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Saturday 9 May 2015

Apocalypse Hal - Contemporary Zombies

Where do zombies come from Mummy?

Everywhere!



Popular culture has allowed the original Haitian zombi to evolve into a range of contemporary zombie types. There is a huge range of influences on these fictional zombies. Too many to discuss here but the above is what most zombie experts regard as the main lineage of zombies.

What is interesting is that most of these are not zombies. Richard Matheson stripped back the vampire legends to give us I am Legend which George A Romero used as a basis for his horror flick Night of the Living Dead. Romero's creatures were never called zombies. They got tagged that way when his sequel Dawn of the Dead was released as non English versions. The distributor added "zombi" to the titles.

Fast zombies are not really zombies either, as they are living people who have been infected. Danny Boyle was influenced by the real life disease rabies when he created the "rage" virus for 28 Days Later. Rabies is Latin for "rage", as aggression is one of the symptoms of rabies. However, the general public decided that infected people were close enough to "zombies", so the name stuck. 

No doubt we will see the zombie continue to evolve into new types. 


Bite off more rage virus than you can chew.

Mr Rimsky


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