It’s October, the time when the air turns crisp, the leaves change color and the dead walk the night and day. I love this time of year. I’ve loved scary movies, books and TV shows since….jeez….I think I saw the Creature Double Feature on the UHF station when we lived in the Philly suburbs. Those horror movies are a far cry from the blood porn most movies of this genre are today. Vampires worked themselves into the culture and become sexy instead of scary…well maybe that hasn’t changed to some extent (and I’m not counting Nostforatu). The un-killable serial killers like Jason, Freddie and Mike Myers all have pasts that we should be sympathetic too. And monsters have become computer generated and too big to take seriously, i.e. Cloverfield (which is a great movie but I’m not that scared of giant praying mantis from outer space).

There is one thing in horror movies, however, that has always made my skin crawl since I first saw it when MTV did its week of scary movies for Halloween back in the ‘80’s, that’s The Night of the Living Dead. I’m talking Zombies!!!!!!

While all other monsters ebb and flow in popularity it is the Zombies, no pun intended, live on. Story tellers use them to make varied social commentary on what they see in the world around them.



George Romero, once a political filmmaker, has done this with serious accuracy since the late ‘60’s. Night of the Living Dead (1968), depending on who your talking to, range in topic from feminism to civil rights movement or the era to the Vietnam war and it being unwinnable. Dawn of the Dead (1978 & 2004) focused on our love of stuff. If people taking refuge from zombies in mall isn’t a metaphor for mass consumerism I don’t know what is. Day of the Dead (1985) and Land of the Dead are all about class warfare, the wealthy are safe and sound but it’s the poor that must fend for themselves with the zombie population. And while I haven’t seen Dairy of the Dead (2008) in researching I’ve learned it takes on the topic of fear mongering, how apropos during the last decade.

Other movies make us look at the idea that maybe we’re already living like zombies, Shaun of the Dead (2004) points out that we mindless talk on the phone and mindless watch TV, mindlessly go to work. We just trudge through our lives not really thinking for ourselves and that its only when we wake up and take control that we make a difference.

28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later looks at the fear global pandemics can cause. Fido takes on conformity. Homecoming drives home the point when American soldiers rise from the grave to vote out the president that sent them to war.

No matter what brushes we use to paint zombies with they are still seem to be one thing – they are the complexity that is us.