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End Times… All the
Time
The problem with being a zombie fighter is that the world is
always ending. Well, that and the smell of reanimated rotting corpses—no one ever talks
about it, but a planet of decomposed bodies walking around…phew,
nasty.
Here’s what my itinerary looks like any given
day:
- Little touch of apocalypse….try to
prevent
- Determine mysterious cause of zombie plague….supernatural, biological,
alien, or grocery clerk Joey Fong (he would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t
for me and that meddling pup).
- Wash blood and guts out of leather
pants
Zombie origins have always been about as diverse as their metaphorical
significance and about as socially reflective (Mr. Fong notwithstanding), but their
outcomes always mean one thing—the end. The evolutionary history of the genre begins with
the mummy—an oatmeal covered, toilet paper wrapped, curse-driven fiend that dragged its
undead body into collective imaginations after archeologist Howard Carter discovered the
tomb of King Tut. This historically significant find was greeted with superstitious
legends that circulated faster than artifacts on a museum circuit and quickly found their
way onto the silver screen.
This supernatural basis spilled into the
mystique and misunderstandings around the Voodoo religion of Haiti, and it wasn’t until
Romero and Russo tag-teamed the undead genre that the culprit shifted. By the time
Night of the Living Dead rolled into theaters, the space race had everyone’s eyes
on the skies. This was combined with the Vietnam-era distrust of all things
government.
Today, Anthrax, AIDS, and the age of bio-terrorism have left
their mark on the genre. From the outbreak monkeys of 28 Days Later (see my review) to the
corporate engineered virus of Resident Evil—the theme covers the genre spectrum
from visionary artistry to utter cheesiness, and it doesn’t seem to be fading out any
time soon.
The sweeping saga of semi-sequels that stumbled from
NOTLD presents an array of alternate dimensions set in motion by the living dead
lore. While the full history is probably only of interest to dead heads of the zombie
variety and fans of intellectual property law, it’s still worth a note. The divergent
franchise of founders Romero (Dawn / Day) and Russo (the Return
franchise) perpetuated the mythos from its small-town origins.
Where
Romero left his origins unanswered and focused on a world of zombies run amuck, Russo
stuck them in specimen jars and made the military culpable, the zombies unstoppable, and
the origins biomedical. Interestingly, Lucio Fulci’s Zombi 2 is actually a sequel
to the Italian release of Dawn (released as Zombi) owing little more than
its title and Romero’s European success to the project. After letting his ROTLD
series get away from him—with two dramatically different sequels—Russo returned to the
concept to make an embarrassing reprise. This time around, he had secured the rights via
the anniversary re-release of NOTLD—and rather than cast allusion to the original,
he attempted a full-on sequel. Children of the Living Dead was the direct-to-video
result of that experiment (gone horribly awry).
Four films primed for
release will take the mythos even further—two of them will be covered here, and none of
them are Children of the Living Dead 2.
Day of the Dead:
Contagium
From the combination of zombie lore and copyright lapse
emerges a fifth divergence in the mythos. The new Day sounds like Girl,
Interrupted with zombies, featuring a mentally ill Scooby gang set to figure out the
mysterious origins of a zombie plague (that dates back to none other than NOTLD)
while exposing a military cover-up and preventing end times. Nothing says therapeutic
recovery like zombie fighting—talk about radical treatment
models!
Taking it in the gut:
Day of the Dead:
Contagium promises to be an exploration of mental illness and socio-political
commentary combined (while also trying to infuse "…all known (zombie) lore…" together)—an
incredibly ambitious feat for any film, especially a direct-to-video release. In fact, it
might be too ambitious. With disturbed teens being a staple of horror, mental
institutions being standard fare for such flicks, and generic military industrial bad
guys orchestrating generic conspiratorial government cover-ups, it seems unlikely it will
offer anything new. In the wake of a worse-than-Watergate political quagmire (a
pre-emptive strike and horribly violent occupation based on fabrications and outright
lies), however, even the most trite pop cultural treatment of the theme can manufacture
awareness.
Return of the Living Dead 4:
Necropolis
ROTLD 4 features a group of teens pit against an
evil corporation that’s responsible for zombie manufacturing. Hey, wait a second…group of
teens, military industrial corporation, conspiracy, zombies? Why does this sound
familiar? Well, here the toxic gas at the center of the events can be traced to Cold War
era weaponry, and the events that were featured in NOTLD… oh, never
mind.
Taking it in the gut:
While I’m skeptical of
any film that gets hyped on what takes place behind the scenes rather than on content,
ROTLD 4 has a buzz that’s central to its theme. Nothing says end times like an old
fashioned nuclear meltdown, and nothing says meltdown like the Chernobyl Ukrainian power
plant disaster of 1986. ROTLD 4 is the first non-documentary American film to have
access to the site. Its opening scene uses not only the setting but also a fully-charged,
pull-no-punches implicit laden metaphor tied up in all of our impressions of the event.
I was nine-ish when the disaster occurred, and I clearly remember my mom
trying to explain nuclear winter, radioactive fallout, and the obliteration of all life
on earth through hysterical tears. I was the only kid in my third grade class who read
Greenpeace newsletters, obsessed about ecological devastation and developed an ulcer—all
this before Mad
Max taught me how to be post-Apocalyptic cool.
And while I’m even
more skeptical of two sequels released back-to-back (ROTLD 5 is slated immediately
after Necropolis), its use of post Cold War American bio weaponry speaks to our
society’s current fears.
Looking for more Notes of a Zombie
Fighter? Be sure to check out Part 1.
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