Zombie Genre Movie
From white zombie, to 28 weeks later, zombie movies have been part of the entertainment industry for over forty years. Even now, they are being made. What started out as a romantic sci-fi genre, became a fast-paced action-horror genre. It is one of the most watched genres. But nobody knows how it got that way. There are a lot of reasons.
In the 1950s, when the Communist threat loomed, aliens were the perfect movie plot. Then came September 11, 2001. Sincethe 2001 terror attacks left nearly 3,000 dead in New York and Washington, we've been hooked on zombies. Nearly half of the 10 top-grossing zombie movies of all time, led by 2004's Dawn of the Dead, have been released in the last five years, per Box Office stats.
Meanwhile, aliens who couldn't double as 9/11 allegories, such as those of War of the Worlds and Signs, stopped being interesting.
Audiences first looked into the vacant eyes of a Hollywood zombie in 1932's White Zombie. According to Peter Dendle, it established the movie zombie as "a resurrected corpse with limited rationality and diminished mental capacity," under the control of a mad scientist. But zombies thinking on their own. Modern zombies, as portrayed in books, films, games, and haunted attractions, are quite different from those zombies.
Modern zombies are typically depicted in popular culture as mindless, unfeeling monsters with a hunger for human flesh, such as in the 1968 film Night of the Living Dead. Typically, these creatures can sustain damage far beyond that of a normal, living human and can pass whatever syndrome that causes their condition onto others.
Night of the Living Dead is one of the more famous zombie movies. Directed by George Romero, it is a black-and-white horror film that was an independent production. Ben and Barbra are the protagonists of a story about the mysterious reanimation of the recently dead, and their efforts, along with five other people to survive the night while trapped in a rural Pennsylvania farmhouse. George Romero produced the film on a $114,000 budget, but, after a decade of cinematic re-releases, it grossed some $12 million dollars domestically, in the United States, and $30 million dollars internationally. On its release in 1968, Night of the Living Dead was strongly criticized for its explicit content.
In 1999, the Library of Congress registered it to the National Film Registry as a film deemed "historically, culturally or aesthetically important".
Night of the Living Dead had a great impact upon the culture of the Vietnam-era U.S., because it is laden with critiques of late-1960s U.S. society; an historian described it as "subversive on many levels". Although it is not the first zombie film, Night of the Living Dead is progenitor of the contemporary "zombie apocalypse" sub-genre of horror film, and it influenced the modern pop-culture zombie archetype. Night of the Living Dead, is the first of five films directed by George Romero, and twice has been remade, as Night of the Living Dead (1990), directed by Tom Savini and as Night of the Living Dead 3D (2006).
While attending Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, George A. Romero embarked upon his career in the film industry. In the 1960s, he directed and produced television commercials and industrial films for The Latent Image, a company he co-founded with friends John Russo and Russell Streiner. During this period, the trio grew bored making commercials and wanted to film a horror movie. According to Romero, they wanted to capitalize on the film industry's "thirst for the bizarre." He and Streiner contacted Karl Hardman and Marilyn Eastman, president and vice president respectively of a Pittsburgh-based industrial film firm called Hardman Associates, Inc., and pitched their idea for a then-untitled horror film. Convinced by Romero, a production company called Image Ten was formed which included Romero, Russo, Streiner, Hardman and Eastman. Image Ten raised approximately $114,000 for the budget.
By the time Re-Animator and The Return of the Living Dead came out in 1985, something has definitely changed with
zombies: their speed. No more waiting for you to trip on a rock or take a nap, the new undead were fast of feet. Also, the new zombies wanted brains in specific, and could actually say one lined sentences. During the nineties, there was a decrease in zombie movies being watched and made. However, when 28 days later appeared in 2003, and zombie movies seemed to boost in popularity, they started lacking the ability to speak at all.
They also started devouring people completely, instead of just eating brains.
Zombies are usually described and undead monsters with exposed wounds and a hunger for human flesh. However zombies are fictional so each movie, book or video game describes them differently. For example, the zombies from Night of the Living Dead featured slow, unkillable zombies that ate people. Mean while, the 28 days later zombies are fast, die as normal people would, and don't kill people, only infect them. However all zombies have one thing in common: they can spread their infection. In movies, most zombies spread the infection by biting and/or scratching.
Well, zombies have sure gone a long way from romantic white zombie, to scary 28 weeks later. We now know how zombies have changed from 1934 to 2003. And zombie movies will keep being made and changed. Possibly, in a couple of years zombies will be able to fly! But one thing remains certain, zombie movies will never die out.
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