Zombie Movies Past And Present

The classic zombie films are the ones that really stand out and show all the dead rising with arms hanging off and have a load of characters who have to band together to survive against the zombie hordes.

It really started with one film and that was George A Romeros "Night Of The Living Dead" this kick started the zombie horror genre off as far as I could remember, it had some references towards racial tensions at the time towards the end of the film and the ones that followed in Romeros zombie trilogy and follow up zombie films are all social commentaries on society in general, and really have something to say about ourselves as humans and that the zombies are very much like ourselves.

Alot of some of the zombie films were banned in the early 80's as these were deemed to be video nasties, then later a few other films were banned to, which was damn wrong! - Some of the old classics fell into the banning by the film boards ancient classification.

But as with all films they get re-released or unbanned as the film classifications get less strict, some of the best and classic ones to resurface after the bans were lifted were italian zombie films such as Zombie Holocaust and zombie island, some dealt with voodoo zombies (Boooooo!!) and others had the brilliant zombies we know and love today.

There are of course bad zombie films that meant well but they failed to add anything good to the genre.

Shaun of the dead gave a quality recent effort to the much loved zombie genre of films and was so british in it's way of adding humour to the situations that the lead characters found themselves in.

For me this was a homage to all the other zombie horror films that came before them, you was placed in the know if you loved the past films, you knew certain cliches of the zombie premise and could see it carried on further throughout the film.

Some say it revitalized the zombie genre and brought the zombies back, others say it added something new to the genre and brought with it a much loved area of the undead that previous generations enjoyed watching at the local cinemas.

Shaun of the dead remains an instant cult classic and brings with it a sense of fun too.

It is highly recommended.

When the dawn of the dead remake came I was a little uncertain about the way zombies ran quite fast in this film, I mean they moved too fast, although this must have been to add a new edge to an old premise, the film itself is actual good but this small annoyance niggled througout.

Such films like 28 days later were the obvious influences here.

Most zombie films follow a simple formula, they introduce the characters and then they trap them in a building of some sort and they try and fend them off and fail miserably, with only a handful of survivors that are left, they go off into the sunset in the distance and then never heard of ever again in any subsequent sequels.

From shopping malls, to houses, to underground army bunkers, you name it zombies have appeared and forced our filthy living into these buildings in the past.

The original dawn of the dead film brought with it a great social commentary about us as consumers and how we take things for granted that they will always be there, but the remake steered clear of this and just updates the story slightly for just the popcorn thrills of a usual horror film.

Day of the dead was the best one of the lot out of the original romero trilogy and when the so called good guys (who were actually bad!) get ripped apart you feel like it was worth watching, the effects were some of the best seen on the zombie films, as most of the stuff was actual animal organs.

In fact, out of the Night of the Living Dead and The Dawn of the Dead, this movies effects were spot on and the classic zombie character Bub is a hoot too as it just adds more to the zombie mythology and sort of gives a sly nod to the Land of the Dead which would appear over 20 years later with zombies evolving more with using guns and other weapons more.

I always think that Day of the Dead is the best out the lot, because I seemed to like most films back in the 80's and this just made my day.