Chp 137. Zombie Movie Marathon

With the MCS (Mizoram Civil Service) exam coming up next month, my room-mates and I have stopped all daily activities other than food, crap, bath and 30 minutes of blogging. But all books and no leisure makes Jack a nerdy boy. So on this upcoming Saturday, we are all going to have a Movie marathon. And what better way to revitalize our stagnant brain cells than to make that a ZOMBIE Movie Marathon!

I know that still sounds a bit nerdy, but hey, we’re old now ok?

I’ve been a Zombie fan since time immemorial. The first horror movie I watched was “Thriller”, the Michael Jackson movie, when I was just 5 or 6 years old. And yup, that movie was indeed zombifying. The make-up used on the living-dead scared me for the next 5 years. And the make-up on Michael Jackson scared me for 10. Oh wait, that wasn’t make-up, it was just “plastic surgery”

In the “Epic of Gilgamesh”, the goddess Ishtar swore:

I will knock down the Gates of the Netherworld,
I will smash the door posts, and leave the doors flat down,
And will let the dead go up to eat the living!
And the dead will outnumber the living!

And that’s exactly why I loooove zombie flicks.

I seldom watch horror movies, especially those Japanese horror movies with tiny subtitles! Man, those are some really really scary stuff. But if the movie involves the “rotting walking dead feeding on the living” plotlines, I just go crazy! George A. Romero rocks! Just as how Stephen King is to horror novels, Romero is to zombie movies. (By the way, King and Romero are good friends. King was even reported to have played the role of a zombie in one of Romero’s films). The zombies in Romero’s films (aptly named “Romero Zombies”) have a large cult following among lovers of the supernatural and the unexplained.

Romero gave us “The Night of the Living Dead” in 1968, proving to the World that a movie need not have a high budget in order to be a box-office Hit. Legendary movies such as “The Exorcist”, “The Omen” and “The Shining” are all said to have been influenced heavily by this movie. Such was the masterpiece of Romero.

Which made me wonder, how come we’ve never had Bollywood zombie movies? I’m sure it would have been a great hit. Of course if it was a Bollywood movie, there would have been at least three songs with “imported” background dancers and an item number by Himesh in between the part that the zombies are 10 feet away and the part where they are 5 feet away. And it wouldn’t be necessary to run away from the flesh eating zombie rampage, after all, the Hero is there! The Hero would beat the shit out of any zombie that crosses his path.

Remember all those movies where we used to complain that “no matter how many times the hero clobber the bad guys (or vice versa), the person receiving the beating always gets up again”. He just simply refuses to die! Now at least the directors have a good excuse, because the zombies are already dead! They can shoot a whole 40 minutes of a “fight scene” now, showing the same two people thrashing each other and hurling each other through brick walls over and over again!

Anyway, the list of Movies for our Grand Saturday Movie Marathon is:

1. Night of the Living Dead
   
2. Night of the Living Dead (1990 remake)
   
3. Dawn of the Dead (2004 remake)
   
4. Land of the Dead
   
5. Shaun of the Dead
   
6. Resident Evil
   
7. Resident Evil: Apocalypse

Phew! That’s at least 12 hours of hardcore Zombie gore, running amok and eating the brains and flesh of the defenseless humans. It’s going to be a great Saturday!

We couldn’t lay our hands on “Day of the Dead”. Otherwise it would have been awesome to watch the entire series in order, all at once (Night, Dawn, Day, Land). We also couldn’t find the original version of “Dawn of the Dead”, hence had to settle for the 2004 version. The problem is, in this latest version, the zombies are very different. They don’t walk slowly in a mindless fashion anymore (after all they’re supposed to be brain dead right?). Instead, they have amazing reflexes and super strength! They jump over walls, outrun vehicles and growl like a wolf. It’s like the X-Men meets the Addams Family! Crazy. That is so unzombie-like.

And Romero will be out with the fifth part “Diary of the Dead” soon. I can’t wait to watch it. Another movie release I’m fervently waiting for is the third part of Resident Evil entitled “Resident Evil: Extinction”. Nothing to make my day than seeing the sexy Milla Jovovich kicking zombie ass.

“Shaun of the Dead” is the only comedy-horror in our list. It has a high rating of 8.0/10 at imdb.com, hence it can’t be a cheap B-Grade horror flick with overacting actors and incidents that makes you point at the TV screen and scream “you stupid (censored)!!! Why did you do that? Nobody in real life would ever do that!!!”.

The problem with zombie movies is, most of them are B-Grade kinda movies, you know, all those “Return of the living dead” series and “Tales from the Crypt” TV shows. Bad actors, bad acting, bad setting, bad clichés, bad make-ups, bad plots. All bad. That is why we decided to watch only the Romero zombies, Resident Evil series and “Shaun of the Dead”. Coz once we’re done with the Movie Marathon, we have to go back to our studies again. We definitely do not want to be distracted by lingering thoughts like “damn that movie sucks”…

And yeah, you gotta love some of the Taglines of the movies we’re going to watch!

When there’s no more room in Hell, the dead will walk the Earth.
- Dawn of the Dead
The dead have waited. The day has come.
- Day of the Dead
It’s just one of those days when you’re feeling a little… dead.
- Shaun of the Dead
Everyone died. The trouble is, they didn’t stay dead.
- Resident Evil

I took the Zombie Apocalypse Survival quiz, and it seems I have only a 46% chance of surviving in case of a zombie apocalypse.

But still, that’s better than my girlfriend who has just a 22% chance of surviving! Ha ha ha! But the more important question now is, if she turns into a zombie and I didn’t, will I have the courage to shoot her brains out? What about you? Suppose somebody you love deeply has been infected and will turn into a zombie any minute, what will you do?

1. Blow her brains out before she turns into a zombie.
   
2. Wait for her to die first, and then blow her brains out the moment she starts to change.
   
3. Tie her up and leave her. How can you ever kill the sweet thing?
   
4. Infect your own blood with her infected blood, so that the two of you will turn into zombies together.

With that, I leave you all for now. Have a great weekend, and if you are planning to mail me after Saturday, write softly, because I am going to be quite jumpy