Zombie Jamboree

Submitted by Donna S. on Thu, 10/27/2011 - 1:27pm

Wow!  When did that happen?! 

When did zombies become the number one threat to humanity in horror movies and TV?
 


 
In the old days of movies, zombies were simply animated corpses, doing the will of some evil person.  Or sometimes they were living people under a spell.  Rather like supernatural puppets.  Then they became sort of a joke, in movies like King of the Zombies and Zombies on Broadway.  By the 1950s there was even a silly song titled Zombie Jamboree, recorded by various artists, from The Kingston Trio to Harry Belafonte  to Rockapella  to Harry Nilsson.

Then in 1968, George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead gave us the version of zombies we now know best: the post-apocalyptic, mindless, flesh-eating undead.  And a new sub-genre of horror was born.  Now zombies aren’t under anyone’s spell.  Now they’re ravenous creatures, who literally want to have us for dinner.
 
And the idea doesn’t stop with films and TV.  Nope.  Zombies have become part of popular literature.  Which in turn, of course, becomes part of film and TV, with upcoming movie versions of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, World War Z, and the current television series The Walking Dead.  There are even humorous books and studies of the genre.

So with Halloween in mind, check out some of the zombies in our collection.  There’s a little something for –

Shall I say it?
 
Yeah, why not.

"There’s something for every appetite..."
 

And for a little light reading…

Happy Halloween!