Zombie Style and Definitions Discussion

[Quorthon]

A comment I received from Slayrrr in the Last Seen thread sparked me to this. There are lots of styles of zombies through the years, and what I consider the "standard model" of modern zombie is something that is now just a part of a larger theme.

Here's Slayrrr's comment that originally inspired this:

Sept 28, 2009 10:34:31 GMT -5 slayrrr666 said:

And Burial Ground is simply awesome for the fact that it presents zombies they way they should be, walking dead things. I defy you to point to those things and tell me they've been dead for centuries, instead of that piece of crap work Savini did for the original Dawn. Italians always got the undead look right, while I have a hard time thinking of the US doing them right.

And my new response:


I guess I'm not surprised that you like Burial Ground, but I found the zombie effects to be just atrocious. Some of the worst looking zombies ever. In my view, the modern zombie is a recently deceased person brought back to life to feast on the innards of the living. What we have in Burial Ground I relegate more to simply old "risen" corpses. Something that is between a mummy and a regular zombie.

Burial Ground's effects really bothered me. For instance, you could see an actor's nose, painted black, protruding from the mask they were wearing through the skeletal nose-hole. That's pretty awful. Worse was seeing their eyes behind the mask as clearly closed in an attempt to mimic an open skeletal orbital. Worse than that, though, was seeing the actual actors eyes behind the mask, with no attempt whatsoever to hide them. Seeing black-painted actor's lips behind the skeletal teeth of the mask also ruined the effect.

Aside from being dressed in dirty brown or green sack-cloths, they were dull and unremarkable. Some of the masks did manage to look creative and interesting, but others were nonsensically awful. Some were clearly just smeared putty or clay that looked like a badly-crafted piece of faux-art. Like a morbid 5th grader had crafted this during his first time playing with clays and paper-mache.


Don't get me wrong, I like "risen-from-the-dead-for-revenge" kind of stories like classic 40's and 50's Tales From the Crypt (many of those stories I have copies of in reprinted comics and book collections), but there was a lot in Burial Ground I just felt failed or was, if you'll pardon the phrase here, unrealistic.

I prefer Romero-style shambling recently-deceased cannibals. In these situations, science can manage to give us an explanation for the zombies I can live with--some chemical or radiation or something has given a kind of "renewed" life to the recently dead cells of the body.

Long-dead, decayed ghouls, in my view, require a supernatural explanation. And when they're decayed skeletal corpses, there's no reason, in my view, to have them eating the flesh of living humans.

[slayrrr666]

Here's a few samples of some of my favorite Burial Ground zombies to get an idea of what Q is talking about:





Now, to me, that's what a zombie is: a long-dead corpse risen from the ground.

Compared to the crapwork of the original Dawn of the Dead:





No style, no creativity, just gray make-up on a person's face. They look terrible.

Therefore, in my best lost-four-year-old-in-the-mall voice:
I WANT MY MUMMY!!!!

[Quorthon]

As for the Italian front, Fulci's zombies are a wide cut above those in Burial Ground. Fulci combined the recently-deceased shamblers with the long-dead dusty corpses and had them all come back with voodoo. His make-up and gore effects were vastly superior to those in Burial Ground.

Like I said in the other thread, my biggest issue was the fact that they were all-too-obviously just costumes really hurt Burial Ground. Obvious actors with black make-up on their faces with a crappy mask over the front--sometimes with the actors eyes, nose, or lips clearly visible through the zombie mask.

There is an appeal in the dusty old corpses, but in my view, that appeal is pretty much completely lost in Burial Ground due to just lazy all-around filmmaking. Cheap zombies, obvious Fulci rip-offs. Absolutely terrible dialog and dubbing.

[slayrrr666]

And pretty much all of those areas mean next to nothing. I could care less about those, they're inconsequential to what I look for in films and I care more about intent in these films than actual execution. Zombie films are like that, as I know I would come down hard on most other genres for that, but the intent on these films wins out over execution.

And in most cases, I can't recognize it anyways.

[Quorthon]

I can't stand films that come off as illogical to me.

I know this might sound ridiculous when talking about zombie movies, but I prefer something that can be explained with a kind of "scientific feasibility." In my view, a kind of radiation that could jolt recently dead cells to a form of corrupted faux-life works. A body with total cellular decay risen by unnamed supernatural forces doesn't work for me.

Now, what is it you can't recognize? Quality acting or dialog? Care to elaborate?

[slayrrr666]

Both of them. I don't know what good acting is, it all looks the same to me. The only thing I care about the dialogue is explaining the plot or the rules of the film, and otherwise it tends to just wash over me. If I can stay interested in what's going on without wanting to drift my attention to other matters, I call it an entertaining film.