Zombiephobia
I love horror movies and horror fiction. No surprise to anyone who knows me. From Edgar Allen Poe to Robert Bloch to Ray Garton, from Dracula to Damian to Dr. Herbert West, from Kolchak: The Night Stalker to Friday the 13th: The Series to Angel ... I can't get enough of them. The chill created by a good piece of horror fiction as it tries to get inside your head and mess up your sense of security, or even your sense of self, is delicious. It's wonderful to suspend disbelief and consider, if only for a moment, that a menace from your darkest nightmares might be standing right behind you and breathing on your neck.
That said, there are two subcategories of horror that I tend to avoid. First up are slasher/torture films, which are usually miserable, misogynistic, self-hating movies whose idea of "horror" is little more than a Jack-in-the-Box shock effect. The second subcategory is zombies. My avoidance of zombie movies has nothing to do with quality.
Zombies creep me out.
I suppose it has to do with the flipping of the classic horror paradigm. Before George Romero and Lucio Fulvi started making movies, the good guys in horror films always hunted the monsters. In zombie movies, the zombies hunt us. And they're relentless. And incapable of reason. They just want to eat your brainsssssss! Worse still, because of infection, they could make your mother, your child, your spouse into zombies, too -- and instead of love, all they would feel is hunger. That's goddamn creepy.
But isn't that good horror? Shouldn't good horror BE creepy? Of course! So why do zombies bug me? Maybe it's the slow-motion thing, the way they just quietly shamble toward you, head to the side, mouth hanging open. (Yet hey, that means you can usually run away from them! Wait, what's that? Directors Zach Snyder and Danny Boyle came up with FAST zombies?!? Shit.)
Maybe it's the concept of the Zombiepocalypse. Zombies aren't just monsters -- they're a plague. In no time flat, the civilized world quickly collapses into paranoid, dog-eat-dog pockets of survivors, where (as in the aforementioned Danny Boyle's great 28 Days Later) many of the humans are more monstrous than the zombies.
Ultimately, maybe it's the raw hunger that the most upsetting factor. Most monsters have reasons for their actions. You might be able to rationalize with a vampire or a mummy. Even werewolves can think a little bit. Zombies don't think. They just grab and bite. And you can't afford to let yourself get injured in a fight with zombies; one bite wound and you'll become one of them. Yikes.
The funny thing is, when I have watched the "good" zombie movies, I've often enjoyed them: Romero's first three Dead films, Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things, 28 Days Later, and the wonderful Shaun of the Dead, among others. Still, my first instinct is to get away. Even trailers for crapfests like Flight of the Living Dead make me squeamish.
Whatever. I'm too damn old to be afraid. Bring on the zombie hordes! I'm actually psyched to see AMC's upcoming series, The Walking Dead, based on Robert Kirkman's comics series. (I haven't read any of them -- of course! -- but pal Rick Maffei says they're great.) Here is the scary-as-shit trailer for the series, which premieres on -- oh baby -- Halloween Night:
Oh yeah, it's partially my pal Rick's fault that I'm writing this post now. In the follow-up to our first D&D campaign session, Rick suggested half-jokingly (?!) that our characters might soon be faced with a zombie horde. Now D&D zombies have traditionally been the staggering, dumb minions of pre-Romero times, not flesh-eating threats. (Ghouls have usually held that role.) Yet in recent years, there have been more attempts to incorporate, ahem, hungry zombies into D&D, largely because of their popularity in film. And yes, D&D 4e does have these variant zombies. Yum!
Obviously, zombie threats to a role-playing-game character don't have quite the same terrifying, um, bite. Still, though, I should look for some zombie-repelling armor. One of the other players, Felix, is just as concerned as I am.
That said, there are two subcategories of horror that I tend to avoid. First up are slasher/torture films, which are usually miserable, misogynistic, self-hating movies whose idea of "horror" is little more than a Jack-in-the-Box shock effect. The second subcategory is zombies. My avoidance of zombie movies has nothing to do with quality.
Zombies creep me out.
I suppose it has to do with the flipping of the classic horror paradigm. Before George Romero and Lucio Fulvi started making movies, the good guys in horror films always hunted the monsters. In zombie movies, the zombies hunt us. And they're relentless. And incapable of reason. They just want to eat your brainsssssss! Worse still, because of infection, they could make your mother, your child, your spouse into zombies, too -- and instead of love, all they would feel is hunger. That's goddamn creepy.
But isn't that good horror? Shouldn't good horror BE creepy? Of course! So why do zombies bug me? Maybe it's the slow-motion thing, the way they just quietly shamble toward you, head to the side, mouth hanging open. (Yet hey, that means you can usually run away from them! Wait, what's that? Directors Zach Snyder and Danny Boyle came up with FAST zombies?!? Shit.)
Maybe it's the concept of the Zombiepocalypse. Zombies aren't just monsters -- they're a plague. In no time flat, the civilized world quickly collapses into paranoid, dog-eat-dog pockets of survivors, where (as in the aforementioned Danny Boyle's great 28 Days Later) many of the humans are more monstrous than the zombies.
Ultimately, maybe it's the raw hunger that the most upsetting factor. Most monsters have reasons for their actions. You might be able to rationalize with a vampire or a mummy. Even werewolves can think a little bit. Zombies don't think. They just grab and bite. And you can't afford to let yourself get injured in a fight with zombies; one bite wound and you'll become one of them. Yikes.
The funny thing is, when I have watched the "good" zombie movies, I've often enjoyed them: Romero's first three Dead films, Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things, 28 Days Later, and the wonderful Shaun of the Dead, among others. Still, my first instinct is to get away. Even trailers for crapfests like Flight of the Living Dead make me squeamish.
Whatever. I'm too damn old to be afraid. Bring on the zombie hordes! I'm actually psyched to see AMC's upcoming series, The Walking Dead, based on Robert Kirkman's comics series. (I haven't read any of them -- of course! -- but pal Rick Maffei says they're great.) Here is the scary-as-shit trailer for the series, which premieres on -- oh baby -- Halloween Night:
Oh yeah, it's partially my pal Rick's fault that I'm writing this post now. In the follow-up to our first D&D campaign session, Rick suggested half-jokingly (?!) that our characters might soon be faced with a zombie horde. Now D&D zombies have traditionally been the staggering, dumb minions of pre-Romero times, not flesh-eating threats. (Ghouls have usually held that role.) Yet in recent years, there have been more attempts to incorporate, ahem, hungry zombies into D&D, largely because of their popularity in film. And yes, D&D 4e does have these variant zombies. Yum!
Obviously, zombie threats to a role-playing-game character don't have quite the same terrifying, um, bite. Still, though, I should look for some zombie-repelling armor. One of the other players, Felix, is just as concerned as I am.