Love 'em or hate 'em, there are loads of zombie movies just waiting to be unearthed.
For all you undead fans out there here is a list of Zombie films I've so far sat through, complete with a taster from YouTube.
Due to copyright issues, the YouTube site sometimes deletes the clips. So... sorry for any YouTube 'this clip is no longer available' messages. If you GeekMail me with any deletions I will update the entry with an alternate clip.
Recently I have begun updating the list with ratings out of ten:
Four survivors of the expanding zombie apocalypse take refuge in an abandoned shopping mall following a horrific SWAT evacuation of an apartment complex. Taking stock of their surroundings, they arm themselves, lock down the mall, and destroy the zombies inside so they can eke out a living - at least for a while. Tensions begin to build as months go on, however, when they come to realize that they've fallen prey to consumerism. Soon afterwards, they have even heavier problems to worry about, as a large gang of bikers discovers the mall and invades it, ruining the survivors' best-laid plans and forcing them to fight off both lethal bandits and flesh-eating zombies.
The best film in the world. My favourite since 1979. The film that got me into zombie movies and the whole genre.
A Zombie is found aboard a boat off the New York coast which belongs to a famous scientist. Peter West, a journalist, travels to the Antilles with Ann, the daughter of the scientist. On the way, they meet with with Brian, an ethnologist, and Susan. When they arrive at Matul Island they find Dr. Menard, and discover a terrifying diease which is turning the Islanders into horrifying Zombies which devour human flesh and seem indestructible
One of my alltime fave's, Lucio Fulci at his peak. You can almost smell this film if you watch it in high summer. The music by fabio Frizzi is amazing.
While the Shark v Zombie scene and the ...shudder... eyeball scene were crazy, I didn't like this one take much when I saw it however long ago. Perhaps I should give it a second chance
Chaos descends upon the world as the brains of the recently deceased become inexplicably reanimated, causing the dead to rise and feed on human flesh. Speculation rests on a radiation-covered NASA satellite returning from Venus, but it only remains a speculation. Anyone who dies during the crisis of causes unrelated to brain trauma will return as a flesh-eating zombie, including anyone who has been bitten by a zombie. The only way to destroy the zombies is to destroy the brain. As the catastrophe unfolds, a young woman visiting her father's grave takes refuge in a nearby farmhouse, where she is met by a man who protects her and barricades them inside. They both later discover people hiding in the basement, and they each attempt to cope with the situation. Their only hope rests on getting some gasoline from a nearby pump into a truck that is running on empty, but this requires braving the hordes of ravenous walking corpses outside. When they finally put their plans into action, panic and personal tensions only add to the terror as they try to survive.
The zombies can actually talk, but generally just shout "Braaiiiins!!!" in a gravelly voice.
This is the only zed film out of the 'hundred plus' or so that I've seen where they only eat brains...
It makes you think why so many people out there believe that brains are a zombies staple diet.... I guess those so called zombie fans must've only ever seen this one comedy
The transfer of this great movie from VHS to DVD was awful. They cut some music out of the DVD release due to copyright issues, which disappoints because I always thought the music was one of the most effective aspects of the movie.
Danny Boyle and Alex Garlands end-of-the-world fable, 28 Days Later.
An excellent film misconstrued by the media as a zombie flick. Boyle and Garland never set out to make a zombie film per se. They drew instead on John Wyndham's Day of the Triffids, as well as Matheson and Romero's work, to fashion a new strain of survival horror, featuring a London beset by rabid propagators of a virus known as "rage".
Though technically these creatures are not zombies, the overall effect is similiar. The best Zombie movie in recent years, I think! Very gritty and showing great shots of a deserted London. The sequel though, 28 Weeks Later, does not stand up to this brillant movie.
Yakuza, Zombies, Swords, Knives, Guns, Martial Arts, Yakuza Zombies. Throw in a liberal dose of The Matrix and blend it all together until smooth. Mwah! sensory overload.
'Ultimate Versus' crams in at least another 5-6 minutes of action.
A hotel in Louisiana stands on one of the seven entrances to hell, which eventually opens up and provides the house with a horde of unwelcome zombie guests.
Worth watching. Even if only for the zombie sequence in the hospital.
Also features a 20 shot revolver which is loaded up by pushing bullets down the end of the barrel? Shurely shome mishtake.
An underground complex (supposedly a missile silo) is home to a few surviving scientists and threatening military types who constantly bicker, as the ghouls gather on the surface.
The military want to blow the zombies away, whilst the boffins are trying to find a way to cure the disease. Guess who gets their way!
An Italian Zombie movie which is blessed with the sort of dubbing that leaves characters' mouths flapping like stranded fish while their dialogue attempts to follow.
The storyline depicts a world taken over by the glassy-eyed creatures, who like to amble up to people and take huge bites out of them while the soundtrack goes potty with unsynchronised slurping noises.
Rips off DOTD's Goblin soundtrack and uses stock footage from wildlife programs. Still I like this one a lot.
If you ever get to see the uncut version, watch for the scene where the girl gets her eyeballs pulled out through her mouth!
The living dead now have an aversion to mirrors, and will only attack anyone who shows fear...
Somehow I don't think the director did his homework on zombies. One gets shot in the thigh by a bow & arrow and dies. Another gets a steam iron slammed into its brains and doesn't bat an eyelid.
There's also a zombie who looks uncannily like David Bowie.
In Buffalora cemetery the dead rise like clockwork after 8 days.
Francesco Dellamorte and his grotesquely bald and childlike assistant Gnaghi are actually employed to keep the inhabitants of the cemetery in their place, by shooting the 'Returners' through the noggin and sending them back to their graves.
Dellamorte has a series of love affairs which all end in a ghastly fashion, and eventually he goes on a murder spree, killing the living for a change.
I would have to say that this was one of my all time favs! I have Hot Fuzz as well but the group that made them created this movie with so much more power! This was just a great movie! Hands down!
"Sorry Shaun..." Showcasing some of the funniest actors in the world today. I just about crack a rib laughing at Simon Pegg 'going through the motions' the morning before and then the morning of the disaster.
Mother's boy Tim sneaks off to meet his girlfriend at the zoo, unaware that he is being shadowed by his overprotective jealous mum. The old bird pays for her nosiness when she is bitten by a Sumatran Rat Monkey, which gradually turns her into a rabid zombie with disgusting table manners.
Tim looks after his infected mother, and the other folk she has infected, until his uncle turns up for a party. Soon the entire guest list is infected and Tim has to bring out the lawnmower of death to get things under control again.
A bearded antiques dealer gets the blame for a series of cannibalistic murders because of his "hippy" looks. But we know they were caused by corpses re-animated by a new government pest control device that emits sonic waves.
A very eerie film that has a great gory climax in which the zombies take over a hospital and scoff most of the patients.
The Cemetery scene was partially shot in Hathersage, Derbyshire which I have visited. The church is a genuine tourist attraction because it's supposedly the location of Little John's grave (for anyone who believes all that Robin Hood crap). Of course, we all know it's really the emerging point of the zombified Guthrie The Loony.
I've also visited the now derelict Hospital where some scenes were filmed. Thankfully The living dead were not to be seen, although there was a living tramp in residence. EEEEEK!!!!!!
The Knights Templar are an evil cult of inquisitors who magically spring forth from their graves seven centuries after having been executed for their misdeeds. The crows had pecked their eyes out on the hangman's gibbet, so they must locate their victims by the sound of their terrified screams.
The climax is drawn out way beyond belief... and you thought Zombies moved slowly. I fast forwarded this on picture search at x16 speed. Even then they were barely up to shuffling speed!
Ian McCulloch returns (fresh from his starring role in Zombie Flesheaters) to battle more greedy ghouls, as the leader of an expedition to a remote tropical island where the mad doctor has been experimenting on the natives and succeeded in creating a race of brain-transplanted zombies.
It all ends in a battle of Cannibals vs Zombies.
Someone falls from a window and the 'plastic' arm flies out of the sleeve and off screen. It doesn't get much better than this!!!!
A gang of college kids holidaying in a remote rural shanty are possessed by demons that come out of the woods and turn them into bloodlusting zombies. The only way the others can get rid of them is to chop them up into tiny pieces - and then the pieces keep twitching!
Gory as hell and made on a shoestring budget. Anyone for rice pudding?
Herbert West is testing out a serum he has devised that will bring dead bodies back to screaming, kicking life. He recruits a fellow medical student and his girlfriend to help him with his experiments, but things get out of hand pretty quickly.
Filmed four times. Once as 'The Last Man On Earth' with Vincent Price, then with Chuck Heston as 'The Omega Man'. A third remake with Will Smith, and then another instalment called 'I Am Omega' with Mark Dascoscas.
Neither of them do justice to the book. These are not zombies but vampires and probably shouldn't even be included on this list. But if you watch the Vincent Price version you can see where George A. Romero got his idea for NOTLD from.
You can watch 'Vincent Price as 'The Last Man on Earth' in its entirety here.
I've got a real soft spot for the Omega Man, although not strictly Zombies, the Family's haunting chant of 'Nevilllllllllllllllle' still remain vividly in my mind. Ron Grainer's (of Doctor Who fame) score is hauntingly memorable. Of course there is Chuck and loads of guns...
You are so right that none of the films are even close to Richard Matheson's original novel. Vincent Price's Last Man on Earth is probably the closest in tone to the novel.
Although I have seen a few of the milder/more mainstream films in this list, I am not what you would classify as a huge 'Zombie Fan'.
I only just watched the original Night of the Living Dead for the first time a couple of weeks ago, and I thought it was terrific. I think the sense of futility, and claustrophobia within the characters trapped in the house was incredibly well played.
The thing that really got me was toward the end when the Zs finally make it into the house, and it's not the speed (slow shamble) or savagery (slow munching) that is so intimidating, it's the sheer volume of dead flesh and mindless persistence in their behaviour that is truly frightening. If that's what Romero was trying to get across he delivered it in truckloads.
IMHO it's the terror that makes for a good horror film, not how many different ways you can disgustingly spray body parts across the screen.
Stephen King once said "If I can't scare you, I'll gross you out". For my money, if you can't scare me, you're doing it wrong...
Still waiting on the Max Brooks film, or rather the film based on his book. High hopes waiting to be dashed! Should be 'proper' zombies instead of the post-28 Days Later 'super zombies', and no stupid 'Braaaains' dialogue pleeease. Incidently, 28 Days Later is not a zombie film, the 'infected' are still alive. Even Danny Boyle has pointed this out in several interviews.
Still waiting on the Max Brooks film, or rather the film based on his book. High hopes waiting to be dashed! Should be 'proper' zombies instead of the post-28 Days Later 'super zombies', and no stupid 'Braaaains' dialogue pleeease. Incidently, 28 Days Later is not a zombie film, the 'infected' are still alive. Even Danny Boyle has pointed this out in several interviews.
Re: 28 Days Later
zombiegod wrote:
An excellent film misconstrued by the media as a zombie flick
I watched a filming sequence for WWZ the other night:
Posted Mon Nov 12, 2007 9:45 pm
British comedy genius. One of my all time favs. 
