Being male, middle class and white, I rarely find myself in a position where I can credulously get truly self righteous about “stuff” or “issues”.
Despite having a black man in the White House, most of the world is still run by older, richer, smarter and slightly more evil versions of me.
That is to say: Rich honky scum.
Side bar: Even the racial slur, “honky” sounds goofy. Honky sounds like the name of a poorly animated car that gets into zany adventures with a scrappy little kid named Zack. Honky and Zack – WHEELY good PALS! [cue: upbeat theme tune]
Copyright Clawsome! I’m watching you, Pixar…
ANYWAY I finally have a racial (?) slur I can get all pissy about, the “Z” word: ZOMBIE.
Being a gore hound of some renown I’ve seen my fair share of zombie movies. If you were to ask me, “Please kind sir, could you direct me to the cream of this festering crop?” I might point a bony, gnarled claw tine in the direction of:
George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead
Lucio Fulci’s Zombie aka: Zombie Flesh Eaters
Dan O’Bannon’s The Return of the Living Dead
George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead
Peter Jackson’s Braindead aka: Dead Alive
Michele Soavi’s Dellamorte Dellamore aka: Cemetery Man
Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead
Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead (2004) remake (no one was more surprised than me at how cool this one was)
Re-Animator (“Kill him? I GAVE HIM LIFE!”)
Deadgirl (low budget, nasty and sleazy)
Now you’ll probably notice a few absent entries. Movies that normally appear in these kinds of lists. The Evil Dead for instance.
While that does feature reanimated corpses it also has live people being possessed by Candarian demons. The most zombie-rific entry in this auspicious series is Army of Darkness – with the huge horde of the undead.
The thing is, they’re director Sam Raimi’s loving nod to the animated skeleton armies constructed by another dead hero and stop motion pioneer: Ray Harryhausen (think Clash of the Titans, The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms and Jason and the Argonauts) very cool, but not really zombies. They don’t shamble, moan or eat the delicious flesh of the living – so arguably they’re demons possessing skeletons, hence not zombies.
Some of you may also notice 28 Days/Weeks/Months/Years Later (whatever they’re up to) missing as well. That’s because the grumpy, slobbery antagonists in those movies aren’t zombies – they’ve caught a dose of RAGE virus and are just have the shits something fierce.
I almost came to blows with a previous flatmate about this. His argument was they massed like zombies, they act like zombies they ARE zombies.
My superior and correct response was they have to be REANIMATED from the dead. They need to die and come back to life.
THEN, and only then, are they zombies.
However I think the most egregious misuse, nay SAVAGE ABUSE, of the “Z” word is in, wait for it, THE MOST SUCCESSFUL “ZOMBIE” MOVIE OF ALL TIME – ZOMBIELAND.
Now, I don’t hate Zombieland (read my review), but I do take issue with the fact the “zombies” are, as in 28 Days Later, INFECTED HUMANS WHO ARE STILL ALIVE!
As light and fluffy as Zombieland is (even compared to Shaun, much less Dawn) it’s charm can’t hide the fact it should be called INFECTED-BITEYPEOPLE-LAND.
THE RULE OF CLAW:You put zombie in the title we’d best see some fucking zombies! That’s OUR word, society, don’t mess with me on this one. I’ll let you off with a warning this time… but the claw is ready and lubricated. S’all I’m saying, readers, sa’ll I’m saying…
