American Zombification

No, I don't mean that everyone is becoming zombies from TV or for blindly following someone...although...

Actually, I'm talking the current zombie trend in pop culture. After the discussion last week about vampires, I thought I'd go a different direction and talk about a horror "villain" that doesn't have a unified lore. As I stated last week, most (good) vampire movies have some similar tendencies and lore that define the category and movies (or shows) that deviate from this lore run the risk of gathering a huge amount of haters and I'm one of them. Zombies, on the other hand, have a different set of rules depending on the "world" they inhabit. About the only thing you can count on anymore is that destroying the brain kills the zombie. That makes them something that can be fresh and interesting all the time, but also something that divides more people than it unites.

So let's dispel a few quote/unquote myths about the zombie horror genre and show why it is such a scattered lore:

George Romero is the grandfather of all zombie movies - this isn't really true unless you insert "modern" after the word all. Zombie movies have been around since "White Zombie" in 1936 (yes, the movie that Rob Zombie got his band name from); and if your definition of a zombie (we'll get to that in a minute) is a reanimated corpse, then "Frankenstein" in 1910 had one of those, so he only linked the two together. If he had just done that with "Night of the Living Dead", it probably would have been forgotten. That's not what made it interesting. Romero's zombie movies have always had something to say. "Night" was a metaphor for race relations just as "Dawn of the Dead" was about rampant consumerism. That's what made them great, not the zombies themselves.

Zombies eat brains - have you always thought that that was kind of a staple of the genre? Well, it hasn't been. In fact, no "classic" zombie film had that in it. What started that idea was a small part in "Return of the Living Dead"in 1985 (a personal favorite) where a severely decayed zombie groans "BRAINS!" at one point which just stuck from then on as "lore".

Zombies can drown - now here's a point of contention that leads to that point of no unifying lore. You've seen it in several instances that a zombie drowns in water. How? Unless you prescribe to a certain aspect that we will get to in the next section, zombies are dead and don't breathe, so how would they drown? Several movies ("Land of the Dead") and even "Walking Dead" have shown otherwise. Lucio Fulci's "Zombii 2" even has an infamous fight scene of a zombie walking on the ocean floor and encountering (and fighting) a shark!

Zombies are the undead - here's a big sticking point with me. That's generally what I consider to be a main tenet of the genre, but really it isn't. The term zombi itself came from the Caribbean, more specifically Haiti, where people were raised from the dead by the way of voodoo to do their master's bidding. Usually the bokor (witch doctor) is said to have trapped the person's soul so they can be controlled. It is even on the law books in Haiti that you can't zombifi someone. What really happens, though, is the person is drugged into a death like coma that lasts for days and then the person is dug up only to be brainwashed into thinking they are undead. Watch "The Serpent & The Rainbow" which is an excellent movie that delves into that. So can we really say they are not zombies if it is drugs or an infection? Hence the discrepancy over "28 Days Later" being a zombie movie or not (most "purists" and even director Danny Boyle argue not). Which brings me to my last point.

Zombies are slow shambling (un)dead - this is the other sticking point with me. Purists HATE the (fairly) recent advent of the fast moving zombie. They mostly think the shambling zombie is the only way to go, which I agree with, if they are the dead coming from the ground, but the virus style just doesn't jive with me when they shamble. I think people one day waking up and us being over-run with shambling reanimated corpses is a little more than far-fetched unless the incubation time is outrageous or we're all already infected. Otherwise, transmission from person to person takes time and a shambling zombie is too easy to get away from if there isn't a horde. This is what made "28 Days Later" so terrifying. How realistic it was with speed of transmission and speed of turning combined with fast moving "zombies". And that was just "rage". I, for one, like the fast movers AND the slow shamblers, just depends on if the world they are in makes sense for that speed.

And that's all I really have to say about them. Just hope I could shed some light on zombies and how they are an ever-evolving lore that some people take just a little too seriously. LOL.

Vampires in Cinema

I've always been a big fan of vampires. I LOVE vampire movies, but I also LOATHE vampire movies. I'm really glad that the horror genre has begun to move on from them especially since mainstream started making vampire movies into these horrible, mopey teenage romance movies. Ugh. And it isn't the romance that is a problem, that's always been a part of vampires. There's a certain Gothic romance element that SHOULD be integral to the story.

So what does the right vampire story entail? Lore. The lore is really important. When I read "Dracula" in middle school (the unabridged version, btw) it entirely shaped the way I thought of vampires. Yes, there was a romantic quality to him, but there was also a vicious need that drove Dracula. The movie kind of made him more sympathetic than he really was in the book, but there was still that animalistic urge that made him want something and stop at nothing to get it. Beyond that, it laid the groundwork for what was necessary for vampires to maintain themselves (dirt from the homeland, the coffin in Lucy's case, blood, and minions), the shapes he could take (bat, wolf, and smoke) as well as what could damage them (crosses, silver, stake to the heart, beheading, roses (look it up), holy water, and fire). No sunlight to be found.

Let's discuss that last one. That little change been added in the last 100 years. Nowhere in Stoker's masterpiece is it said that vampires are damaged by sunlight. Dracula walks around in daylight and has no real effect, although it has been said that he is not as powerful. No, that part of lore was added by "Nosferatu" in 1922. And honestly, I really don't mind that. There has to be some changes from time to time in order to keep the stories fresh and new. Somewhere along the line the killing of the "master" will free the subjects was added and used to great effect in movies like "The Lost Boys" and "Fright Night (1985)" (2 of my other favorites). (SPOILER ALERT) "Dracula 2000" added that Dracula had a new back story (which was never really given in the book, just the movie version's Vlad the Impaler back story) of being Judas Iscariot which made many of the things he feared make more sense so I actually liked those changes.

What really rubs me the wrong way? The half-blood vampire stuff. The half vampire, half werewolf stuff. The sparkly, brooding, "vegetarian" vampire stuff. Or taking the Dracula story and warping it into something completely different that just uses the names (I'm staring daggers at you, "Dracula" TV show). I understand trying to move things into a new time and place since much of the Gothic style has been played to death from the '60s and '70s Hammer films, but do it right. Even with all it's faults, True Blood (or more accurately the BOOKS the show was originally based on since the show jumped the shark somewhere in season 3) actually stuck with much of the original lore with a few little twists to make it interesting. Don't bring back "Dark Shadows" and make it a farce! When they brought it back in the '90s, it was AWESOME. It was present day and it worked, not this pseudo '60s in the 2000s crap. I digress.

I just want my old school vampires back. I'm hoping this new "Dracula Untold" will maybe move in the right direction, but I doubt it. Especially since Vlad Tepes was not an inspiration for Dracula in the first place. Plus, it seems they've gone really Hollywood with it all. Ugh. If you want to see good vampires anymore, you've got to delve into the past. Seek out the movies I've mentioned above plus "Fright Night 2" and a lesser known series of movies called "Subspecies" which are really good (if not really dated now, lol). The first 2 movies of that one are great and then they decline, but still, good twists on the old formula.

Let me know if I've forgotten any of your favorites!

The Rise and Fall of the Summer Blockbuster

In the summer of 1975, "Jaws" opened and the term Blockbuster was born. Before that, there had been plenty of runaway hits that had made plenty of money, but nothing that people had continually gone back to see just for the thrill of it. There had been plenty of movies before then that had made a significant amount of money (even more than Jaws), but this was a turn in Hollywood's thinking towards making a film and marketing it. Action packed and generally more fast paced than other movies, Blockbusters are generally marketed towards a younger crowd (that, conveniently, is not in school over the summer). Budgets ballooned on the promise of a big return at the box office.

As time went on, the budgets went more towards bigger and better special effects that are way easier to market and less towards the script and plot. Thus, they began to get less intelligent to the point of most critics HATING the summer movie season more and more because the overall quality of the movies was waning. The Holidays had their own Blockbuster season as well with more family friendly fare launching during the period, just not to quite as big of a box office haul. Critics didn't hate this as much because it also coincided with the push for Academy Award films, so there was a good mix. Summers, however, with rare exception got sillier, more action bloated, and paper-thin plots until in the 2000s they just were shells of movies for marketing only.

Then the public started to get a little wiser, probably because they were thinking more with their wallets. Bigger budgeted movies were getting to be more of a gamble with mediocre openings or huge second week drop offs as people were more choosy in what they saw. This funnily corresponded with the rise of Geek culture. Suddenly, there was room for the Intelligent Blockbuster. Comic book movies started becoming popular and there was almost no such thing as a bonafide movie star anymore. People were no longer the draw. It was either the director (like Quentin Tarantino) or the actual plot that started drawing in the people.

So, now, in the last couple of years you've had much more intelligent fare doing increasingly well and the schlock that used to do so well before is an even bigger gamble for Hollywood. Christopher Nolan's movies are the new idea of a Blockbuster and Tarantino has begun to release his movies during the summer and studios are moving films around to get away from his weekend. That's pretty powerful stuff. Summer is also becoming less and less of an exclusive time to release the big movies. with the start and end of the season starting and ending earlier and later (respectively) every year. Look at this year, "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" opened in March and, honestly, there are big films almost every week for the rest of the year. Probably won't be much of a drop off until January (when all the Academy Award bait will be coming out). Within the next few years, there may not even BE a drop off in a particular month as they see that people will go see a good movie REGARDLESS of the time of year.