The Seven Major Laws of Zombies

We all know the religious fundamentalists. The guys who believe in, and adhere to, the letter of their holy books as published for them to see and read.

I never thought I'd compare myself in any way to those jokers, but in one strain of thought, I am a fundie.

I'm a Romero zombie fundamentalist.

Yeah, that's right. You don't like it? Then kiss my happy white zombie-writin' ass.

Here are the rules as laid down by the Great Prophet of Zombies, George A. Romero (gore be upon his name).

 1: Zombies are slow. That's right. No running zombies. No dashing zombies. No zombies out to win an Olympic race. They are slow. They are implacable. They do not give up.

2: Zombies only eat living human flesh. No eating other animals. They target living humans and kill and eat only living humans. Why? I couldn't give fuck one why. That's the way Romero made them, goddamn it.

3: They decay, but very damned slowly. They do rot, but as put forth in Romero's DAY OF THE DEAD, there is something that inhibits uncontrolled decay in them and they can last for years as zombies.

4: They are pretty much mindless. Bub (from DAY OF THE DEAD) standing almost as a fluke, zombies are pretty damned stupid and have only rudimentary memories of their lives before rising from the dead. Zombies do not operate machinery, and they don't figure out complicated puzzles or communicate with one another. They're dead. They're all messed up.

5: All people rise from the dead within a couple of hours after dying. Doesn't matter how you die, you come back to life, unless your brain was destroyed.

6: If you are bitten, you will get sick, and you will succumb, and you will rise from the dead. What is the reason for the raging fever that kills you? Hell if I know. Sepsis? I don't know. I don't really care. So it is written, so shall it be.

7: The only way to put down a zombie for good is to destroy its brain. As Chilly Billy says: "Bash 'em or burn 'em. They go up pretty good."

These are the Seven Major Laws of the Romero Zombie. Anything else is heresy and should be roundly condemned as such. I have spoken.

This Movie Needs Extra Love.

I just read the announcement that George A. Romero is going to remake the original NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. This mystified me for mainly one reason:

The film was remade in 1990 with Romero producing and Tom Savini directing. Why would Romero want to remake it yet again? To cash in on the zombie craze that he created? Hard to say.

But the thing is, that remake is one of the single most effective horror films I've ever seen, and it gets only a fraction of the respect that it deserves. By now, everyone is familiar with the original NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD directed by George Romero with screenplay by John Russo and George Romero. That film is a classic of paranoid fantasy and one of the most psychologically effective horror movies ever made. That it was filmed on a shoestring budget in black and white actually enhances the effectiveness of the movie.

However, because Romero, Russo, and company were inexperienced in dealing with distributors, they were ripped off and saw almost none of the massive profits that the movie generated for its eventual distributor. Thus, they all felt the need to remake the movie with a bigger budget in 1990 so that they could all, at long last, actually see some profits from the sweat of their brows.

I very much admire the remake. It is similar enough to the original to make it a powerful social statement, just as the first one did. And it was different enough to make further social and political statements in ways that make it different enough from the original for each to remain unique. The movie has a number of exceptional performances and is absolutely brilliantly directed by Tom Savini. After I saw this movie on its initial run, I figured that the door would be opened for Savini to direct many movies and receive funding for any number of projects to which he would be attached as director. His vision for the movie was just about flawless.

However, while the movie apparently did moderately well, it did not break any records, did not end

up making the producers much wealthier; and, worst of all, it was not the beginning of a long line of Savini-directed features.

Well, shit. There ain't no justice.

If you've never seen the 1990 version of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, give it a look. It's a truly creepy and effective horror movie. The film deserves a wider following, and Savini deserves a lot of respect and a lot of credit for the excellent work he turned in as director.

They're coming to get you, Barbara.

Best Zombies in Media

For years I've loved the zombie trope created by George Romero. As I've mentioned before, his creation of the shambling undead incorporate and encompass just about every fear and phobia you could name. The possibilities for themes both covert and overt are endless. This is one reason that I felt I had to try my hand at penning a zombie novel.

So, I want to do a list. Everyone seems to like compiling lists. Lists of bests, worsts, must-haves, you-name-it. The following here is a simple list of the best uses of the zombie in various forms of art. This is by no means a complete list, but is a compilation of the creations that spring to mind and which were instrumental in my own development as a writer, and as a creator of the zombie novel, THE LIVING END.

Top of the Heap: This one is easy. The original NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD directed by George A. Romero, screenplay by Romero and John Russo, a variation on a theme by Richard Matheson. This movie is the masterpiece of claustrophobia and paranoia. Romero never made it a secret that this film was an allegory based on the Richard Matheson novel I AM LEGEND. To this day, the original NIGHT is still the best adaptation of Matheson's seminal themes.

"They're coming to get you, Barbara."

Second: The original DAWN OF THE DEAD film by George Romero. In this film we see for the first time the zombie utilized as the instrument of apocalypse. It was as brilliant a move as the original concept Romero revealed in the 1968 film. The underlying commentary of consumerism has not been lost on the audience over the intervening years. If there's a movie with a more kinetic and frantic opening, I've not encountered it.

"What floor is this?"

Third: Richard Matheson's novel, I AM LEGEND. Yeah, I know. It's vampires and not zombies. But it might as well be zombies, the way Matheson portrays the pathetic and ravaged infected who have surrounded the last living man on Earth. I encountered this novel when I was fifteen years old and the first line grabbed me. I was hooked. It's a pity that no one has ever done the novel justice as a film. Until then, we have Romero's first zombie movie, and that's good enough.

Richard Matheson, one of the great fantasists of our age.

Fourth: Len Barnhart's indie novel, REIGN OF THE DEAD. I stumbled upon this novel after meeting Len Barnhart either at a convention or online. I honestly can't recall how I first found the book. But once I'd found it, I was really happy that I had. When Mr. Barnhart published REIGN OF THE DEAD there had been virtually no other zombie novels. To my knowledge, only Phil Nutman's WET WORK and the various novelizations of Romero zombie movies preceded it. In those days, who the heck would publish a novel about flesh-eating zombies? Well, apparently, nearly no one. Len Barnhart pretty much started the zombie wave and created a whole new market for apocalyptic fiction about the undead overwhelming the living. The book was great when it came out and it's still great now.


Fifth: THE WALKING DEAD. Robert Kirkman wasn't the first to bring zombies to comics, but he was the first to do it effectively. There had been some notable attempts to do comic book zombies; however, Kirkman blew the others away with something the rest of them lacked: characterization. With THE WALKING DEAD you had finally found a continuing series that had people in it who were not bland cutouts. I first heard about the title when I found myself talking to fans of the comic who didn't normally even read comics! They were following the series for the simple reason that it was so well written and that the situations seemed true to them, despite the fantastic setting. For comics, zombie fiction doesn't get any better.

Zombies well done.

Sixth: WET WORK by Phil Nutman. Wet Work is a term that describes the task of killing people, principally by those who work as assassins for various governments. The world of WET WORK begins in just such a situation as a zombie plague begins to envelope the Earth. This was another what-the-heck-is-going-on-here? experience. When Nutman published this book as a mass market paperback it was unique: a zombie novel. It actually preceded REIGN OF THE DEAD and it had zombie fandom to itself for a very long time. Why Nutman never followed it up with another similar novel is a mystery. I kept waiting for another, but it never came. The book is out again in a deluxe format, and I recommend it.


Seventh: THE WALKING DEAD television series. It's not quite the series I was expecting, but it's pretty darned good, so far. If you haven't seen it, go rent the DVD or buy a set. If you're a zombie fan, you'll like it. If you enjoy drama in general, you'll probably still get a kick out of it.

"I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. Darabont."

Well, as the seventh-born of a seventh-born of a seventh-born, I'll leave it at that lucky number. For now. In the meantime, you can buy my own zombie novel THE LIVING END in both trade paperback and Kindle.

"This guy James Robert Smith can write! Not since Philip K. Dick have I read an author who so convincingly paints the social milieu of his story's world. From the very first page I felt eerily and alarmingly at home in James Robert Smith s The Living End. Every detail is masterfully rendered on the page. Plus, he gives us zombies. And dogs! I loved The Living End. Bravo, James Robert Smith! Your book blew me away." - Joe McKinney, author of Dead City and Apocalypse of the Dead

My favorite horror movies.

For someone as historically fond of horror as I, there really aren’t a great lot of horror movies that I find effective. Very few actually frighten me, and very few are worthwhile as cinematic achievements. Most horror films that I’ve watched over the years were frankly rather lame and very disappointing in failing to evoke a feeling of unease, or to achieve any emotion in me as something worth seeing.

Here are the exceptions.

The Body Snatcher

This Val Lewton-produced gem is one of the darkest movies I’ve seen. The movie is at once disturbing because there seems to be no solidly delineated good or bad. Everyone in the film moves about in a kind of gray area between light and dark. The villain of the piece, Gray the Cabman, is capable of great cruelty, and yet is somehow sympathetic in his loneliness and thirst for companionship and (perhaps) some kind of revenge for a past wrong. The apparent hero, Dr. Toddy MacFarlane, a surgeon, is not so good as we are first led to expect. And even his assistant, who provides a romantic interest for the audience, can be led astray by duty. For its visual accomplishments, and for Karloff’s performance as Gray, this movie deserves a place on my all-time favorites list.

Night of the Living Dead

George A. Romero’s landmark horror film is easily one of the most emotionally wrenching stories I’ve ever watched. Cheaply made, starring no one who made a name as an actor, the movie presents a claustrophobic and paranoid atmosphere that has been pretty much unmatched in all the years since I’ve seen it. And this is the seed of his zombie mythos, the beginning of an entire genre of film that scratches at the itch of paranoia in every person. His zombies are frightening in their sheer plainness, and implacable in their thirst for the destruction of the living.

Dawn of the Dead

Romero returned some years later with this fantastic sequel that doubles as a superlative commentary on the consumer society of the USA. This time, the heroes are not confined to a fragile house, but are able to roam in a kind of wonderland of commercial delight inside of a shopping mall walled off from the zombie hoards who wait outside. Finally, in this movie, we see the zombies not as someone coming to get us, but as ourselves willing to destroy those who are different. This film rivals its predecessor in its effects of generating a sense of horror and dread.

The Haunting

If there is a more atmospheric horror movie, I have yet to see it. The Haunting is a series of visual and auditory illusions whose whole effect is to completely unsettle the viewer. One identifies immediately with the most vulnerable of the characters, and the witnessing of the downward spiral, mentally and physically, of this person is one of the most disturbing experiences in all of modern cinema.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)

The greatest horror novels and films prey upon human paranoia. Finney’s novel that spawned these films is a classic, rivaled in the category of paranoid fantasies only by Matheson’s I AM LEGEND. Both of these versions of Invasion are superlative films, and while generally I disdain remakes of classic and perfectly fine movies, in this case the remake was worth the doing. Invasion of the Body Snatchers is both effective science fiction and evocative horror. The fifties version relied on the Red Scare, perhaps subtly or maybe on the surface—but who’s to know. The paranoia of being ratted out for being different (leftist) could also be the germ that created the fear in some viewers of that era.

The later version has a cast at least equal to that in the 50s film, and a script that goes the original one better in having the courage to end with a far more horrifying and downbeat ending. The small changes in the storyline were startling and make the film different enough so that what was familiar is made strange enough so that the experience is new.



The Woman in Black

This is, to my way of thinking, the most frightening ghost story ever put to film. Based on the very popular novel of the same name, and the stage play, The Woman in Black is a ghost story with a grain of logic behind it. This is the key to creating a good ghost story—if one is to accept the perfectly ridiculous idea of a ghost, then one must be presented with a kind of twisted logic to make it all seem believable (on some level). This movie does that, and brilliantly. The ghost in the film (the Woman in Black) appears tenuously, at first, her presence building and building as the protagonist of the film slowly realizes just what he is dealing with. The movie has the single scariest ghost encounter I have ever witnessed, and every time I see it (even in daylight), I never fail to be literally scared and to feel the gooseflesh creeping up my spine.


Alien

Alien is probably the scariest pure science fiction film I’ve seen. The movie relies not on a single fear to generate dread, but on many different fears. There is the fear of the unknown, the fear of one’s own body, the fear of betrayal, the fear of violence, fear of the dark, claustrophobia, and on and on. Ridley Scott has succeeded in crafting not only one of the finest horror films ever made, but also one of the best science fiction films ever. This one works on so many levels that it’s hard to understand how it works so well. Add to all of this the most disturbing film monster of all time, and it’s a recipe for total horror.