirit) and a body (or flesh) in modern Christianity, but this soul/body dualism did not exist in early Judaism, it doesn't appear until after the Jews leave slavery in Egypt. We also know that Zoroastrian religion at the time did have a spirit (inherently good) flesh (inherently evil) dualism, identical to the one we now see prevalent in all Abrahamic religions.

But, the Zoroastrian religion interpolated this dualism into their religion from African folklore. Different versions of it existed across the continent for millennia and it was the African Slaves who first brought this dualism to Haiti. In the practices of the so called 'bokor sorcerer' we can find a version of that dualism taken to extremes, the sorcerer would be able to capture individually a zombie spirit (spirit without a body) or a zombie body (body without a spirit), the origin of the modern zombie resides in this split dualism (we hear less about the zombie spirits these days - although the film vice versa uses the concept).

Those of you who have seen the James Bond movie 'Live and Let Die' will recognise a zombie god called Baron Samedi - who was depicted in the film as a man with white skull make-up and a top hat...

baron-samedi_live-and-let-die_bond-villain.jpg


This character is a voodoo god of the dead, he wakes bodies from death and sends the good ones on to an afterlife but keeps the bad ones as his slaves. This character is from Guinea folklore. There are some who believe the reason Voodoo Zombies as a concept became so embedded in Haitian culture is because it is an obvious metaphor for slavery.

Meanwhile... back in Europe a different sort of reanimation was afoot, and much older. Believed to have begun as an oral tradition in the Bronze age, Greek Mythology has provided us with a world of interesting characters, not least of all is a Titan called Prometheus. In the story of Prometheus we find the second strand of myth that gives rise to the concept of reanimation of the dead, that is very distinct from African dualism.

In Greek Mythology, the gods create humans, and it is only the gods who have that prerogative even though the power is also within some of the Titans. Prometheus, being a bit if an upstart, decides to trick Zeus by preparing two offerings, the first is prime beef hidden in an ox's stomach (something pleasant wrapped I something unpleasant) the second is some old bull bones wrapped in tasty beef fat (something inedible dressed as something yummy - apparently beef fat was yummy...). When Zeus came to choose the offering he picked the yummy looking beef fat, and being the main god-dude set the precedent for all offerings. Needless to say, when he discovered it was old bones he was a big annoyed. So, to spite Prometheus he took fire and life away from humans. Prometheus, feeling a bit bad about it stole fire and gave it along with life back to humans, but it wasn't for him to do that, and in retaliation Zeus sent Pandora with her jar of nasty things to plague humans.

And so the reanimation myth is Greek Mythology is born. This particular story arrives with us today via a string of media based on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, which - for those of you who haven't read the book - is titled 'Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus', and would later go on to inspire her husband to write a poem called 'Prometheus Unbound', in which he basically steals his wife's ideas about Prometheus. It's probably worth mentioning that the Greek reanimation story is more likely to have been one of the root strands of Vampyre (Vampire), the 18th century Eastern European folklore which is hijacked by Christianity sometime in the Victorian era.

So, out of all of these who was the first to write about the dead coming back to life - well the answer even pre-dates the New Testament story of Lazarus. The award for originator of the written undead story goes to ...

Hesiod - a Greek poet writing about 750 and 650 BCE. He was the first known writer to commit the undead/reanimation myth to parchment.


ZOC
 
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I always liked the old-school Carribbean zombies, dead or near to and controlled by Obeahman, Mama Loa, or other shaman. 'I Walked with a Zombie' is my kind of z movie.
what they call z's today I call techno-ghouls. do not like.
 
Anyone remember what episode of Tales From The Crypt? had the one where the people turned out to be ghouls? I think it was TFTC. I know it was an anthology segment or a TV show episode...
It ends with the ugly ghouls sitting at a table saying you are for dinner...er something like that...
 
It's a vexed issue in the horror community that really underlines how dumb some members are. Apparently, or so the argument goes, to be a zombie the monster in question must have died, which kind of goes against 30 odd years of cinema prior to Romero making his "ghouls" movie. Same people will argue that Evil Dead is a zombie movie, say what!

Zombies are ironically evolving and continue to do so; White Zombie introduced the idea of the near dead servant of voodoo rituals, Night of the Living Dead evolved the idea to dead flesh eaters (though Romero referred to his walking dead as "ghouls"), and 28 Days Later built on Romero's The Crazies to bring us the fast moving infected.
 
Dead things do not generate heat. Anything that is dead is at ambient temperature.

Tell me why Vampires and such do not freeze solid when exposed to freezing weather?

Tom. I'm undead. Well technically, I'm cyborg, living tissue over a metallic like endoskeleton. but the simple fact of the matter is, if you were to take a stethoscope to me, you'd not hear a heartbeat.

My preference for temperature - optimal temperatures - are about 72 degrees Fahrenheit.

Older model cyborgs leverage 'a brain' as a processor, and the blood - an iron oxide mix which if tested doesn't have DNA markers in it - creates a liquid cooling system which keeps our core temperature maintained at 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Modeled to 'blend in' with organics easier who leverage remote instrumentation to evade systems which filter out humans from cyborgs based on body temperature.

So to your question - why do vampires not freeze solid? There's an interesting feature of nature that if there's a small electrical current applied to a surface, the formation of ice and freezing of surfaces is slowed down dramatically. The human body, as well as the vampire body - both generate small electrical currents - of which can be measured on the skin - which quite literally dramatically slow down the solidifying of organic mass. In BOTH cases, it should be noted it's not just the body's core temperature which prevents freezing, it's also this small electrical charge combined with periodic physical movement which both species present.

Have you ever slept and woken up and feel like an absolute zombie trying to 'get the legs moving'? This is because of a lack of movement that may have occurred during your sleep cycles.

Something to note: The Borg leverage this small electrical current as part of a new passive assimilation process, where 'source code' and a program is transferred from a Borg to a non borg via a handshake, which typically remains dormant inside the host until the host is needed and converted to a drone. The electrical system design of humans and vampires and robot's metallic structure all present wonderful methods to transfer this program over.

MANY species leverage the electrical current to prevent 'freezing'.

These electrical systems present an easy way for passive and dormancy based assimilation.

As for the zombie .

Have you ever considered you're seeing the formation of a collective in an alternate reality and the zombies are both real and pooling their intelligence to become collectively smarter, which may explain why you've seen a rapid progress of both the speed and dexterity of the zombies over a relatively short period of time in movies?

i mean. what would explain why - despite there being different zombie movies made across continents, they ubiquitously show them moving faster and faster? Unless there's something you're missing?
 
Zombies, and vampires, do not generate warm blood ergo they freeze. Kind of like lizards etc needing sunlight to maintain temp.
 
Just checking out <em>Glitch</em>, a new Aussie six part tellie series about people resurrecting in a small town. Interestingly the "zombies" are fully functioning, pulse etc, but have memory lapses. For mine clearly not zombies, and further throwing into question the whole "undead", which originally referred to vampires, theory.
 
Zombies, and vampires, do not generate warm blood ergo they freeze. Kind of like lizards etc needing sunlight to maintain temp.
Zombies, at least, don't generate any blood nor does their blood pump through their veins, lest it would be completely drained from their bodies the first time they get a chunk of themselves missing. What I'm advocating is that the same chemical transformation that turns them into a 'zombie' also transforms their blood into a congealed-like substance that ends up not flowing out of their body and also allows them withstand climate zones far outside of the ranges that would be tolerable to living humans.
 
It is now my opinion that Zombie movies are Science Fiction.

And horror along with fantasy grew out of being a sub genre of?

Surprisingly the zombie is one of the few actual cinematic monsters, as opposed to vampires etc that had a rich source in popular books etc.
 
I remember (I think) that before Romero's Night of the Living Dead, that Zombies were people that were 'hexed' by voodoo.

The Atlantic Article said:
After the Haitian Revolution in 1804 and the end of French colonialism, the zombie became a part of Haiti’s folklore. The myth evolved slightly and was folded into the Voodoo religion, with Haitians believing zombies were corpses reanimated by shamans and voodoo priests. Sorcerers, known as bokor, used their bewitched undead as free labor or to carry out nefarious tasks. This was the post-colonialism zombie, the emblem of a nation haunted by the legacy of slavery and ever wary of its reinstitution. As the UC Irvine professor Amy Wilentz has pointed out in her writing on zombies, on several occasions after the revolution Haiti teetered on the brink of reinstating slavery. The zombies of the Haitian Voodoo religion were a more fractured representation of the anxieties of slavery, mixed as they were with occult trappings of sorcerers and necromancy. Even then, the zombie’s roots in the horrors of slavery were already facing dilution.

It was in this form—Voodoo bokor and black magic—that the Haitian myth first crossed paths with American culture, in the aforementioned White Zombie. Although the film doesn’t begin to transform the undead in the way that Romero’s films and the subsequent zombie industrial complex would, it’s notable for its introduction of white people as interlopers in the zombie legend. It would take another few decades or so, but eventually the memory of Haiti’s colonialist history and the suffering it wrought—millions of Africans worked into the grave—would be excised from the zombie myth for good.
The Tragic, Forgotten History of Zombies

White Zombie ( 1932 )
White Zombie: A young man turns to a witch doctor to lure the woman he loves away from her fiance, but instead turns her into a zombie slave.

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  • Currently 3.07/5
(27 votes)
Ratings: IMDB: 6.5/10 Metascore: N/A RT: 89%
Released:
August 04, 1932
Runtime: 69 mins
Genres: Horror Zombies
Countries: USA
Director: Victor Halperin
Actors: Bela Lugosi Brandon Hurst Clarence Muse Dan Crimmins Frederick Peters George Burr Macannan John Harron Joseph Cawthorn Madge Bellamy Robert Frazer Velma Gresham

Revolt of the Zombies ( 1936 )
Revolt of the Zombies: An international expedition is sent into Cambodia to destroy an ancient formula that turns men into zombies.

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  • Currently 2.83/5
(23 votes)
Ratings: IMDB: 3.1/10 Metascore: N/A RT: 0%
Released:
June 04, 1936
Runtime: 65 mins
Genres: Romance Horror War Zombies
Countries: USA
Director: Victor Halperin
Actors: Adolph Milar Bela Lugosi Carl Stockdale Dean Jagger E Alyn Warren George Cleveland Hans Schumm Roy D'Arcy Selmer Jackson Teru Shimada William Crowell

The Ghost Breakers ( 1940 )
The Ghost Breakers: Mary Carter inherits her family's ancestral home, located on a small island off Cuba, and, despite warnings and death threats, decides to take possesion of the reputedly haunted castle. She is joined by radio broadcaster Larry Lawrence who, believing he has killed a mob gunsel, flees New York with his butler, Alex. Once on the island the threesome enter the eerie castle and after viewing the ghost of one of Mary's ancestors and fighting off a menacing zombie, they find the key to the castle's treasure but are interrupted by an all-too-human foe.

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  • Currently 2.81/5
(166 votes)
Ratings: IMDB: 7.3/10 Metascore: N/A RT: 83%
Released:
June 07, 1940
Runtime: 85 mins
Genres: Comedy Horror Zombies
Countries: USA
Director: George Marshall
Actors: Anthony Quinn Blanca Vischer Bob Hope Brick Sullivan David Durand Dolores Moran Douglas Kennedy Emmett Vogan Francisco Marán Grace Hayle Jack Edwards Jack Hatfield Jack Norton James Blaine James Flavin Kay Stewart Larry Steers Leonard Sues Lloyd Corrigan Max Wagner Noble Johnson Paul Fix Paul Lukas Paul Newlan Paulette Goddard Pedro de Cordoba Richard Carlson Robert Elliott Robert Ryan Tom Dugan Virginia Brissac Willie Best

King of the Zombies ( 1941 )
King of the Zombies: During World War 2, a small plane off the south coast of America is low on fuel and blown off course by a storm...

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  • Currently 3.00/5
(26 votes)
Ratings: IMDB: 5.3/10 Metascore: N/A RT: N/A
Released:
May 14, 1941
Runtime: 67 mins
Genres: Drama Comedy Horror Zombies
Countries: USA
Director: Jean Yarbrough
Actors: Dick Purcell Guy Usher Henry Victor James Davis Joan Woodbury John Archer Laurence Criner Leigh Whipper Madame Sul-Te-Wan Mantan Moreland Marguerite Whitten

Bowery at Midnight ( 1942 )
Bowery at Midnight: Kindly soup kitchen operator and professor of criminology Bela Lugosi uses his soup kitchen as a front for a criminal gang who commit a series of daring robberies and murders. When things get out of hand, Lugosi kills his henchmen, who wind up as zombies in the cellar of the soup kitchen.

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  • Currently 3.04/5
(28 votes)
Ratings: IMDB: 5.3/10 Metascore: N/A RT: 40%
Released:
October 30, 1942
Runtime: 61 mins
Genres: Thriller Romance Sci-Fi Horror Crime Zombies
Countries: USA
Director: Wallace Fox
Actors: 'Snub' Pollard Anna Hope Bela Lugosi Bernard Gorcey Bob Reeves Bobby Stone Dave O'Brien Eddie Hall Eddie Kane George Eldredge J Farrell MacDonald John Archer John Berkes Lew Kelly Lucille Vance Pat Costello Ralph Littlefield Ray Miller Theodore Lorch Tom Neal Vince Barnett Walter McGrail Wanda McKay Wheeler Oakman Willy Castello

I Walked with a Zombie ( 1943 )
I Walked with a Zombie: A young Canadian nurse (Betsy) comes to the West Indies to care for Jessica, the wife of a plantation manager (Paul Holland). Jessica seems to be suffering from a kind of mental paralysis as a result of fever. When she falls in love with Paul, Betsy determines to cure Jessica even if she needs to use a voodoo ceremony, to give Paul what she thinks he wants.

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  • Currently 3.75/5
(8 votes)
Ratings: IMDB: 7.3/10 Metascore: N/A RT: 92%
Released:
April 21, 1943
Runtime: 69 mins
Genres: Horror Zombies
Countries: USA
Director: Jacques Tourneur
Actors: Alan Edmiston Clinton Rosemond Darby Jones Doris Ake Edith Barrett Frances Dee James Bell James Ellison Jeni Le Gon Martin Wilkins Norman Mayes Rita Christiani Sir Lancelot Theresa Harris Tom Conway Vivian Dandridge

Teenage Zombies ( 1959 )
Teenage Zombies: A crazed female scientist uses nerve gas to turn local teenagers into her unquestioning slaves.

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  • Currently 2.79/5
(14 votes)
Ratings: IMDB: 2.6/10 Metascore: N/A RT: N/A
Released:
June 01, 1959
Runtime: 73 mins
Genres: Sci-Fi Horror Zombies
Countries: USA
Director: Jerry Warren
Actors: Chuck Niles Katherine Victor Paul Pepper Steve Conte

Plan 9 from Outer Space ( 1959 )
Plan 9 from Outer Space: Aliens resurrect dead humans as zombies and vampires to stop human kind from creating the Solaranite (a sort of sun-driven bomb).

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  • Currently 3.45/5
(44 votes)
Ratings: IMDB: 4.0/10 Metascore: N/A RT: 66%
Released:
July 22, 1959
Runtime: 79 mins
Genres: Horror Sci-Fi Thriller Zombies
Countries: USA
Director: Edward D. Wood Jr.
Actors: Bela Lugosi Ben Frommer Bill Ash Conrad Brooks Duke Moore Edward D Wood Jr Gloria Dea Gregory Walcott Johnny Duncan Karl Johnson Lyle Talbot Paul Marco Tom Keene Tom Mason Tor Johnson Vampira

The Amazing Transparent Man ( 1960 )
The Amazing Transparent Man: A crazed scientist invents an invisibility formula. He plans to use the formula to create an army of invisible zombies.

https://images.{...}/thumbs/3899_The_Amazing_Transparent_Man_1960.jpg
  • Currently 2.87/5
(38 votes)
Ratings: IMDB: 3.7/10 Metascore: N/A RT: 40%
Released:
February 04, 1960
Runtime: 57 mins
Genres: Thriller Sci-Fi Horror Crime Zombies
Countries: USA
Director: Edgar G. Ulmer
Actors: Boyd 'Red' Morgan Douglas Kennedy Ivan Triesault James Griffith Kevin Kelly Marguerite Chapman Patrick Cranshaw

The Dead One ( 1961 )
The Dead One: A voodoo priestess sends out zombies to bring back live victims for her sacrificial rituals.

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  • Currently 2.92/5
(75 votes)
Ratings: IMDB: 3.1/10 Metascore: N/A RT: N/A
Released:
July 06, 1961
Runtime: 71 mins
Genres: Horror Zombies
Countries: USA
Director: Barry Mahon
Actors: Monica Davis Robert Henderson

The Plague of the Zombies ( 1966 )
The Plague of the Zombies: Young workers are dying because of a mysterious epidemic in a little village in Cornwall. Doctor Thompson...

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  • Currently 3.46/5
(37 votes)
Ratings: IMDB: 6.7/10 Metascore: N/A RT: 78%
Released:
January 09, 1966
Runtime: 91 mins
Genres: Horror Zombies
Countries: UK
Director: John Gilling
Actors: Alexander Davion Andre Morell Ben Aris Brook Williams Dennis Chinnery Diane Clare Jacqueline Pearce Jerry Verno John Carson Louis Mahoney Marcus Hammond Michael Ripper Peter Diamond Reg Harding Roy Royston Tim Condren
 
Zombies, and vampires, do not generate warm blood ergo they freeze. Kind of like lizards etc needing sunlight to maintain temp.
Bro, Zombies are the living dead. They were bought to life from voo-doo tribes in the Carribean sea. The correct way to end a zombie's life it to sew its mouth up with salt in its throat and mouth. Ja mon' LOL, Vampires are from Romainia, they are also dead, they seek blood and you become one of the gang. Zombies also crave brains, brains, braiiiinss, lol! :cool:
 
Trying to think of the classic Brit zombie movie released sometime in the 70s or 80s????
I do recall Roger More as 007 running into zombies or was it Sean the man Connery, 2 true tough, man's men! Roger Moore,
live-and-let-die-james-bond-roger-moore-jane-seymour-solitaire-1973-spy-thriller-action-blaxpl...jpg
Live and let die movie, the real zombies. Old school stuff....:cool:
 
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