A Field Guide to Zombies

Zombies: hordes of the living dead. Since their origins in Haitian folklore, the phenomenon has taken on a life (or death?) of its own. While early zombie films like White Zombie were true to the Voodoo formula, zombies achieved widespread popularity as a metaphor for herd behaviour.


Night of the Living Dead, the film that launched the zombie craze.

This is exactly how the legendary George A. Romero orchestrated it with his Night of the Living Dead. Lately, zombie films have become virtually devoid of metaphor – a characteristic lamented by Romero. These films merely postulate a zombie apocalypse at some point in the future, without any social commentary. Zombie films have become nothing but mindless entertainment, albeit with an awful lot of brains.

I Walked With A Zombie

The word zombie has its roots in various languages. The most likely origin is the Kongo word nzambi, meaning the spirit of a dead person. Another candidate is zonbi, a word of Bantu origin, which means a person brought back from the dead without its own free will.

Although zombies were originally the result of Voodoo, most Hollywood films downplay this aspect and highlight a chemical cause of zombies instead.

The Zombie Stomp

In Voodoo, a bokor (Voodoo sorcerer) may revive a dead person, or zombi. This zombi is then a slave to the bokor. Although this might sound too good to be true, bokor actually do this with tetrodoxin, a powerful neurotoxin. Bokor traditionally find tetrodoxin in pufferfish.


Datura, a plant used to maintain the catatonic zombie state. Don't try this at home, kids!

Bokor create zombies with two powders. The first, coup de poudre, consisting mostly of tetrodoxin, creates a near death state in a victim. The second powder contains mainly dissociative drugs which create the catatonic zombie state. Datura is an example of a plant containing these dissociative chemicals (atropine, scopolamine, and hyoscyamine).

Zombie In My Veins

Perhaps due to the religious overtones of Voodoo, Hollywood decided to avoid any occult connotations with zombies. While some early zombie films like Plague of the Zombies still used this traditional Voodoo link, biochemical zombies soon upstaged the occult zombies.

With biochemical zombies, the government is usually somehow responsible for the outbreak. A biochemical zombie plague inevitably results in zombie apocalypse, or at least the impending doom of such an apocalypse. Films of this nature include Return of the Living Dead 3 and 28 Days Later.

Lost Zombies: A Community Generated Zombie Documentary

This a really interesting zombie project. Community generated projects seem to be the future of film.

Find more videos like this on Lost Zombies


Our goal at Lost Zombies is to gather definitive proof that zombies are real and to compile that proof into a feature length documentary film. We are asking the general public to assist us by submitting any proof of zombies they may have. We believe as a community we can educate the world’s population of the reality of zombies and the potential, if not imminent, zombie apocalypse.

Suggested Links

• Internet dating of the undead. Features zombie Eileen, a woman after my own heart. And after my own brains too.


• How stuff works page on zombies. It goes into a fair amount of detail.


• Lost Zombies, a community generated zombie project.


• Wikipedia page on datura, the plant responsible for producring a zombie state.


• Wikipedia page on Doctor Wade Davis. Dr Davis is a noted anthropologist who studied zombification in Haiti.

Back From the Dead and Hungry For More: Return of the Living Dead 3 Review

Conclusion

Zombies, lots of gore and buckets of blood. This is a terrible horror film, but I happen to like terrible horror movies, especially when they contain zombies, lots of gore and buckets of blood.

Plot

You mean you need a plot when you have zombies, lots of gore and buckets of blood? All you need is zealous observation of my ten commandments of horror.

Review

Naturally, an outbreak of zombies means we have to get the military to nuke them. In order to gather all the zombies at an appropriate place for their genocide, you need serious zombie-human diplomacy skills. It's not always as simple as letting them run mindlessly after fireworks or after a little girl in a red hood.

Being a conflict catalyst myself, I don't know much about resolving conflict. I googled a bit and found a helpful guide from mister Jim Murdoch, named the Five Finger Rule for Conflict.

• Rule 1: Take a hike


• Rule 2: Remember that when you point to accuse someone that 3 fingers are pointing back.


• Rule 3: Show no aggression.


• Rule 4: Remember the love bond.


• Rule 5: Don’t fight over little things.

The Five Finger Rules for Resolving Zombie Conflict

These rules are adapted and designed to gain a strategic advantage over zombies. These rules are not helpful when trying to resolve inner conflict, because

• you can't take a hike from yourself


• when you point one finger at yourself, three are pointing away


• you are already angry with yourself


• loving yourself results in hairy palms and god killing a kitten


• inner conflict often results from big things

Nevertheless, when a zombie holocaust is desired the five finger rules are suitable to resolve conflict. These rules sometimes work with metaphorical zombies like Pro-Life supporters and religious zealots too. No, you can't lead them to a genocide. Politicians need their votes.

Rule 1. The Thumb: Take a hike.

Our heroes Curt Reynolds (J. Trevor Edmond) and Julie Walker (Melinda Clark) break the first rule of zombie-human diplomacy and opt to take a bike instead. Curt's father works at a military facility where they experiment with 2-4-5 Trioxin gas. This gas brings people back from the dead. And it isn't even Easter!

Curiously, 2-4-5 Trioxin is originally designed to be a marijuana defoliant. The premise of 2-4-5 Trioxin is based on 2,4,5-trichlorophenoxyacetic acid (Common name: Trioxone), which is also a defoliant. This would make the structure of 2,4,5 Trioxin more or less accurate and its name slightly better than complete thumb suck.

2,4,5-trichlorophenoxyacetic acid is better known as Agent Orange. Agent Orange is unlikely to catch on as a recreational drug.

Rule 2. The Pointer: Remember that when you point to accuse someone that 3 fingers are pointing back.

Curt and Julie decide to break into the military facility to see if what Curt's dad does for a living merits his long hours away from home and his binge drinking. Curt and Julie are miraculously not spotted while breaking into a military complex with seriously tight security. The G-men must be adverse to conflict. They should have a long, hard talk with their guidance counsellors.

Rule 3. Middle Finger: Show no aggression.

Once inside the military complex, Curt and Julie witness how a corpse gets reanimated. The zombie shows lots of aggression, which is dealt with by means of a hi-tech badminton weapon. Except the gaurds shot like little girls and the zombie gets animate again. He gets up, boogies and mauls half of the girlie guards. Curt and Julie get aroused after seeing this corpse get up and boogie.



The first and worst looking zombie in this horror movie. The rest of the zombies look much better - especially Julie!

The sub-text here is that if you show aggression, your ass would be artillery food, whereas if you don't show aggression, you get to do the nasty awkwardly while still wearing your underwear. Yes, Curt and Julie think Jockey is luxurious birth control. Or maybe they intended to use 2-4-5 Trioxin as a sort of twisted birth control? Corpse boogie kink, I like it.

Rule 4. Ring Finger: Remember the love bond.

Despite Rule 3, Curt and Julie show aggression while riding Curt's bike. Julie gets killed in the following accident. Curt remembers the love bond and reanimates Julie's corpse with 2-4-5 Trioxin at the military base so they can do the nasty again, this time without constrictive underwear. Or her pulse. Necrophiliac kink, I like it.

Rule 5. Little Finger: Don’t fight over little things.

Don't pet the sweaty things, don't sweat the petty things. Petty things, like the fact that your girlfriend now resembles a zombie who desperately wants to maul people and eat their brains.

Petty things, like the fact that this newly cultivated hobby is not just a bad case of PMS, but your girlfriend actually is a zombie who needs to eat brains in order to stay alive.

Petty things, like the death of illegal immigrants, who die at the hands of your merciless girlfriend in her insatiable thirst for fresh brains and this makes it really hard for you to adhere to Rule 4 - Remember the love bond.

Petty things, like the fact that you upset a few industrial size containers of 2-4-5 Trioxin at your dad's work and you are likely to be grounded for a very, very long time if giving in to your raging teenage hormones doesn't render the entire country into zombies. In fact, your dad is likely to beat you so hard you won't remember anything for a couple of days thanks to mild traumatic brain injury.

But don't worry, a concussion is daddy's way of telling you he is remembering Rule 4 - Remember the love bond.

Zombies, lots of gore from the goremeister Brian Yuzna (who also did Faust: Love of the Damned and who also produced fellow goremeister Stuart Gordon's Dagon) and buckets of blood!

Director

Brian Yuzna

Cast

Jill Andre, Melinda Clark, J. Trevor Edmond, Kent McCord, Basil Wallace.

Rating

Oops, I developed a 2-4-5 Trioxin habit. My bad...