Book Review: Zombie Movies - The Ultimate Guide
Susan Dunne - Hartford Courant
Oct 20, 2008
Zombie Movies: The Ultimate Guide
By Glenn Kay
These days a lot of film buffs have snagged book contracts by throwing together random lists and goofy riffs on their favorite lowbrow genres. They're fun to read, but a waste of space on a bookshelf. At first glance, "Zombie Movies: The Ultimate Guide" by Glenn Kay seems like it would fit that slapdash, bargain-bin category.
How delightful, then, to find this compendium of zombiism -- I don't know if that's a real word, but Kay uses it and I like it -- in American and foreign film cultures is surprisingly meaningful and well-researched. It's enjoyable and funny, reflecting Kay's love of this genre, which itself is predicated on the ridiculous. But it also has a lot to teach, about film history but about world history. A serious student of cinema shouldn't feel the weekend was wasted in reading "Zombie Movies" and setting it in the bookcase next to the latest David Thomson tome about Hollywood.
Kay goes way back, starting with the 15th-century Spanish landing in Haiti. Over the subsequent centuries, that beleaguered island nation, built by slaves, became a seedbed for the transplanted African practice of voodoo and belief in zombies. (In fact, it might be said, considering the thickness of this book, that the concept of the zombie could be Haiti's premier contribution to world art and culture.)
Haiti's occupation by the United States in the early 20th century brought Americans into contact with voodoo and spooky zombie lore. These folk tales eventually crossed the sea when the occupiers went home, and seeped into our pop culture via short stories and fantasy novels.
The first zombie movie was "White Zombie" from 1932, starring Bela Lugosi. The genre sputtered sporadically -- occasionally producing a great film, such as the 1943 Jacques Tourneur chiller "I Walked With a Zombie" -- until 1968. That was the year George Romero released "Night of the Living Dead," which is the sort of movie the word "seminal" was coined for.
Romero, and his five "... of the Dead" movies, are the jewels in the zombie-movie crown, and Kay gives them their due. But, like a good journalist, he isn't unquestioningly fawning. Kay gives a good-but-not-outstanding rating to Romero's 2008 "Diary of the Dead."
Kay raves about "Tales From the Crypt," "Let Sleeping Corpses Lie," "Night of the Creeps," "Planet Terror," "The Serpent and the Rainbow," Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video, "28 Days Later" and "Shaun of the Dead." He takes a dissenting view of the legendary crap auteur Ed Wood and his dismal "Plan 9 from Outer Space." Regarded by most as the worst film ever made, Kay instead calls it one of the greatest zombie movies of all time.
Kay effectively tracks zombie trends. World War II left a lingering legacy on zombie movies by establishing Nazis as the ideal zombie-creating villains. The nuclear arms race left another legacy, mixing radiation poisoning into the zombie stew. The growing popularity of drive-in movie theaters led to a boom in the sort of ultra-low-budget filmmaking where zombies traditionally dwelt. In the 70s, zombies visited the blaxploitation genre, and gained strong footholds in Italian and Asian film industries.
Other things that Kay chronicles are just silly and fun. In his review of "Zombies of Mora Tau," he writes "At one point a character exclaims that 'there's a whole flock of them chasing us!' If anyone has ever wondered how to refer to a large number of zombies, the question is finally answered."
As with many film commentators, Kay is most entertaining when panning a bad film: "'Zombie High' is also known as 'The School That Ate My Brain,' and it may have done the same to anyone who managed to see it during its brief theatrical run."
Kay quite possibly has seen every zombie movie ever made. He knows the genre inside and out. He also knows the movie business, cultural history and filmmaking procedures.
More than anything, he knows the Dutch tilt. You may not know what that is, but if you're a fan of zombie films, you've seen lots of them. Buy the book and read it. You'll learn about the Dutch tilt. And a lot more.
Zombie Movies: The Ultimate Guide
By Glenn Kay
(Chicago Review Press, 352 pages, $22.95)
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