So. I’ve reached a major milestone. I’ve watched 100 zombie movies.

I’m not about to stop. I definitely want to keep going. I mean, I’m not tired of them yet. And it’s a great way to kill time at my last remaining day job.

Before I go on, though, I’d like to do one or two posts reflecting on my methods, my choices, things I’ve learned, and some highlights from the experience. But first, some stats!

- I have watched 8491 minutes of zombie footage.
- Or 141.5 hours.
- Or 5.9 solid days.
- I began this project on July 3rd, 2009. I logged my 100th review on March 20th, 2011. This means that I’ve spent 632 days on this project so far, during which I watched approximately 13 minutes of footage every day, or 94 minutes per week. 632 days works out to about 90 weeks, so I watched approximately 1.1 movies per week.
- The time I spent watching movies constitutes approximately .9% of the total time I’ve been running this project.
- The shortest movie, B-17 (which I did not count towards my 100 movie goal), was 5 minutes long. The next shortest, Thriller, was 15.
- The longest movie, the original Dawn of the Dead, was 126 minutes.
- I marked 29 movies out of 101 as being favorites, or roughly 28%.

You can see screenshots of my official movie log. Click to view larger versions.

Now, it’s time to evaluate a few things.

In my introduction, I stated that I was not going to attempt to create the be-all-end-all zombie movie review site. Other sites have done that far more skillfully and passionately than I could ever hope to. Instead, I planned to write just a few words about each movie, enough to prove (at least to the average reader) that I viewed it. My goal was simply to watch as many zombie movies as possible. Quantity over quality.

Overall, I think I’ve achieved this. I took the vast majority of the films I watched seriously enough to at least consider what they were contributing to the canon. There have been a few instances where I’ve found myself critiquing certain movies, but in doing so I attempted to keep my remarks brief and to leverage them into discussions about larger issues in zombiedom. Furthermore, in those instances where I’ve found myself talking at length about the quality of a movie (or simply whether or not I liked it), I tried to limit myself to positive comments. And if I really detested a movie, I just tried to be as fair as possible. Rarely did I stoop to using such words as “stupid” or “suck.” When I did – it was probably deserved. As in, I likely edited my post several times, and could find no more descriptive and/or intelligent words for what I’d watched. My brain had been turned to goo. And even then, I tried to find at least one thing to compliment. (There are a few movies that I was almost nothing but negative about – I take responsibility for those.)

And yet, I’ve hesitated to do even this. Since getting my publishing contract and becoming an Official Author, I do not publicly talk about books – Stacia Kane had some posts about this a while back, and I agree with almost every word of them. I do not strive to be kind to my fellow writers because I fear burning bridges; I strive to be kind to my fellow writers because it’s a matter of respect. Plus, you know, I’ve seen Theater of Blood. And I’ve worked in retail. I know what happens to people who are overly criticized.

I feel the same way about my fellow zombie creators. I don’t work in film – if I did, I would not review films – but I still respect those who use film in order to tell stories. Behind every horrid homemade or student production is someone who loved it and believed in it. Behind every B movie that’s so-bad-it’s-bad sits a group of people who had the time of their lives making it. I don’t want to disparage them, or the time and effort they put into their work.

Additionally, I don’t want the zombie lovers of the world to see me as someone who thinks her zombies are above reproach, the only perfect specimens – “Your contribution to the genre is stupid and no one wants it; mine rules.” Ha. I’m the first to admit that my zombie crew is silly and tongue-in-cheek and far from perfect – because no characters are perfect. No story is perfect. No creator is perfect.

I love zombies. I love people who create zombies. And I’m going to keep watching zombies. I mean, I haven’t even gotten to Shaun of the Dead yet! Or Re-Animator, or I Walked With a Zombie! So everyone out there who works in film – you need to make more zombies for me to watch!

Anyway, I’ll wrap up with some of my favorite highlights.

Lia’s Unified Theories:
Lia’s Unified Theory of Nazi Zombies
Part One of Lia’s Unified Theory of Living Zombies

An Ode to Sugar Hill

Zombies Performing Equus on the Moon

My mother’s picture of the “bad doggies” from Resident Evil: Apocalypse

Zombie pizza

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Title: Army of Darkness
Year: 1992
Director: Sam Raimi
Leads: Bruce Campbell, Embeth Davidtz, Marcus Gilbert

Favorite quote: “This is my boomstick!”

Thoughts: I started with a classic. I’ll end this group of 100 films with a classic.

Army of Darkness has always struck me as a live action cartoon. It’s bombastic and twitchy – and the deadites are positively spastic, the very definition of undeath as a form of exaggerated life. Even Ash himself is an animated, leaping kettle of contradictions – he plays virtuoso piano and is apparently a chemical and engineering genius, and yet he’s an obnoxious, immature man-child who works at S-Mart. In fact, that might be why I like his character so much – no one can say that he’s one-dimensional.

Of course I adore Ash’s evil undead twin, as well. And it always amuses me that the first thing that the resurrected, skeletal members of the Army of Darkness think about is women. Aside from that, they’re intelligent, strategy-driven foes, which causes me to respect them quite a bit.

On a final note, I think that Ash’s metal hand and the modifications made to his car are arguably steampunk (or at least something-punk. Clockpunk, maybe?).

Links: Army of Darkness at IMDB
Army of Darkness on Wikipedia

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Title: Evil Dead II / Evil Dead II: Dead by Dawn
Year: 1987
Director: Sam Raimi
Leads: Bruce Campbell, Sarah Berry, Dan Hicks

Favorite quote: “We just cut up our girlfriend with a chainsaw. Does that sound “fine”?”

Thoughts: I took my latest viewing of Evil Dead II quite seriously, because I am aware that it is the weakest zombie-related entry in the series. I evaluated it honestly and critically, prepared to own up to it not being a zombie film and skip it. After all, Ash is the main possessed character in the second film, and he’s quite alive. While I will argue for certain living zombies until I’m blue in the face, I will not argue for demonically-possessed living people. It’s just a personal line in the sand.

However, by the end, it had hit several zombie buttons for me – and thus I decided to include it. Specifically, aside from Ash’s battles with his own personal demons – literally – the only other main exterior, principal threat faced by the characters in Evil Dead II is the deadites. They appear briefly and sporadically, but they are there, and constitute a clear continuation from the first film. So. There you go.

That said, there’s very little new information to analyze, so I just want to mention two things. First of all, this film offers compelling evidence for all the times I’ve argued that characters in horror movies (I think I was specifically talking about the Texas Chainsaw Massacre films), when confronted with a chainsaw, just need to turn around and face it head-on. That’s the only way they’re going to have a fighting chance – both running and hiding leave them too vulnerable to chainsaw attack. Ash does this, and perseveres. Yay!

Secondly, I just want to mention how hugely the poster/video art figured in my childhood.

I was five when this film came out. For years afterward, whenever I would wander through the horror section of our local video rental shop (yes, I am that old) and encounter this image, I would always stop to stare at it. It’s a beautiful, beautiful image of death, and it still transfixes me to this day. It’s the clarity of the eyes. The fact that the skull is pensive, thoughtful, not grinning malevolently. It looks like the face of a zombie who’s seen so much, and has so many stories to tell. I love it. I fully consider it an artistic masterpiece.

Links: Evil Dead II at IMDB
Evil Dead II on Wikipedia

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Title: Tombs of the Blind Dead / Mark of the Devil, Part 4: Tombs of the Blind Dead / La Noche del terror ciego
Year: 1971
Director: Amando de Ossorio
Leads: Lone Fleming, César Burner, María Elena Arpón

Favorite quote: “She doesn’t know what she’s getting into.”

Thoughts: Notes! Because I’m lazy!

Train porn! Oh, to ride such a train!

Early lesbian experience for Bet and Virginia – this would explain why meeting her former boarding school chum/lover and potentially losing her not-serious boytoy to her is fraught with so much emotion.

Virginia jumps off the train and heads toward Zombieville. I like this, solo female – fairly rare. Either going to end really badly, or really awesomely.

Yes, put on your clothes to investigate the sound. Because you know it’d be indecent to be killed in your nightgown.

Templar zombies on horses, yes! Moldering cloaks, chanting – I am all about this.

Geez, lady, use your words. Ask them what they want.

Horsejacking! Templars justified at this point? Virginia gummed to death? Bite transmission/curse model.

Freaky morgue guard. Igor? “Why are you not answering my horribly impertinent, inappropriate, disgusting questions regarding the body of this young woman? Why are you ruining this for meeee?” Oh, and victim-shaming medical examiners? You suck.

Virgin sacrifice in 13th century – blood = life. Satanism.

Bony hands look almost metallic. Love the bearded skulls. Shooting them does zip.

Zombies are blind, hunt by sound – really incredible idea. They follow heartbeats – betrayal of one’s own body.

Zombie plague spread via train! Let the steampunk angels sing!

Links: Tombs of the Blind Dead at IMDB
Tombs of the Blind Dead on Wikipedia

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Title: Dance of the Dead
Year: 2008
Director: Gregg Bishop
Leads: Jared Kusnitz, Greyson Chadwick, Chandler Darby

Favorite quote: “You can have all of me, Lindsey, my love! Cut me open, take my heart – it is yours! Wow, I feel the same way, Froggy.”

or

“You give me ten minutes, I’ll have this place wired like a crackhead on Red Bull.”

Thoughts: I am incredibly glad that I decided to start TDD – because it’s made me seek out and watch some fantastic movies that I might not’ve, otherwise. Dance of the Dead (no, different one) is definitely amongst these.

DotD is an independent zombie teen comedy that, although silly in parts – and then, delightfully silly – charmed my skull-print socks off. It’s yet another example of my own personal truism regarding living survivor stories, and how creators must take pains to make their survivors interesting and dynamic. Although the plot focuses on several stereotypical groups of high school students and teachers – the sci-fi club nerds, the cheerleader and the prom queen, the local juvenile delinquents, the psycho gym coach, etc. – I ended up really liking them all. Heck, I even liked the cemetery groundskeeper, who appeared to deal routinely with the dead the way the main character in Cemetery Man purported to.

Even the zombies were great. They were ground-popping brain eaters (sometimes extremely so, leaping out of their graves like undead antelope), apparently created via nuclear waste, with independent body part movement. For sheer looks, I loved the skeleton-headed zombie holding his own head skin (or perhaps the head of another zombie?) and the zombie frog; when it comes to behavior, I giggled like an idiot at the zombies stealing a car to drive to a source of fresh brains, as well as the zombie spiking the prom punch with blood. (And there’s a lot of support for the zombie-music link in this film, too.)

Most of all, I just loved the random bits of meta-humor. The great moment where the kids suddenly realize that they’ve barricaded themselves so carefully…inside a funeral home. The C4 ordered off of Craigslist. The decision to visit the local pancake house for a break before storming the nuclear power plant. Awesome.

Links: Dance of the Dead at IMDB
Dance of the Dead on Wikipedia

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Title: Last of the Living
Year: 2009
Director: Logan McMillan
Leads: Morgan Williams, Robert Faith, Ashleigh Southam

Favorite quote: “Oh, that’s my bat. I made it. Well, I didn’t make it, I actually bought it – from a shop. …I stole it. Because that’s what I do. Because I’m a badass.”

Thoughts: I loved this one. There were a few “huh?” parts, but they didn’t stick with me for long – I soon fell back to laughing. It also passed the “noooo, I LIKED HIM!” living death test, which is always a difficult note to hit with me. And it has its own theme song, performed by two distressingly attractive men from New Zealand! Well done, guys.

The opening shots were formulaic enough, quickly establishing a post-apocalyptic world – but they were interspersed with a few really brilliant ideas, such as a shot of a lone man running the wrong way up an empty street. The laws that previously maintained societal order are now moot – nice. There were also some interesting kills, and some fun zombies – the vegan zombie and the church zombie who didn’t want to go down easily foremost amongst them.

The zombies themselves are specifically mentioned as being dead, although the plot turn involves the formulation of a cure from extracted zombie blood. In order to be cured, mustn’t the zombies be…alive? (I mean, a zombie gets the last parachute at the end…)

Aside from being about three young men and their awesome car, the film seems to explore the idea of choosing to surf through life vs. deciding to take greater action. I also read some commentary about totems and rule-following into Ash’s insistence on maintaining his complicated zombie-fighting gear, seeing as he’s ultimately the last man standing.

Links: Last of the Living at IMDB
Last of the Living on Wikipedia

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Title: King of the Zombies
Year: 1941
Director: Jean Yarbrough
Leads: Dick Purcell, Joan Woodbury, Mantan Moreland, Henry Victor

Favorite quote: “What’s a museum?”
“A place that keeps dead things.”
“Oh, like here!”

Thoughts: Sadly, whenever I see poor Mantan Moreland in a film’s credits, my first thought is, “Oh, this is going to be uncomfortable.”

King of the Zombies is one of a number of 1940s zombie comedies that incorporate references to the looming threat of the Nazis. Unfortunately, the “comedy” is often based on racial and gender stereotypes. I actually found King harder to watch than Revenge, simply because it seemed to feature much more trenchant, unfunny racist commentary – see “uncomfortable.” Moreland was an absolutely hilarious, skilled actor. It’s so sad that he had to make his living propagating the form of humor that he did.

(The principal players, conveniently arranged by height.)

This movie serves as a great example of the confusion attending early zombies – whether they’re technically living or dead, whether they’re created via hypnosis, chemical control, spiritual control, etc. There’s a fantastic scene where Dr. Sangre turns Moreland into a zombie, during which he has (the very alive, very healthy) man repeat, “I am dead. I am dead.”

The Nazi doctor, in this instance, is apparently making liberal use of both zombie legend (in which his servants seem to fervently believe, to the point of talking openly about the zombies amongst them) and world transmigration lore. Via a combination of hypnotism and voodoo ritual, he seeks to transfer the souls/minds of his Allied “guests” into controlled vessels (sacrificing his wife and niece to do so), in order to access military secrets to radio on to the Nazis. Yes.

Interestingly, in the end we find that salt cures zombies – it was coffee, before. Also, in this movie zombies have no reflection. Possibly a psychological manifestation of the mind control to which they are subject? If one has been convinced that he is dead, after all – doesn’t that mean that he has no existence?

Oh, and I’m stealing the phrase “marble orchard.”

Links: King of the Zombies at IMDB
King of the Zombies on Wikipedia

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Title: The Video Dead
Year: 1987
Director: Robert Scott
Leads: Michael St. Michaels, Thaddeus Golas, Douglas Bell

Favorite quote: “The reason for the mirrors is simple. The dead can’t stand to look at themselves. Same goes for when a living person comes up ag’in’ one of ‘em – when the living person shows fear, it all comes home ag’in…that they’re different. All they wanna do is kill the only thing they can never be.”

Thoughts: In my notes I wrote, “ZOMBIE BRIDE FINDS WIG = THIS MOVIE IS ME.”

It was three in the morning, and I was jittery from all the coffee I’d been drinking to keep myself awake for an all-night zombie binge, but even now, I think the sentiment holds true. The Video Dead is a lesser-known, direct-to-video 80s gem – one of those obscure zombie films that reached out and made me love it. In fact, I think it actually redeemed the entire decade.

I mean, how could it not? The movie opens with a reclusive writer who sleeps in ’til noon, blindly signs for packages he doesn’t remember ordering, lives off of pizza, and watches Zombie Blood Nightmare…my God. What have I become. Anyway, it goes on to feature personality-rich (albeit evil) character zombies who quite literally smash down the fourth wall – emerging from a possessed television set to torment a peaceful neighborhood. Yaaaay! I love metaphors for the anxiety that attended video’s move into the home and the increasing violence of the television and movies being consumed by the young! And the kid arguing that he wants to use the chainsaw because Texas Chainsaw Massacre is his favorite movie – people!

(I can only take so much awesomeness per movie. I am only human.)

And I truly adored the zombies (of course). They were imbued with a sort of charming, malicious glee – though there were several moments where they evinced true emotion (the bride finding a wig, the immediate turn to domestic activities upon invading a home). The final scene, involving a girl doing her best to convince the zombies that she is not afraid of them, during which they treat her fairly and politely – dang. Too bad it all fell apart in the end.

(I am convinced that Robert Pattison stole Greaser Zombie’s look.)

There were a number of similarities to Dead Alive – the dinner scene, the independent body parts, etc. There were also many unique, complicated rules concerning the disposal of the dead, which veered a little into the realm of the ridiculous – but I found it hard to care much about them. Not when the movie had already given me so much.

Links: The Video Dead at IMDB
The Video Dead on Wikipedia

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Title: Meat Market 2
Year: 2001
Director: Brian Clement
Leads: Bettina May, Alison Therriault, Stephan Eng

Favorite quote: “But he – it – has survived. Because it can still consume to keep itself going.”

Thoughts: This one has to be notes, sorry.

Same characters…

Most of the makeup gives an idea of what Fulci zombies would look like if slightly more animated.

Zombies are evolving – physically, at least. (Strength, dexterity.)

Zombie in “xxx vegan straight-edge xxx” shirt – bahahaha.

Once isolated in survivor site (Reconstructive Commerce Association?), only white women elevated to status of “breeding stock” – WTF? Why the racial angle? Rest of movie has absolutely nothing to do with issues of race.

Anti-zombie pep rally, corporate team-building – but elevation of the idea of the zombie as a soulless, dedicated consumer talked up? Lots of economic model talk, “create as much as you consume” – very weird, but very interesting. Using zombies to talk about consumerism, again?

Scientists fuse dead/alive flesh, we’ve seen this before…

Oh, the horrible racist living people are the real cannibalistic monsters. I see.

…I thought El Diablo Azul was dead!
…oh. He’s an angel.

Links: Meat Market 2 at IMDB

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Title: Meat Market
Year: 2000
Director: Brian Clement
Leads: Bettina May, Paul Pedrosa, Teresa Simon

Favorite quote: “I think these things – these people with this disease – they’re doing a good thing! They’re cleaning the trash off the streets!”

Thoughts: Ooh boy.

This low-budget movie features two ex-security guard vigilantes, a trio of vinyl-clad vampiresses with laser guns, a luchadore in a wifebeater named El Diablo Azul who appears to have been dubbed over, and nanobot-genesis zombies who function as part of a wireless hive-like neuronetwork.

Well, there were some good moments – mostly involving the actual filming. Zombies are always incredibly effective in silhouette, and there were some fantastic shots of such; similarly, the “week two” destruction sequence was actually very well done, with the camera panning through (or perhaps alongside) a building in order to reveal the battle taking place in each “cell.” It reminded me of an animated waxworks.

When one of the vampires explains that they’re interested in taking on the zombies due to the fact that the zombies are destroying their food supply, I found her reasoning quite clever.

Also, this may be the first example of nanite/nanobot/computer-controlled zombies I’ve seen (and just the other day, I was arguing that I could probably spin the victims of the Mad Hatter from Batman into zombies). I wouldn’t count Fido, as in that movie technology is used to enslave, not create, zombies.

Apparently these medical ‘bots were intended to enter a body and eat diseased tissue, but in testing ended up eating everything, replicating, and establishing a collective consciousness. Thus, they are still transmissible via bodily fluids. The doctor who created this zombie “gray goo” is seen toiling away on a cure, which indicates to me that the zombies are not technically dead. He also makes mention of winter killing them off.

Links: Meat Market at IMDB

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