Joshua Hodges
Miss Marsden
English 100
December 9,2009
Zombies and You
A hand bursts through the wooden door and a drooling, stumbling, and shambling creature tears through, with a hungry look on his face. As he approaches you note the decay on his skin and the reeking odor about him. You try to run, but it’s too late, you’re in the clutches of a zombie. Zombies are a popular topic in modern culture, from George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, to more recent films that feature zombies in different forms, such as I Am Legend. But despite this popularity, there is a lot that people do not know about zombies.
To begin, we must first address the origins of zombies. The Voodoo practices of Haiti have a human like creature, that they call a zombie. It’s not the traditional zombie, as we would imagine in, but a poor mindless soul. They believe that once a person dies, they must be resurrected by a Borok, or a sorcerer. Once resurrected they can be sold as mindless slaves. Their minds are blank, they have no emotion, and live to receive orders. The only cure was to feed them salt, but until then they were harmless. Though they all seemed to have died, most received little medical attention before their death. Some have speculated that these ‘zombies’ are just people who were buried prematurely and lack of oxygen killed their brain cells. In a study on the boroks and zombies, one scientist found that boroks often use a “Zombie Powder” on their victims. While the contents of zombie powder differed throughout Haiti, they all commonly used puffer fish, marine toad, hyla tree frog, and humans remains in their brew. The consequence of this being that puffer fish have a deadly neurotoxin, marine toads produce many different toxic substances, and the hyla tree frog produces a irritating, but not deadly, liquid. In combination, this could easy harm the brain to the point where the are only able to follow orders.
Further into the history of zombies is the 1932 classic White Zombie, which was based off the 1930 play Zombie. In the movie, a women is turned into a zombie to be a love slave for some time, but the man who purchased the women regrets his actions, the borok who raised the women from the dead refused to return her to her original state and took her as his own. The husband of the now zombified women their appears with a missionary and attacks the borok, eventually freeing his wife from his grasp. This movie, at the time, was as popular as movies such as Frankenstein, The Mummy, or even the classic Dracula, movies which assisted in getting the horror film industry started.
Following White Zombie was the next wave of zombie movies, starting with Revolt of the Zombies (1936) it continued to include I Walked With a Zombie (1943), Voodoo Man (1944), and Zombies on Broadway (1945). While some of these movies moved from Haiti to other locations, they all maintained that a zombie was an unfortunate humans, as some were just described as in a trance, that had a master. It was not until 1961 with I Eat Your Skin, followed by The Plague of the Zombies (1965), that zombies started eating flesh. Though they now began eating flesh, they still had masters.
In 1968, fueled by the horrors coming out of the Vietnamese War, the beginning of modern zombie films began with horror classic Night of the Living Dead by the horror mastermind George A. Romero. Though receiving poor reviews by critics, it was widely accepted as a horror masterpiece by the public, grossing $42,000,000. ($689,716,923 in 2008 dollars) This would rank, in amount grossed world wide, right along side the modern movie Transformers, in a time were television was not as widely viewed. In the movie it is implied that radiation from a probe in the atmosphere has caused the dead to rise and hunger for human flesh. In Romero’s film meet the characters Barbra, Ben, who was scandalously played by a black male, a young couple, Tom and Judy, and the Cooper family and follow their struggle to survive in the Cooper’s home. It maintains a conflict between Harry Cooper, the father, and Ben over who is in charge in the home’s defense against the undead. Ben insists that holding the home itself is the only option, while Harry Cooper believes the cellar is best. In the climax of the movie, Ben and Harry attack one another, with Ben killing Harry in the end. After Harry is killed zombies invade the home in one large wave, killing everyone but Ben, who ironically hides in the cellar.
Romero establishes a few standards for future zombie movies. First off, zombies are undead. In the classic horror movies, zombies have died and came back to life. This is a passive happening, and all dead are due to rise again. Second, zombies shamble and stumble as their motor function are hindered by death. Thirdly, they are scared of light and fire. During the day, zombies hide in dark places and they run from fire during the night. We see this when Ben burns a chair outside the Cooper home to scare the zombies off. Forth, zombies eat flesh. In a classic zombie movie, zombies “live” to eat flesh. They have an undying hunger and will blindly throw themselves at something to get flesh. This is a staple of the movie and is see several times. Fifth, zombies may only be killed by damage to the brain. In the movie a radio broadcast is sent out saying zombies may only be killed by shots to the head or massive trauma to the head. Finally, it establishes that once you’ve been bit, you will die. The Cooper’s youngest daughter was bitten but survived and was locked in the cellars. In the climax of the movie, they find her eating Harry Cooper, her father. All of these become constants in most of the zombie movies for the following years.
Zombies began to dominate horror fiction as the ultimate enemy. It produced movies throughout the 1970’s, 1980’s, and 1990’s that included Romero’s shambling menaces such as “House of the Dead,” “Zombie Flesh Eaters,” Romero’s sequels, “Dawn of the Dead,”  and “Day of the Dead,” and several reproductions of “Night of the Living Dead.” While the horror of zombies could last through this time period, using the same style of zombie would eventually fade. The horrors of the Vietnamese War slowly faded out of our collective memory as a new generation was born. With the new generation came a new fear, HIV/AIDS. No longer were we afraid of radiation turning us all into mutated freaks, but we were afraid of a virus that could kill us. With this new fear came a change in how our horror movies were made, and as such, how zombies functioned. This fear has lived on with viruses and diseases such as scars, swine flu, anthrax, Ebola, and avian flu.
Though a viral theme is much more prevalent, those who make fear their career don’t stop there. Modern zombies are very diverse, opposed to the older zombies, almost always having radiation assumed. Some are creating films and games that involve plagues or parasites, such as the zombie game series Resident Evil. In Resident Evil they a biological weapons dealer, under the disguise of an international pharmaceutical company, creates a parasite, Las Plagas, that takes control of the person’s body. This goes back to the roots of zombies, as they often have a master. It is also often seen, more so in B-Movies, movies that are low budget and not advertised well, that black magic will be used to raise the dead. This includes Voodoo, which is sometimes used to raise zombies, but not in a Haitian form. Even more diversity is seen in how zombies now behave. Some of the questions now answered by directors and script writers are things such as, are they to shamble or be able to run? Do they have the ability to use tools, or even weapons? Is the infection reversible? How did the infection begin? How does the infection pass? Are some immune? How can you kill them? Are they afraid of anything? Are there different types of zombies? Is there mutations? All this and more must be answered, but the single most common element is that they want to eat you, and that is the universal fear behind zombies, cannibalism.
Modern culture has taken the zombie and ran with it, there are entire industries devoted to zombies. The book, video game, board game, movies, and even activities devoted to the zombie culture. The Resident Evil, House of the Dead, and Left 4 Dead series, just to name a few, have based their games series off zombies of different kinds, with a large following and fan base. While they all implement their own style of play, Resident Evil with a colorful cast, House of the Dead with light guns, which are controllers which are pointed at the screen as a gun, and Left 4 Dead 4 player co-op, they all have the common bloodthirsty zombie to kill. Max Brooks is an acclaimed author on zombies, writing such books as World War Z, and Zombie Survival Guide, which has gotten raving reviews from fans. In addition, there are many other books with zombies, Its Beginning to Look a Lot Like ZOMBIES! and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies which takes classics, such as Christmas Carols and Pride and Prejudice and adds zombies to them. We even see board games emerge, such as Zombies!! By Twilight Creations, an award winning board game which puts plays against one another in self-created zombie infected city. Zombies have even infected the world of table top games, such as All Flesh Must Be Eaten, a game which allows plays complete control over their actions in a zombified world. Some have gone as far as to create zombie simulation games and zombie based events, such as Rob Bliss’s annual Zombie Walk in Grand Rapids or David Hardwood’s zombie outbreak simulation, Zomb.
While other markets have been exploiting the cultures love for zombies, the movie market is still the dominating force. Movies like 28 Days Later have begun to challenge what the zombie culture is evolving into, even now. The Resident Evil film series, remakes of Dawn of the Dead, Dairy of the Dead, a recent Romero film, other recently zombie movies, despite this, have recreated the modern zombie into the running plagued unfortunate, while still scaring their audience. Even with all the horror assigned to zombies, we can still find humor in them in movies such as Zombieland, a well received movie following a nerd, a cowboy-like figure, and 2 sisters in their quest to find a bastion of survival in the infected land of the United States of “Zombieland.” Some people are borderline obsessed with the concept of zombies, even preparing for an actual invasion. The Zombie Squad prepares for an actual invasion by training for an invasion on the side of their job.
As now evident, zombies are a huge part of our culture. From the beginning of Haitian Zombies there has been a radical change that has turned zombies into the horror film staple they are today. From games, to books, to movies, escaping the type monster created by George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead is impossible. For now, zombies will continue to desire to eat your flesh in the creative minds of many, and still more to come.