Top Ten Zombie Films Without Zombies

Zombie films have been around almost as long as any other form of horror film. Originally zombies in these movies were based on the Caribbean myths of the zombie. In these myths the zombie was a dead person reawakened by voodoo to serve the master who reanimated him. The movie White Zombie starring Dracula himself, Bela Lugosi, featured this stiff walking undead corpse.

The shambling, mindless voodoo zombie made sporadic appearances in film until a man named George Romero reinvented the genre and the zombie. It was Romero who gave the zombie his taste for human flesh and took voodoo out of the equation. George Romero may have been responsible for the single most important evolution of the zombie, but the reanimated corpse has continued to evolve.

Now zombies have advanced even past being dead. Film makers are using the zombie term to refer to any creature or group of people who attack mindlessly. Many films have “zombies” that bear little if any resemblance to Romero’s zombies or their voodoo predecessors. Some are good, some are horrible. Here is a list of my favorites.

10. Slither- An alien land on Earth with the desire to feed and mate in the horror comedy Slither. To do this it takes over the townspeople with alien slugs and turns them into mindless zombies. The zombies bear some surface similarities to Romero but that‘s about it. The alien infected zombie story has been done before in Night of the Creeps and even the classic Plan Nine From Outer Space but in these films the zombies were actually dead,

9. Warning Sign- A experimental virus escapes in an underground bunker changing everyone infected into homicidal killers. No real relation to a true zombie, the zombies here are still alive and still intelligent. They do not crave flesh but are homicidal. Predates and influenced the rage virus of 28 Days later. The main difference is that in Warning Signs we know the government created the virus. In 28 days we are lead to believe it developed naturally.

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quick update

Just a qucikie. This weekend I watched Carriers and Pontypool and hope to review both. Also purchased Thirst, Let the Right One In, and The Forsaken ( 4 bucks at walmart get em while they last)

The Crazies is a remake of the George Romero movie. The Crazies is directed by Bret Eisner and starring Timothy Oliphant and Radha Mitchell. Normally I hate remakes and, well honestly I can't see that this one will be much different than the rest of the remake crowd. However, I'm not a big fan of the original. That may seem like sacrilege to some but I have only seen it a couple of times and it just doesn't strike the same resonance as Romero's other work. Since I really like both of the stars, Radha Mitchell has never let me down and I have fond memories of Oliphant from Deadwood so I might give this a chance

David Dutton is sheriff of Ogden Marsh, a picture-perfect American town with happy, law-abiding citizens. But one night, one of them comes to a school baseball game with a loaded shotgun, ready to kill. Another man burns down his house after locking his wife and young son in a closet inside. Something is infecting the citizens of Ogden Marsh...with insanity. The few still sane find themselves trapped: Sheriff Dutton; his pregnant wife, Judy; Becca, an assistant at the medical center; and Russell, Dutton's deputy and right-hand man. Forced to band together, an ordinary night becomes a struggle for survival as they try to get out of town alive.