Zombie Movies

February 14, 2005 12:59 PM

ZombieFilter: I have recently developed an interest in zombie movies. I'm having trouble finding a good list though; can anyone recommend some new ones I haven't seen yet? Preferably North American releases but any foreign suggestions are welcome too. [+]

Already Seen
Evil Dead
Evil Dead II
Army of Darkness

Dawn of the Dead (1978)
Dawn of the Dead (2004)
Day of the Dead
Night of the Living Dead (1968)

28 Days Later
House of the Dead
Braindead aka Dead Alive

Resident Evil
Resident Evil: Apocalypse

Planning to See
Night of the Living Dead (1990)

posted by id girl to media & arts (37 answers total)

Have you not yet seen Shaun of the Dead?

Because you must. You really must.
posted by jacquilynne at 1:00 PM on February 14, 2005

D'oh! I knew I would leave something off that list... Loved Shaun of the Dead.
posted by id girl at 1:01 PM on February 14, 2005

Fave's you didn't list
ReAnimator (1985)
Return of the Living Dead
Cemetery Man (1995 I think)
Big Zombie (1998 - from Hong Kong, pretty awesome)
Zombi (1979 - from Italy - one of the all time classics, super gory)
posted by Quartermass at 1:08 PM on February 14, 2005

You're not in the Chicago area, by any chance, are you? Because the U of C's Doc Film Society is running a zombie series this quarter on Thursday nights. Even if you're not in Chicagoland, their list of movies for the series should give you some ideas, including some pretty old-school zombie movies.
posted by Johnny Assay at 1:13 PM on February 14, 2005

Wild Zero (japanese zombie flick!)
posted by reverendX at 1:15 PM on February 14, 2005

Oh! Do see Reanimator! It's great. I haven't seen the sequels (Beyond Reanimator, Bride of Reanimator) but the creepy guy, Jeffrey Combs, was also in the surprisingly good Michael J. Fox movie The Frighteners (not zombies, but worth watching, especially as it's what Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh did directly before Lord of the Rings).
I haven't seen any of Jeffrey Combs' other movies but I'd watch things just for him, especially if he's the evil guy.
posted by librarina at 1:20 PM on February 14, 2005

Haven't seen it yet, but Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things is in my Netflix queue. Gets my vote on title alone.
posted by Otis at 1:20 PM on February 14, 2005

The Serpent and the Rainbow -- WARNING! DANGER WILL ROBINSON! A relatively serious movie about Haitian zombies, not flesh-eating undead zombies.
Zombie Nightmare With soundtrack by Motorhead! Best seen in the MST3K version... shut up and eat your ice cream. Has Adam West and Tia Carrere.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 1:24 PM on February 14, 2005

This is new in the "not actually released yet" sense of the word new, but I caught a showing at Slamdance last month and really liked it. Worth checking out when it does get distribution, I think: Zombie Honeymoon.
posted by Stacey at 1:31 PM on February 14, 2005

White Zombie.
posted by inksyndicate at 1:32 PM on February 14, 2005

Versus! Japanese zombies vs. yakuza!
posted by GeekAnimator at 1:34 PM on February 14, 2005

I also highly recommend Re-Animator.

Note: Avoid the heavily edited 86 minute R rated version. Luckily, both DVD releases of this film are unrated.
posted by njm at 1:42 PM on February 14, 2005

Versus was nuts, a late night foggy head must see, if only for the loony dubbing and ultraviolence and fashion.

Night of the Comet is an ill New Wave Apocalo/Zombie masterpiece, sorta a sideways move zombie traditionwise, but well worth it.

I love Zombie movies. And zombie jokes: What did the zombie statistician say to the zombie chemical engineer?


A: Brains, BRAINS!!
posted by Divine_Wino at 1:42 PM on February 14, 2005

Bio-Zombie

A large list of zombie movies.
posted by cmonkey at 1:57 PM on February 14, 2005

A friend just showed me:
NIGHT OF THE DAY OF THE DAWN OF THE SON OF THE BRIDE OF THE RETURN OF THE REVENGE OF THE TERROR OF THE ATTACK OF THE EVIL, MUTANT ALIEN, FLESH-EATING HELLBOUND CRAWLING ZOMBIFIED LIVING-DEAD
PART II IN SHOCKING 2-D
posted by dirtylittlemonkey at 2:08 PM on February 14, 2005

Not exactally the undead or North American, but Peter Jackson's Bad Taste may offer what you need. When's the all-zombie film festival?
posted by glibhamdreck at 2:08 PM on February 14, 2005

Zombierama is the best zombie movie resource on the net.
posted by goatdog at 2:09 PM on February 14, 2005

Doc Films led us astray, though, johnny assay. There wasn't a single damn zombie in The Dead Are Alive, which they showed a couple of weeks ago. For shame!
posted by goatdog at 2:11 PM on February 14, 2005

Funny timing here--Chip Gubera, the son of one of my coworkers, just released a small budget independent film, Song of the Dead, a "zombie Musical-Horror film ... complete with sexy dancing zombies and a rock opera score." It just premiered in Columbia Missouri last weekend.
posted by LarryC at 2:57 PM on February 14, 2005

Another low budget indie: Enter Zombie King (a.k.a. "Zombie Beach Party"). I can honestly say it's the best Canadian zombie movie featuring masked wrestlers I've ever seen.
posted by JoanArkham at 3:02 PM on February 14, 2005

While Googling for the comic (which is not what you aksed for but is still highly recommended) "The Walking Dead", I did find AllThingsZombie.com
posted by yerfatma at 3:19 PM on February 14, 2005

Zombie Zombie Zombie ...
posted by CrunchyFrog at 3:27 PM on February 14, 2005

"Deathdream" isn't strictly a zombie film, but the main character seems to be pretty much turning into one over the course of the movie. It's pretty cool, too, in a depressing sort of way.
posted by ralphyk at 3:33 PM on February 14, 2005

Not exactally the undead or North American, but Peter Jackson's Bad Taste may offer what you need.

Dead Alive (aka Braindead) is a follow up of sorts that's actually about zombies. It's also an hour and a half of gore soaked mirth that I would heartily recommend to anyone with even a passing interest in the genre. Keep in mind that there are (at least) two cuts, and only the unrated version will do.
posted by moift at 3:40 PM on February 14, 2005

id girl, do you know what the appeal of zombie movies is for you? Is it the undead aspect, the contagion, the mass mindless hordes going after the living, or what? Depending on exactly what angle you're coming from, you might also appreciate The Omega Man, or even any of the Invasion of the Body Snatchers movies (at least the first two). Possibly also The Stuff.

The Return of the Living Dead, as mentioned by Quartermass, and its sequels are, what, tangential to the Romero movies, and fun in their own right, if occasionally (deliberately) goofy. Their contribution to the overall mythos is the whole "Brains! Brains!" thing.

Finally, if you're really into this stuff, there are a number of zombieverse anthologies available as well. I really enjoyed "Less Than Zombie," a now-outdated parody of Bret Easton Ellis' writing style and subject matter....
posted by kimota at 3:44 PM on February 14, 2005

An early Tsui Hark film, the hilariously and accurately titled We Are Going to Eat You, is a bit hard to find, but well worth the search. Great stuff.
posted by Dr. Wu at 3:52 PM on February 14, 2005

Wow, thanks for the suggestions! I will be busy for quite a while tracking all these down.

kimota, I'm not entirely sure what it is about zombie movies: the camp, the gore, the inevitably cheesy soundtrack, the ironic appeal of humanity dying at the hands of our own dead... there's just something about zombies. Plus I've always had a fascination with apocalyptic movies/books, so the zombie thing is kind of an outgrowth of that, too.
posted by id girl at 4:14 PM on February 14, 2005

Er....Frankenhooker?
Not quite zombie, but I claim a safety with the reanimator references.
posted by nj_subgenius at 4:56 PM on February 14, 2005

Return of the Living Dead is a favorite of mine.
posted by zardoz at 5:37 PM on February 14, 2005

I insist that Pirates of the Carribean is a zombie movie.

Also, The Last Man on Earth, starring Vincent Price, is an earlier, grimmer, and I think better version, of Richard Matheson's I Am Legend, which was subsequently made into The Omega Man.
posted by SPrintF at 5:49 PM on February 14, 2005

The gore-soaked mirth of Dead Alive, yesyesyes. The bloodshed and story are hilariously over the top; rats desert slave ship, rape tree monkeys, offspring bite humans, create zombies. Now *that's* a story. The movie gleefully rips into babies, mothers, religion, whatever. Here's a short clip of the kung fu vicar kicking zombie ass in a cemetary, from a page with sound clips and stills. Rat-monkey zombie babies, yum.
posted by mediareport at 10:28 PM on February 14, 2005

Damn, I've got to stop digging around after posting. Here's a great page full of Dead Alive clips. This one is a perfect introduction to Jackson's style of goofball gore; it feels so wrong to laugh at a guy getting the meat torn off his legs, but I'll be damned if I can stop. And that's not even the worst of it.
posted by mediareport at 10:46 PM on February 14, 2005

Almost-but-not-quite-a-zombie-film: Warning Sign.
posted by Token Meme at 11:17 PM on February 14, 2005

If you include golem/Frankenstein movies in the zombie canon, then May eventually gets there, in its own squishy way.
posted by NortonDC at 1:13 AM on February 15, 2005

Zombie Flesh Eaters is a great, but disturbing example, with a kick-ass underwater zombie / shark fight, and some particularly grisly special effects.

I'd also seriously second the recommendation of Cemetary Man (also known as Delamorte Delamore), which is a charming, spooky, entirely strange - almost fairy-tale like - Italian flick with Rupert Everett cast in the lead (in a similar way to Clint Eastwood in spaghetti westerns, everyone else is Italian, and dubbed into English). It's one of my favourite films of any genre.

On a similar tangent, Psychomania is worth watching if you think you might enjoy the odd, fairy-tale-ish side of things. It's a bizarre cross between a biker flick and Hammer film with a liberal dose of Carry On (it's British), and stars Beryl Reid. Lovely movie - very odd though, and not very scary.
posted by bifter at 2:19 AM on February 15, 2005

Comedies are underrepresented here, but perhaps because many are very, very bad. Don't watch Ed and his dead mother unless you're a completist.

Now, My boyfriend's back gets a bad rap but I think it's worth watching. It's an earlier love-story-with-zombies (well, one) -in-it but as an exploration of ow ordinary people approach the undead it's very unique.
posted by codger at 7:19 AM on February 15, 2005

I second Quartermass. After watching a lot of them, Cemetary Man is the best zombie movie there is. The best.
posted by koeselitz at 4:37 PM on February 15, 2005