Worried about the Zombie Apocalypse ruining your Christmas? Don’t be! Here is an instructional video to make sure things go smoothly.
(courtesy a zombie-entranced Facebooking friend)
My pitch for a great new zombie movie: Set it on a cruise ship
If you are not watching the new AMC series, “The Walking Dead,” you are cheating yourself out of some of the best TV I’ve ever seen. And it’s only two episodes in. I’ve even embedded the AMC stream of the complete first episode, so you can get yourself hooked right now.
The show is based on a series of graphic novels that I’ve loved since I was introduced to them a few years ago by Boing Boing.
If zombies ever came to (ahem) life, the plight of survivors would be one of a long, endless slog — a struggle for survival against terrible odds each and every day. There would be no chance of victory after some sort of epic battle. That seems absolutely perfect for an ongoing television series (or graphic novel) rather than a movie.
So that got me thinking: If surviving a zombie epidemic might be better suited to a television series than a movie, what kind of zombie story might play to the strengths of a movie?
Sunday night, after I watched Episode 2 of The Walking Dead, I lay in bed and it suddenly came to me — give the survivors a chance to win. So, here follows my pitch for a great new zombie movie.
ZOMBIE CRUISE SHIP
The pitch: Night of the Living Dead meets The Poseidon Adventure meets Snakes on a Plane
A group of friends and strangers are on a Caribbean cruise. During an off-ship excursion at one of the ports of call, they enter a “tourist trap” that promises a old-style carnival freak show. One of the freaks is a grey-skinned man billed as “The Living Dead.” One of the tourist gets a little too close, and is bitten. Everyone makes zombie jokes, but no one buys it.
Back on the ship, that night, the bitten tourist falls ill. Dies. The zombie jokes take a somber turn, but the ship’s physician blames it on a stomach virus or something — cruise ships are notorious for that.
Then, the infected wakes up. A few quick bites and cue the zombie mayhem.
This shouldn’t be a horror-comedy (zombedy?), more of a straight horror/siege movie (believe it or not, there is already going to be a Spring Break Zombie Cruise in 3-D).
No need for the “Oh my, what are these strange creatures?” that slows down most zombie movies — this should be post-modern enough that characters are aware that these are zombies, know how to kill them, and yet find themselves quickly backed into a corner and outnumbered.
Cruise ships would be great for fighting zombies. There are lots of supplies (food, water, blunt weapons like fire axes and fire extinguishers, possibly even a few guns). Cruise ships would also be great for filming a zombie movie — tight and twisty-turny corridors, lots of blind corners, small rooms, flimsy doors, and multiple backdrops like restaurants, stages, swimming pools, climbing walls.
Our characters are trapped. But even on a mega cruise ship, there are only say, 5,000 people, including passengers and crew. If you’re surrounded by zombies, that’s a manageable number. It’s not billions. It’s not every other human on earth. It’s possible you could see yourself getting out of this and life getting back to normal.
Unfortunately, one of the easiest ways to get rid of zombies on a cruise ship would be to dump them in the water.
So, after the remaining few survivors finally kill the last zombie and set sail for civilization (some of them should have gotten their comeuppance, of course, others will have fallen in love or rediscovered the strength of their relationship, still others made a selfless sacrifice to save the others), we can fade to black, roll credits, and set up a sequel by showing a waterlogged zombie lurching up out of the surf on an otherwise pristine Caribbean island.
Thoughts?
Zombies, the final frontier
It’s like Inception-level deep mashing-up-ness: This is a trailer for a book about a zombie attack at a Star Trek convention.
And it looks awesome. I know The Walking Dead starts at Halloween, but wouldn’t it be great to also have this as a series?
Your guide to zombie survival
Sure, I know you’re the star of your own movie, and in zombie movies, the star almost always lives to the very end (or at least heroically gives his own life so the heroine can get away) but let’s face it: in real life, we’re all supporting actors in other peoples’ movies, too.
So, here’s what you, the average person, would really be doing during a zombie apocalypse:
(From graphjam)
OMG Zombeez? Follow this flowchart!
Amy left this handy flowchart up for me to follow and laugh riotously at. If you’re even in the midst of a zombie epidemic — or perhaps you want to write a zombie-based screenplay — just follow the flowchart.
Click here for the full thing. I won’t spoil it for you, but just like in real life, the flowchart is ruthless. And there are really only two outcomes: death or sequel.
An animated movie that’s not for kids
It’s long been settled that there are comic books for kids, but there’s also a place for graphic novels — graphic in the sense that they include drawn images, but also graphic in the sense that they are for mature audiences.
There’s no reason that the same principle couldn’t apply to animated movies — and yet, animated movies seem to mostly be reserved for family-friendly fare.
Well, not anymore. Check out the teaser trailer for “A.D”, a CG-animated zombie thriller:
Zombie Star Wars? Okay, this zombie thing has now officially jumped the shark
That’s the original trilogy desecrated. If you’d like to see the prequel zombie posters, check out here.
By the by, these posters were drawn by Matt Busch, an official Star Wars artist for Lucasfilm, which DOESN’T MAKE IT RIGHT.
Scientific study regarding zombie outbreak worrisome
A new book entitled “Infectious Diseases Modelling Research Progress” contains a paper by a team out of the University of Ottawa regarding the impacts of a zombie outbreak. In their paper When Zombies Attack!, the team noted that an infected individuals should be destroyed immediately, lest civilization be destroyed.
They concluded there was no point trying to cure those infected or live with them - the best thing was to destroy them as quickly as possible.
“A zombie outbreak is likely to lead to the collapse of civilisation, unless it is dealt with quickly,” they write in the book
“While aggressive quarantine may contain the epidemic, or a cure may lead to coexistence of humans and zombies, the most effective way to contain the rise of the undead is to hit hard and hit often.
“As seen in the movies, it is imperative that zombies are dealt with quickly, or else we are all in a great deal of trouble.”
Never one to challenge how research funds are spent, as I make a hefty portion of my income from the academic world, I did begin to wonder about the relevancy of the study.
“Why,” I asked myself “would anyone want to know this? Unless… They must know something!” My overactive imagination immediately set to work giving me the cold sweats and causing me to cringe in fear anytime someone strolled past my office door.
Despite my nervousness, I decided to finish reading the brief article:
Joe Imad, the study’s co-author, said: “If you look at it in a more realistic way, zombies are about the same as any other major infectious disease, they get out and we try to eliminate them.
“Modelling zombies would be the same as modelling swine flu, with some differences for sure, but it is much more interesting to read.”
Yes. Interesting…
Burning question related to Michael Jackson’s death
IsMichaelJacksonAZombieYet.com
Zombies foretold
Photo courtesy of Mark Lobo Photography, official photographer of the Zombie Uprising.
Before I get into this, a disclaimer: I am not intending to start a religious flamewar. I am not intentionally mocking anyone’s deeply held spiritual beliefs. I am not looking to spend eternity in Hell. I am doing two things: warning the world about the plague of zombies that has been foretold and pointing out how few people that wave the Bible around calling it “the Truth” have actually read it.
Have you read it? Taken as a book (as opposed to a Holy text), it’s a thumping good read. Pun intended. There are all sorts of wild stories in there that put the most creative minds writing today to shame. Eventually I’ll blog about some of them, but today I must warn you about the zombies!
No, I’m not talking about this post by Grant. I’m talking about the older stuff — the stuff written by prophets. You know, the guys that foretold the future!
Check it out:
Thy dead men shall live,
together with my dead body shall they arise.
Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust
for thy dew is as the dew of herbs,
and the earth shall cast out the dead.Come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers,
and shut thy doors about thee:
hide thyself as it were for a little moment,
until the indignation be overpast.
Chilling! Isaiah is not only warning us that the dead will rise (ie. zombies), but implies that we will have no way to fight them and can only hide until the situation is over. But doesn’t that simply raise more questions?
And your covenant with death shall be disannulled,
and your agreement with hell will not stand;
when the overflowing scourge shall pass through,
then ye shall be trodden down by it.From the time that it goeth forth it shall take you:
for morning by morning shall it pass over, by day and by night:
and it shall be a vexation only to understand the report.
The natural laws of death repealed? Crazy! (Also, is it jsut me, or does the above passage sound like something a withered old priest in a movie might say to Bruce Campbell immediately prior to a one-liner and some zombie ass-kicking?)
Isaiah wasn’t the only prophet to suggest that George Romero was on the right track. Zechariah got in on some of the zombie action too:
- And this shall be the plague wherewith the Lord will smite all the people that have fought against Jerusalem;
Their flesh shall consume away while they stand upon their feet,
and their eyes shall consume away in their holes,
and their tongue shall consume away in their mouth.
And it shall come to pass in that day,
that a great tumult from the Lord shall be among them;
and they shall lay hold every one on the hand of his neighbor,
and his hand shall rise up against the hand of his neighbor.
So not only will the dead rise, the living will be infected by the zombie-gene or virus or whatever, causing the flesh to melt off all our faces! If that wasn’t enough, as soon as we are zombified we will head into the streets and engage in hand-to-hand combat with our neighbors!
There you have it. The rise of zombies has been foretold. As the history books don’t seem to have a chapter entitled “The Zombie Wars of 1385,” I think it is safe to assume that this event has not yet come to pass.
Be warned. Be careful. Be prepared.
He died for your sins, now he’s back for your brains
It’s Good Friday, so here’s a little Easter-themed link to pass around to all your (secular) friends: Zombie Jesus.
Acts 2:24
But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on himJohn 6:53
Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you”
Shout-out to my friend Tyler, who says his friend is behind the site (which is really just a link to the Facebook group). That makes me, what, three degrees of separation from the Big Z-J Himself?
Oh, but check out the hilarious page on Zombie Jesus at uncyclopedia:
After dying, Jesus was raised from the dead and once more walked among the living. This, of course, would only be possible if he were a zombie; Zombie Jesus is the identity of Jesus following the Resurrection. In zombie form, Jesus retained his unending love for mankind, in particular, he loved their sweet, delectable brains. Many of his followers were surprised when, instead of offering God’s salvation, Zombie Jesus voraciously consumed their faces.
See? This is why it’s always better to focus on the pagan bunny.
Warning: Zombie attack in New Orleans
So this is it. From the swamps of Louisiana comes the first reported case of a zombie attack:
[Joseph] Lancellotti was gardening … when he noticed a man walking toward his house, shouting angrily, the report said. Lancellotti said he couldn’t understand the man because he was yelling in Spanish. But when the man got within two feet, he slugged Lancellotti in the head, the report said.
Lancellotti said he tried to defend himself with a garden rake. As the men struggled over the rake, the stranger bent over and bit Lancellotti on his right forearm, the report said. Lancellotti’s flesh ripped away as he fell to the ground. The man then got on top of Lancellotti and began choking him, the report said.
It was then that neighbor Chantal Lorio, a podiatrist and director of the Wound Center at East Jefferson General Hospital, came out to check on Lancellotti. Lorio said Monday that she first thought Lancellotti was having a heart attack and the other man was trying to help him.
The stranger was still gripping Lancellotti as Lorio noticed her neighbor was lying in a pool of blood. She didn’t learn what happened until she began dressing the wound — with the stranger still clutching her neighbor’s shirt.
“He said, ‘He bit my arm, chewed the flesh and swallowed it in front of me, ‘ ” Lorio recalled. She said the bite measured almost 3 by 1 1/2 inches, and was less than 1/4-inch deep.
Police took the zombie into custody not that much later, describing him as “hovering near an empty car” and not making any attempt to run away. They found out later that he had been treated earlier at a hospital for a finger wound — I’m guessing a bite.
As we all know, zombies make other zombies through bites, so I’m guessing it’s curtains for Lancellotti. But judging from this story, there are two important takeaway facts:
- These are so-called “slow” zombies — or classic shamblers — not the trendy “fast” zombies of 28 Days Later, etc. This is good news!
- It appears that zombies are even slower than they are often portrayed in movies. Or else we would have heard of injuries to the neighbour or police as they took him in to custody.
Thought: is it suspicious that his neighbour just happens to be “director of the Wound Center” at a hospital? I’m not necessarily saying “coverup” but keep your ear to the ground anyway. Don’t trust the mainstream media to recognize what’s going on — or the government to tell you the truth. They’ll keep a lot of things hidden to “prevent panic.”
Do you have a copy of the Zombie Survival Guide? You should get one — it’ll prove an invaluable resource.
For now, since we live pretty far away from Zombie Patient Zero, I would recommend sitting tight and staying alert. A full-fledged outbreak would probably still be containable, but it wouldn’t hurt to begin stocking up on food, water and weaponry, in case you have to withstand a lengthy siege. Try to keep these supplies on the second floor of your residence, if possible, along with tools to destroy the staircase.
Staving off the inevitable attack of the undead
I can’t remember what I was Googling when I stumbled across these valuable resource films. Thank-you, Internet!
That first video makes me think a little bit of the movie Fido, which, if you haven’t seen it, is worth the rental. Both of these clips, though, make me wish that they were just a little bit better done.
For how to do a deadpan zombie thing, you’ll have to read World War Z, or the Zombie Survival Guide, both of which I highly recommend (as entertainment? No! As resource guides!) or at the very least, Shaun of the Dead:
Zombies vs. vampires, with humans the prize
I love a good zombie story, and I don’t mind vampires one bit either. How’s this for a mind-blower of a twist, though: the last humans on earth (or at least in North America) are holed up in a small town, trying to stave off the zombie apocalypse when out of nowhere comes … vampires? Vampires who say they need to protect the humans as a food source!?
Yeah! How kick-ass is that?
The comic series is called “Last Blood” and it’s an amateur labour of love, but you can read it here. Recommended!