monsters in the movies 100 years of cinematic nightmares

Landis points out their comedic side is evident in Return Of The Living Dead (O’Bannon, 1985), a movie in which the zombies can speak. They were the common subject of most grindhouse B-movies, like in Rodriguez’s 2007 homage Planet Terror. Zombies were no longer slaves, but rather dangerous, hungry, slimy uncivilised versions of our selves, though often slightly comical. The 1960s and 70s are where eating the ﬂesh of the living (specifically the brains) became popularised. Back in the day, zombies were manipulated by higher beings, but as time has moved on, the controlled chaos of zombies has become less controlled, causing apocalyptic level pandemonium. Fun fact: in Haitian, ‘zombi’ means ‘spirit of the dead’.Ī similar theme runs through to the 1960s with Hammer’s ﬁlm The Plague Of The Zombies (Gilling, 1966) where the zombies are created (through witchcraft) for slavery or to be soldiers. The ﬁrst appearance of an on-screen zombie actually starred in White Zombie (Halperin, 1932) with the same concept Haitian voodoo used to create sugar cane slaves. In Voodoo and in the movies, zombies are symbols of exploitation and social decay” (Landis, 2011 – pg.

Many claim that this practise continues today. The houngan then uses their new zombies to pick sugar cane and for other menial tasks. John Landis claims in his 2011 book “Monsters in the Movies” that “In Haitian Voodoo, a houngan uses poisons and ritual burials to convince victims that they are dead. You may recognise Baron Samedi in the James Bond ﬁlm Live And Let Die (Hamilton, 1973) depicted by Geoffrey Holder. This was taken from the idea of Baron Samedi, master of the dead, a spirit who can be summoned by a Houngan (voodoo priest). Voodoo is the idea we thank for giving us these slow moving, brain eating monsters we’ve grown to love shooting in the head.Īn initial sighting of what we now associate with being as a zombie can be recorded in I Walked With A Zombie (Tourneur, 1943), and was commonly recognised as a tall, muscular, glassy eyed, black man formed using Haitian Voodoo.

We all know humans can devolve into a zombie through a virus outbreak like in 28 Days Later (Boyle, 2002), or from the radiation of an atomic bomb, an alien invasion, a green syringe of glowing gunge like in Re-Animator (Gordon, 1985), or voodoo… It’s hard to remember exactly where the concept of zombies originated when the idea has taken its own form and stumbled into different sub-categories of… what exactly a zombie is, how they’re created, what they do, how to kill them, and so on.

This article was written exclusively for The Film Magazineby Rhian Gillah.

Monsters in the movies 100 years of cinematic nightmares