Best zombie movies

Started by Ghostboy, June 17, 2003, 01:43:35 AM

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Find Your Magali

If you like zombie movies and are interested in their evolution, check out the movie that is currently my avatar: The Last Man on Earth, starring the brilliant Vincent Price

Technically, it's a vampire movie, based on Richard Matheson's amazing "I Am Legend." But it feels more like a zombie movie, and you can see the seeds of Romero's original Night of the Living Dead germinate in this creepy flick.

Best yet, there's a fairly nice DVD version of the film available at amazon.com, for a ridiculously low price -- $5.98. Just be sure to get the Madacy Entertainment version.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0000897C9/qid=1066837068/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-7892547-0627211?v=glance&s=dvd

modage


Title: Dawn of the Dead
Released: 9th March 2004
SRP: $19.98

Further Details
We now have the artwork for the special edition release of Dawn of the Dead which stars David Emge and Ken Foree. The disc will be available to own from the 9th March for around $19.98. The film will be presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen along with both Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS tracks. Extras will be headlined by an audio commentary with Writer-Director George A. Romero, Special Makeup Effects Artist Tom Savini, and Assistant Director Chris Romero. Other features will include a George A. Romero bio, poster and advertising gallery, theatrical trailers, TV spots and radio spots.

great news for everyone who didnt get the OOP one that goes for 100 bucks and more on ebay, cant wait for this.
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

analogzombie

does anyone know if the new Dawn dvd is a new transfer or the same one from the last dvd?(okay, it is a new transfer, yay!!)

also, speaking of zombies, the first trailer for 'Shaun of the Dead' is up at: http://www.workingtitlefilms.com/nusite.php

It's a zombie horror comedy that leaves the comedy in the hands of the living humans, where it belongs, and not with the zombies.
"I have love to give, I just don't know where to put it."

pete

"Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot."
- Buster Keaton

Just Withnail

Shaun of the Dead looks absolutely british and brilliant. And that Dawn cover is gorgeous.

modage

Just in from Anchor Bay Entertainment are the full specs for their new March 9th reissue of George Romero's Dawn of the Dead. This single-disc edition includes a new DiviMax anamorphic widescreen transfer, Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1 remixes, a new audio commentary with Romero, and the theatrical trailer. Retail is $19.95, and Anchor Bay also promises a far more elaborate special edition due later this year. Stay tuned...

oops. looks like this one is a decoy for the superset coming later in the year.  shit.
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

Find Your Magali

Shaun of the Dead, of course, must live up to the amazing "My Boyfriend's Back," starring our own PSH.

Weak2ndAct

Quote from: peteversus
Yes!  What an insanely ridiculous, wonderful movie.  It gets thumbs up for having zombies WITH guns.  Though they're a little slow and have bad aim, still quite amusing.

Chest Rockwell

The best zombie flick by far is Seven Doors of Death by some Italian guy. There's some hardcore flesh-eating tarantula scenes in there.

Ravi

Quote from: Weak2ndAct
Quote from: peteversus
Yes!  What an insanely ridiculous, wonderful movie.  It gets thumbs up for having zombies WITH guns.  Though they're a little slow and have bad aim, still quite amusing.

The gore is often comically over-the-top.

penfold0101

Quote from: analogzombie
also, speaking of zombies, the first trailer for 'Shaun of the Dead' is up at: http://www.workingtitlefilms.com/nusite.php

It's a zombie horror comedy that leaves the comedy in the hands of the living humans, where it belongs, and not with the zombies.


This looks so cool! being an avid Spaced fan. (writer/actor Simon Pegg and director Edgar Writes TV comedy) I read about this a long time ago and assumed it would never get made!!  It does look very British, so i doubt it will get a release outside of the UK

The IMDB say a 9th of April UK release! so not too long to wait. Although it will probably only get released to about 4 cinemas in the whole country. :roll:
I'll do my best to go see this one!

N.B.  here is a direct link to the trailer for Windows Media player and is the Real media trailer.
"There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. And that, I think, was the handle - that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting - on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave.
So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high - water mark - that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back." - Hunter S. Thompson.

grand theft sparrow

Quote from: analogzombie
This looks so cool! being an avid Spaced fan. (writer/actor Simon Pegg and director Edgar Writes TV comedy) I read about this a long time ago and assumed it would never get made!!  It does look very British, so i doubt it will get a release outside of the UK

Please don't say that.  I saw the trailer for this last month and I'm still laughing just thinking about it.  However, if you're right and it doesn't get a US release (which you'd think someone might push this in the US on the basis that 28 Days Later did so well), please let me know when the DVD comes out in the UK. I'll buy a multi-region player and order a copy.

I NEED TO SEE THIS MOVIE!

Sleepless

Writting a short film called Samurai Zombies Attack at the moment actually... will be directing it before Christmas. it's gonna be good, lots of blood and dismembered corpses.  :-D
He held on. The dolphin and all the rest of its pod turned and swam out to sea, and still he held on. This is it, he thought. Then he remembered that they were air-breathers too. It was going to be all right.

MacGuffin

Lifestyles of the undead
By Max Brooks, Special to The Times

"When there is no more room in hell, the dead will walk the Earth." Ken Foree's words chill your blood as the trailer for "Dawn of the Dead" flashes before your eyes: screaming victims, frantic news reports, collapsing police barricades. And suddenly there they are, zombies, the living dead! Bleeding, snarling, running ... running? Do zombies move that fast? And why aren't they shouting "More brains!"? Don't zombies eat brains? Are these even real zombies?

This question applies not only to Universal's remake of George A. Romero's zombie epic, but all forms of walking corpses. The zombie's star has risen from horror staple to pop culture icon — but what truly defines the undead?

The word "zombie," with roots dating back to ancient West Africa, has been used to mean everything from a voodoo snake god to a stagnant Japanese corporation. Cinematic zombies are even more nebulous. Each subsequent film, "Dawn of the Dead" being no exception, presents a new and contradictory depiction.

But careful analysis reveals that movie zombies can be distilled and classified into three distinct categories:

Orthodox zombies

Orthodox zombies are, unquestionably, the creation of writer-director Romero in his classic trilogy "Night of the Living Dead" (1968), "Dawn of the Dead" (1978) and "Day of the Dead" (1985).

Slow, awkward, bereft of intelligence and devoid of all but the most basic memories or emotions, they attack and devour the flesh of the living, swelling their ranks with mauled, reanimated victims.

Their origins are realistic and simple — most likely a virus — as is their one critical vulnerability, destruction of the brain.

In these three movies, Romero has created a set of rules so plausible and so globally accepted that Orthodox zombies remain the most numerous and universally recognized version. You can see them battling yakuza thugs in Japan's "Junk" (2000), or wrestling a killer shark in Italy's "Zombi 2" (1979).

Even today's polished, MTV-esque "Resident Evil" (2002) is built upon Romero's Orthodox zombie foundation.

Reform zombies

As with all established movements, there must inevitably be a revolution. It came with Reform zombies, a new breed of ghouls bearing little resemblance to the earlier shambling automatons.

Brains, not just any flesh, are the goal, while destruction of their own brains is no longer fatal. Their speech is human, as is their speed, agility and, in the case of Michael Jackson's "Thriller," their expert choreography.

These zombies defy not only the laws of Romero but also, apparently, the laws of nature. How else could a corpse missing its diaphragm, lungs and larynx still be able to gasp, "More brains"?

While the 1980s and early '90s seemed to be the heyday of Reform zombies, they reappeared in "House of the Dead" (2003), trapping a group of young hot teens on a haunted island where only the hottest survived. If "No more room in hell ... " encapsulates the Orthodox, then nothing sums up these freer, hipper zombies better than their own slogan from 1985's "Return of the Living Dead": "They're back from the grave, and ready to party!"

Conservative zombies

As with most revolutions, the pendulum swings back to the center. The ghouls inhabiting this remade — and, many would argue, reinvented — "Dawn of the Dead" represent a limited return to more traditional guidelines. These are the Conservative zombies, who combine Reform vigor with Orthodox logic.

With the exception of Olympian physical prowess, other aspects adhere to strict Romerian doctrine. Thoughtless, speechless, heartless flesh-eaters, Conservative zombies also share the Orthodox Achilles' heel of a bullet (or sharp object) in the brain.

One school of thought maintains that Conservative zombies did not originate with "Dawn's" remake but owe their beginnings (as with many cultural phenomena) to Britain, specifically director Danny Boyle's smash hit "28 Days Later." This is a fallacy. The psychotic, homicidal hordes of "28 Days Later" were not dead, and if all somnambulist scholars can agree on one basic truth, it is that to be a zombie, one must be clinically dead. Therefore, the "infected" of "28 Days" were not zombies at all, but more accurately "crazies."

Do Conservative zombies represent a viable future for the living dead? Will they lead a parade of sequel and knockoff movies like their Reform and Orthodox predecessors? Or will they quickly be replaced by a new zombie, a ghoul with ever-changing characteristics to suit pop culture's ever-changing whims? Only time and box office balance sheets will tell.

The living dead may continue to prowl mainstream consciousness for years to come, or they may retreat whence they came, back to their subculture shadows and narrow niche lairs.

Regardless, the zombie genre, like the creatures themselves, will never truly die. As America busies itself with some new craze, obsessed with its latest shiny distraction, the undead will wait, patiently, hungrily, for the day they rise again.

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Best of the living dead: Top 10 Zombie Movies

1. Night of the Living Dead (USA, 1968) — A farmhouse besieged by the undead, a genre is born.

2. Dawn of the Dead (USA, 1978) — As society crumbles, zombies wander through a shopping mall like ... well ... like zombies.

3. Day of the Dead (USA, 1985) — Humans holed up in a bunker not dealing with the problem right outside their door. Go figure.

4. Zombie 2 (Italy, 1979) — No social subtext whatsoever, just a zombie fighting a shark.

5. Night of the Living Dead (USA, remake 1990) — New director, same story.

6. Night of the Zombies (Italy, 1981) — Fake Italian gore, but with real cannibal footage.

7. I, Zombie (Britain, 1998) — A uniquely sympathetic, pro-zombie tale.

8. Junk (Japan, 2000) — Classic ghouls versus teens, gangsters and the Japanese Self Defense Force.

9. 28 Days Later (Britain, 2002) — Zombie-esque hordes rule post-apocalyptic Britain.

10. Wild Zero (Japan, 2000) — Zombies, aliens, transsexuals and Japanese rock 'n' roll, yea!

Max Brooks is the author of "The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead" (Three Rivers Press, 2003).
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

modage

Quote from: MacGuffinThis is a fallacy. The psychotic, homicidal hordes of "28 Days Later" were not dead, and if all somnambulist scholars can agree on one basic truth, it is that to be a zombie, one must be clinically dead. Therefore, the "infected" of "28 Days" were not zombies at all, but more accurately "crazies."
this is a good point, and one that my dad brought up to me immediately after he saw the movie.  not TECHNICALLY a zombie movie because theyre not dead only infected.

why are these new wave zombie movies like the only things coming out now?  between 28 Days Later, Dawn of the Dead, Shaun of the Dead, Undead, Resident Evil 2, etc.  what the hell is going on here?
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.