Spring Break
Finding the right zombie for you
Kristin Hall
Issue date: 10/29/03 Section: Flash
What is a zombie? Where do they come from? What do they want?
Watching horror movies on Halloween is a great tradition to get your fright night going, and for a night devoted to the dead rising to walk the streets, zombie movies are the way to go.
But for those of you who might get confused by all the zombie movies out there and their resident monsters, here's a quick and easy guide to find the right zombie for you.
Flesh-eaters
Most of the zombies are flesh-eaters, meaning that they don't just want "brains!" They will scoop out your bright red organs and happily gnaw away if you let them. George A. Romero created the classic zombie-plague film Dawn of the Dead, in which our heroes lock themselves inside a huge abandoned shopping mall while the zombies putter and stumble about outside. A bite from a zombie will turn a person into the living dead after a few days of infection, so be prepared to shoot your friends.
Brain-eaters
This rare type of zombie is found only in Dan O'Bannon films, most notably Return of the Living Dead. According to the zombies, who have a vocabulary that extends farther than the root words "brains" and "more brains," eating brains helps to ease the pain of death. This is a tongue-in-cheek spoof on the zombie movie genre, with such unforgettable lines as, "But I don't care, darling, because I love you, and you've got to let me eat your brains!"
Zombies as a result of radiation
If you watch too many zombie movies, you will firmly believe that your unnatural death will be caused by the human race's own ignorance. In Night of the Living Dead, the prequel to Dawn, zombies are caused by radiation seeping into the graves and infecting their brains.
Zombies as a result of a virus
In probably the best zombie film in the past decade, 28 Days Later, director Danny Boyle creates an apocalyptic nightmare in which an escaped virus causes the victims to turn into violent killing creatures in a matter of seconds. The zombies are fast like junkies on adrenaline and their blood will infect the living, so the survivors have to maintain a kill or be killed attitude toward their friends.
Watching horror movies on Halloween is a great tradition to get your fright night going, and for a night devoted to the dead rising to walk the streets, zombie movies are the way to go.
But for those of you who might get confused by all the zombie movies out there and their resident monsters, here's a quick and easy guide to find the right zombie for you.
Flesh-eaters
Most of the zombies are flesh-eaters, meaning that they don't just want "brains!" They will scoop out your bright red organs and happily gnaw away if you let them. George A. Romero created the classic zombie-plague film Dawn of the Dead, in which our heroes lock themselves inside a huge abandoned shopping mall while the zombies putter and stumble about outside. A bite from a zombie will turn a person into the living dead after a few days of infection, so be prepared to shoot your friends.
Brain-eaters
This rare type of zombie is found only in Dan O'Bannon films, most notably Return of the Living Dead. According to the zombies, who have a vocabulary that extends farther than the root words "brains" and "more brains," eating brains helps to ease the pain of death. This is a tongue-in-cheek spoof on the zombie movie genre, with such unforgettable lines as, "But I don't care, darling, because I love you, and you've got to let me eat your brains!"
Zombies as a result of radiation
If you watch too many zombie movies, you will firmly believe that your unnatural death will be caused by the human race's own ignorance. In Night of the Living Dead, the prequel to Dawn, zombies are caused by radiation seeping into the graves and infecting their brains.
Zombies as a result of a virus
In probably the best zombie film in the past decade, 28 Days Later, director Danny Boyle creates an apocalyptic nightmare in which an escaped virus causes the victims to turn into violent killing creatures in a matter of seconds. The zombies are fast like junkies on adrenaline and their blood will infect the living, so the survivors have to maintain a kill or be killed attitude toward their friends.
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