The voodoo curse.

The zombie, an undead creature

Hindu text, written around 1,000 B.C., describes a strange creature, freely and eternally walking the earth:

He comes from the grave, his body a home of worms and filth. No life in his eyes, no warmth of his skin, no beating of his breast. His soul, as empty and dark as the night sky. He laughs at the blade, spits at the arrow; for they will not harm his flesh. For eternity, he will walk the earth, smelling the sweet blood of the living, feasting upon the bones of the damned. Beware, for he is living dead. (apud Brooks 2003:1)

This may be seen as an accurate description of what the voodoo religion will create many centuries after: a new life-in-death creature, another walking dead on earth, namely, the zombie.

Generally, zombies are "soulless automatons risen from the grave to do the bidding of their masters" (Jones 1993a: 1). These creatures originally, black slaves brought to life to work in the sugar mills--are mindless dead people who are revived, more or less intact, to serve and obey the living, very similar to the Frankenstein monster, but created by black magic, not by scientific methods (Halliwell 1988: 236-237). Or, as the sorcerer 'Murder' Legendre explains to one of his victims in White Zombie (United States, Victor Halperin, 1932) "for you, my friend, they are the Angels of Death." (apud Jones 1993a: 2)

Zombies are one of the few monsters which do not originate from the European Gothic tradition--as ghosts, vampires, werewolves, or the Frankenstein monster do--and which have passed directly from the folk culture into the popular one without first being established in literature.

Zombies are life-in-death evil beings whose undead qualities are reminiscent of vampire legends, while their reanimation calls to mind Victor Frankenstein's mad and mostly unsuccessful scientific experiments. Lacking souls, these walking dead are set apart from other monsters by the magic, ancient myths, and cultural traditions on which they are based. Zombies from Haiti--like the ghouls from Arabia, the mummies from Egypt, the golems from the Jewish lore--become angered and react physically when their environment, eternal life secrets, and, ultimately, their cultural conventions are endangered. (Spratford&Clausen 2004: 32-33)

For the British writer and director Clive Barker (1952-), "zombies are the ideal late-twentieth century monsters. A zombie is the one thing you can't deal with. It survives anything. Frankenstein and Dracula could be sent down in many ways. Zombies, though, fall outside all this. You can't argue with them. They just keep coming at you. Zombies are about dealing with death. They represent a specific face of death." (apud Jones 1993b:3)

Although many of the alive or undead monsters that used to make the day of popular culture for decades have somewhat faded lately, the zombies seem to have increased their "presence" in fiction and cinema especially because of what is known as the apocalypse, the wiping out of the entire Earth population by some possible nuclear, biological or chemical accidents.

The term zombie seems to have been derived from a word of West African origin, used either by the members of a Gabon tribe called the Mitsogho--ndzumbi, meaning the bodily remains left behind after death--or by the Bantu and Bankongo tribes in the lower Congo River area nzambi, meaning the spirit of a dead person, a religious and spiritual entity with superhuman abilities. (Shawn 2008: 2; Boon 2011b: 50-51)

When tribal members moving from Africa settled in the Caribbean area, especially in Santo Domingo/Saint-Domingue (i.e. Haiti), the term "zombi" was still considered--for instance, in 1798, by the lawyer and writer Mederic Louis Elie Moreau de Saint-Mery (1750-1819)--as a "Creole word which means spirit, revenant" (apud Boon 2011b: 53). But during the 19-th century, as African religious beliefs collided with Western influences and zombie mythology underwent the vicissitudes of cultural migration, the term came to represent a spirit that could occupy people, thus referring to a "person for whom internal consciousness and volition were absent--a 'zombie drone'." (Boon 2011b: 53)

After taking control in 1795 of the Spanish colony of Santo Domingo (Hispaniola), the French renamed it Saint-Domingue, and extensively started shipping slaves directly from Africa to work on their plantations. The labor conditions were extremely bad, the landowners opting to maximize their profits by literally working them to death. The slaves brought with them their own religious customs, which they continued to develop and expand on, especially their practice of vodou. The belief in vodou and in its protecting gods helped support the enslaved people in their struggle. As common spiritual beliefs grew among slaves, a particular kind of society arose. Dances, animal sacrifices, and the beating of drums became a part of this new culture. Within the community, leaders and experts gained influence, further honing the use of ritual chants, poisons, and potion making. Through the use of these potions and rituals, a bokor--a sorcerer or vodou priest practicing the black magic--was believed to be able to invoke supernatural powers, the most important being the ability to reanimate a dead human body. The resulting creature was known as zombi--later spelled zombie--and it was characterized by slow mannerisms, low intelligence, and a lack of willpower or a soul. Often, such creatures were believed to be under the control of the person who had made them rise from the grave. In 1791 slaves in the northern part of the country, reportedly backed up by their belief in vodou, started a massive uprising against the wealthy French plantation owners. Led by the Haitian general Toussaint L'Ouverture, the slaves were victorious, and the French administration was forced to announce the abolition of slavery in Haiti. (Kay 2008: 1-2)

Zombie characteristics

Generally, zombies have been considered to be under the control of outside and evil forces such as religious cults, madmen, military scientists, or even aliens. However, over the last few decades, the term has come to refer more specifically to the dead who return to feast on the living, especially on the brain. Although, theoretically, they can live indefinitely, their bodies fall apart over time until they can no longer seek out the flesh that sustains them. The average zombie lifespan is estimated to 2.34 years (Saccheto 2009: 12), or as ranging from three to five years. (Brooks 2003: 10)

Zombies are characterized by vacant stare, milkly eyes, black gums, blue lips, drool, foreign objects embedded in their bodies, rotting flesh, oozing pus or blood, missing body parts, shredded clothing, visible bones protruding from flesh, stiffness in body and limbs, shuffling gait in which they drag one leg behind the other as a result of some wounds suffered before zombification or from uneven decomposition afterwards.

Traditionally, zombies are created by reanimating corpses taken from graveyards, morgues, mortuaries, old decrepit mausoleums, churches, pet cemeteries, war zones, nursing homes, secret research laboratories or medical schools.

Nowadays, there exists a theory asserting that zombies are brought back to life by a virus which mutates rapidly and can vary greatly from one case or person to another. The virus is highly contagious, and any contact involving even the slighest fluid exchange can turn a living healthy human into a zombie, the rapidity of the process depending on the strain of the virus and the immune system of the person involved. The virus is usually transmitted through bites, scratches or abrasions, but it can also be airborne, and thus completely undetectable for some time, to be revealed only at the time of death, when it causes reanimation of the corpse.

When a human being is about to become a zombie, the skin color changes from pinkish to blackish green, the skin is torn away in various places, the eyes become hollow, recessed and take an unhealthy yellowish hue, blood pours from the feet. There is also low moaning and groaning, festering boils and oozing wounds on the skin, body convulsions that stop abruptly, an odor of bad ham, the lack of bladder or bowel control, cold and slimy skin, vomiting up internal organs, blue veins visible through the pale skin, and an insistent clamoring for brains. (Saccheto 2009: 13-17)

Types of zombies

In Haitian folklore, there are two types of zombies, namely, the spirit zombies (zombi jardin), and the physical zombies, that is, the body raised from the dead (zombi corps cadavre). The spirit zombies are considered more powerful and frightening because a bokor controls the spirit of a dead person and can inject that spirit into a variety of living creatures to do his own bidding (Shawn 2008: 2-3). In other words, "spirit zombies are souls without bodies and 'walking' zombies are bodies without souls" (Shawn 2008: 3). In Passage of Darkness: The Ethnobiology of the Haitian Zombie (1988), Wade Davis provides scientific evidence for the poison mixture--made in part from the toxin of the blowfish--that the bokor creates, putting his victim in a state of near-death, only to revive him later. Davis considers that the victim loses many of his higher mental faculties, thus being easily controlled by means of this combination of near-death poisoning, the physiological reaction to the poison as well as the traumatic revivification process. (cf. Shawn 2008: 3)

Generally, there are nine types of zombies, both in fiction and in film:

(1) zombie drone: a person whose will has been taken from him/her, resulting in a slavish obedience; a kind of witless shell used for slave labour, this is the classic zombie to be found in almost all fiction since the 19-th century, and in film since the 1930s (White Zombie, 1932; King of the Zombies, United States, Jean Yarbrough, 1941; I Walked with a Zombie, United States, Jacques Tourneur, 1943);

(2) zombie ghoul: fusion of the Haitian undead zombie and the flesh-eating ghoul, a creature which has lost volition and feeds on flesh; "created" by George A. Romero (1940-) in Night of the Living Dead (United States, 1968), this is presented in almost every film or narrative after the 1980s; however, a fictional predecessor was portrayed by Howard P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) in Herbert West--Reanimator (1922);

(3) tech zombie: people who have lost their volition through the use of some technological device; in fiction one can mention The Stepford Wives (Ira Levin, 1972) or I, Zombie (Curt Selby, 1982);

(4) bio zombie: similar to the tech zombie, except that some biological, natural, or chemical element is the medium that robs people of their will; in fiction this type can be met in One Rainy Night (Richard Laymon, 1991), and in film in Sun faa sau si/Bio-Zombie (Hong Kong, Wilson Yip, 1998), 28 Days Later (United States, Danny Boyle, 2002), Quarantine (United States, John Erick Dowdle, 2008);

(5) zombie channel: a person who has been resurrected and some other entity has possessed his or her form (Lucius Shepard, Green Eyes, 1984; Brian Keene, The Rising, 2003);

(6) psychological zombie: a person who has lost his/her will as a result of psychological conditioning such as hypnotism (Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari/The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Germany, Robert Wiene, 1920) or brainwashing (Richard Condon, The Manchurian Candidate, 1959);

(7) cultural zombie: this is an under-researched "missing link" between zombie mythology and general culture; unconnected with any fantastic or supernatural events, this walking dead can be met both in fiction (Joyce Carol Oates, Zombie, 1995; Brad Gouch, Zombie00, 2000), and in film (The Machinist, United States, Spain, Brad Anderson, 2004);

(8) zombie ghost: the distinction between zombie and ghost is sometime blurred by the overemphasis on returning from the dead; the zombie ghost is not actually a zombie, but rather someone who has returned from the dead with all or most of his/her faculties intact; most of such narratives can be considered ghost stories (Clive Barker, Sex, Death, and Starshine, 1984);

(9) zombie ruse: slight of hand common in young adult novels where the "zombies" turn out to not be zombies at all (Harry Harrison, Bill, the Galactic Hero: On the Planet of Zombie Vampires, 1991). (Boon 2011a: 8; Boon 2011b: 57-60)

Some critics suggest--especially when referring to cinematic zombies--a simpler classification. For instance, especially after the 1950s, there is an evil threat, be it a mad scientist or a representative of an alien race, that "turns human corpses into a slave army designed to invade and conquer" (Bishop 2010: 19). And this was probably the situation which led George A. Romero to distinguish between "enslaved" zombies and "infected" zombies. (Bishop 2010: 19)

Seabrook, Haiti, and zombies

Although, due to slavery, it was included in the Oxford English Dictionary as early as 1819 (cf. Flint 2009: 11), the term "zombie" was virtually unknown outside Haiti until the late 1920s. It entered the United States and the world culture through the writing of William Buehler Seabrook (1884-1945), explorer, occultist, and journalist. In his travel memoirs, The Magic Island (1929), he gave detailed accounts of the voodoo rituals and the Haitian folklore; he seemed especially interested in a "creature [...] which sounded exclusively local--the zombie." (Seabrook 1932: 84)

This book made known to the world the stories of recently dead being brought back to life as "slow-moving, virtually brain-dead creatures" (Penzler 2011: xi) who would work tiredlessly in the fields without pay and without complaint. However, stories of the living dead have existed for centuries, the main "characters" appearing under various aspects and names, be they ghouls (Arabian Tales), reanimated corpses due to scientific experiments or reincarnation (Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, 1818; Bram Stoker, The Jewel of the Seven Stars, 1903), vampires (John William Polidori, The Vampyre, 1819; Bram Stoker, Dracula, 1897), or simply dead people coming back to life (Edgar Allan Poe, The Fall of the House of Usher, 1839; Edgar Allan Poe, The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar, 1845). In the weird menace pulps of the 1930s, tales of resurrected corpses and ghouls were popular, but these undead creatures had no taste for human flesh.

In Seabrook's memoirs, the section dealing with zombies, entitled Black Sorcery, includes the chapter Dead Men Working in the Cane Fields, in which such creatures are described in detail:

It seemed (or so I had been assured by negroes more credulous than Polynice) that while the zombie came from the grave, it was neither a ghost nor yet a person who had been raised like Lazarus from the dead. The zombie, they say, is a soulless human corpse, still dead, but taken from the grave and endowed by sorcery with a mechanical semblance of life--it is a dead body which is made to walk and act and move as if it were alive. (Seabrook 1932: 84)

Thus, a zombie becomes a slave to his master, being compelled to do everything he is asked for --even kill somebody--like a machine, without thinking, as he cannot feel pity or remorse:

People who have the power to do this go to a fresh grave, dig up the body before it had time to rot, galvanize it into movement, and then make of it a servant or slave, occasionally for the commission of some crime, more often simply as a drudge around the habitation or the farm, setting it dull heavy tasks, and beating it like a dumb beast if it slackens. (Seabrook 1932: 84)

The American writer went on to describe the physical traits of zombies--three men--he had supposedly seen working on a stony, terraced slope:

There was something about them unnatural and strange. They were plodding like brutes, like automatons. Without stooping down, I could not fully see their faces, which were bent expressionless over their work. Polynice touched one of them on the shoulder, motioned him to get up. Obediently, like an animal, he slowly stood erect. [...] The eyes were the worst. It was not my imagination. They were in truth like the eyes of a dead man, not blind, but staring, unfocused, unseeing. The whole face, for that matter, was bad enough. It was vacant, as if there was nothing behind it. It seemed not only expressionless, but incapable of expression. (Seabrook 1932: 91)

Voodoo religion

In an interview given to Fernande Bing in 1961, the Swiss ethnographer and anthropologist Alfred Metraux (1902-1963) explained that vaudou "is an extremely vast universe, an African religion indeed, but also an European religion, a syncretic religion that blended together not only different African cults but also certain beliefs from European folklore. One finds here Norman and Breton traditions, carried by the French colonists, and adopted by the Blacks; one even finds masonic rites. In short, this is a sort of conglomeration of elements of all kinds, dominated by African tradition. This religion is practiced by ninety per cent of the Haitian people. [...] At the same time these people consider themselves Catholic, and while I affirm that nine-tenths of the population practice vaudou, I do not mean that they are not Christian. All vaudou believers are in effect excellent Catholics, extremely pious. In their belief, there is no sharp break between the religion they practice and in which they believe, and the Catholicism to which they are bound. Thus vaudou does not reveal itself as a religion opposed to Catholicism. Haitian peasants all are good Catholics, and really perceive no contradiction, no opposition, between the official religion of their country and the particular faith that they have inherited from their ancestors. Vaudou took on its character in Haiti in absence of a Church. The slaves, imported from Africa in the eighteenth century, were baptized, forced to go to church, but they received no religious education. They have remained faithful to the one possession they have been able to take with them, that is, their beliefs. They remained even

more attached since they were thus able to guard some hope and, in spite of the reality, to give to their lives some meaning, thanks to certain values that these beliefs preserved. The life of the slaves was horrible, abominable--and vaudou brought to them that which it brings to Haiti's poor today: the grounds for hope, for confidence, and above all, a way of distracting oneself, of escaping from reality." (apud Mintz 1972: 4-5)

Possibly under the influence of the atrocious crimes attributed to the voodoo followers as described by the British Consul Sir Spenser St. John (1825-1910) in Haiti or the Black Republic (1884), voodoo has been considered for a long time a sect of witchcraft practitioners conjuring up "visions of mysterious deaths, secret rites or dark saturnalia celebrated by 'blood-maddened, sex-maddened, god-maddened' negroes" (Metraux 1972: 15). In fact, voodoo is "nothing more than a conglomeration of beliefs and rites of African origin, which having been closely mixed with Catholic practice, has come to be the religion of the greater parts of the peasant and the urban proletariat of the black republic of Haiti" (Metraux 1972: 15). The Catholic elements, initially adopted to disguise the African original religious practices of the slaves, included saints assimilated into "the pantheon of voodoo gods as part of a largely benign religion that is heavy on symbolism and steeped in spiritualism" (Flint 2009: 10). For many people, a zombie still remains not a supernatural and evil creature, but a real threat based on the possibility that the body of one's dead relative can be revived and used in various ways.

Commonly called voodoo, but initially known as vodun/vodoun/voudou--names derived from the god Vodun of the West African Yoruba people who lived in the 18-th and 19-th centuries Dahomey, an area including parts of today's Togo, Benin and Nigeria--is a religion according to which a human being is made up of five basic components: 1) corpse cadavre (the mortal flesh which decays after death); 2) n 'ame (the spirit of the flesh which functions while the person is alive, and which passes as energy into the soil after the physical death); 3) z 'etoile (the star of destiny, crucial for the fate of that particular person, to be found somewhere in heaven, very far from the actual body); 4) gros bon ange (the "big guardian angel" which keeps the body alive and without which a person losses his/her vital force); 5) ti bon ange (the "little guardian angel," the source of personality). The last two represent the parts of any soul, being the most important components of the human being. The gros bon ange keeps the body alive, and after its physical death it is changed into cosmic energy; it is possible to separate a person's gros bon ange from the body and to store it in a jar or bottle with a view to using the energy for various purposes. The ti bon ange represents the accumulation of a person's knowledge and experience, thus determining his/ her individual characteristics, personality, and will; the ti bon ange can leave the body either when a person is dreaming, or when he/she is possessed by a loa (i.e. a spirit or deity) during a ritual; as compared to the gros bon ange, the ti bon ange is more vulnerable to evil sorcery.

The voodoo beliefs do not consider death as the end of life, but rather a change to another condition. The body, just a "shell" for a person's lifeforce, merely decays while the n 'ame that animates the body returns to the ground as energy. The soul itself is the only one which endures in a different form. The gros bon ange returns to the solar regions from which it has initially drawn out its cosmic energy, thus joining the other loas and becoming one itself. The ti bon ange hovers around the body for nine days--in fact, nights--, then departs towards the land of the dead by the aid of the rituals performed either by a houngan/hungan (a voodoo priest) or a mambo (a voodoo priestess)

The death rituals are very important in the voodoo religion especially when the gros bon ange is to be send in Ginen, the world of the dead, to be found under the water below the earth, the cosmic community of ancestral spirits, where it will be worshipped by the family members as a loa; if this ceremony is not properly carried out, the gros bon ange is trapped on earth, thus bringing misfortunes upon the living members of the family. Misfortunes can also be brought to some other people if the ti bon ange is not kept in the grave by the ritual of the "nine nights." According to the voodoo conception, a person can always have something evil inside. While the soul--now called duppy--is in the body, it is controlled by the heart and brain, and a person is not motivated to do anything evil. However, when the duppy is released in death, the duppy no longer has this restraint and is capable of the most terrible deeds. This is reason of the "nine nights" ritual: making sure that the evil stays in the grave with the body.

Sometimes, the houngan can ritually separate the ti bon ange from the flesh and sent it to live in the so-called "dark waters" for a year and a day; then the family can ritually raise the soul--now called esprit (i. e. spirit or soul of the dead)--and place it in a govi, a sacred clay jar, where it is viewed and treated like a loa.

The ritual process of separating the gros bon ange from the body is called dessounin. According to the burial rituals, the corpse's nostrils and ears are stuffed with cotton, the mouth is tied shut, the knees and the big toes are tied together. During the ceremony, the houngan sprays kleren (i.e. rum made from sugar cane juice) first to the four cardinal points, then over the corpse to cleanse it; he shakes his asson (i.e. a rattle used to summon the loa) over the corpse, lights candles, and whispers the name of the deceased into the body's ear; often animals are sacrificed, and veves (i.e. religious symbols of the astral forces representing the loa to be invoked and serving both as a focal point for the invocation and an altar for offerings) are drawn to summon the loa of the dead. During the burial ritual, the houngan becomes possessed by a loa, then reborn as a divine essence of life which belonged to the dead person and which is on its way to Ginen.

Sometimes, as mentioned before, the ti bon ange--now a lifeforce known as a duppy--can be used after death for evil deeds (for instance, to go after someone). To raise it, rum and three pennies are thrown on the grave, and the ground is beaten with a calabash stick. The ti bon ange can also be sent to possess an enemy through an evil ritual in which the loa of the cemetery--the Baron Cimetiere/Baron Samedy, the master of dark magic, known as the "Lord of the Cemeteries" or the "Guardian of the Grave," associated with the curiously sexual culte des morts, the cult of the dead (King 1991: 130)--is invoked to draw the soul of the dead from the grave.

During the period in which the ti bon ange hovers over the dead body, a bokor can capture it and turn it into a zombie astral. While a zombie is a dead body without a soul, a zombie astral is a dead soul without a body, one which wanders around and performs any acts the boker commands, but is never allowed to have the final rest. To prevent being used by a bokor, the body is stabbed through the heart, the dead is cut off, and sesame seeds are placed in the coffin.

Although, generally, zombies are considered to be created by bokors ' black magic, some specialists state that this process is achieved by means of some powerful drugs which make a person seem dead through extensive intoxication, thus slowing his/her bodily functions; when revived, the person is so brain-damaged that he/ she cannot remember even the real name, therefore being very easily controlled by the bokor. These drugs are in fact poisons, believed to contain substances from various toxic animals and plants. One can mention here the gland secretions of the bouga toad (50 to 100 times more powerful than digitalis, and containing a hallucinogen), millipedes, tarantulas, skins of poisonous tree frogs, seeds and leaves from poisonous plnants, human remains, four species of puffer fish with a significant content of tetrodotoxin.

After administration, the victim is completely paralyzed and enters into a kind of coma, looking like a really dead person; sometimes, the victim remains conscious. After a day or two, the bokor raises the dead and administers a strong hallucinogenic, known as the "zombie's cucumber." Once revived, the zombie cannot speak, his/her senses are diminished, the human personality is absent, and the memory gone. Thus, easily controlled by the bokor, a zombie becomes a slave sent to work in farms and construction sites. Supposedly, the administration of salt is both restoring the zombie's powers of speech and taste, and sends he/she in the grave, and, thus, out of the bokor's evil influence. (Turlington 2000: passim)

If a zombie is given salt to eat or blood to drink, the creature's consciousness will come back and, realizing what he/she has really become, the zombie will kill anyone he/she thinks is responsible for having become a living dead. (Nottridge 1991: 12; Flint 2009: 11)

Specialized studies often point out the various methods by which a person can become or can be changed into a zombie. One such method begins with the "marking" of the living being to be zombified. The bokor rides in the night to the home of the "chosen" victim, makes a slit in the door, presses his lips against it and sucks out the soul of the unfortunate unwary, which he then traps into a bottle. After the victim dies (usually it does not take more than a few days), the bokor goes to the respective grave at midnight on the day of the funeral, disinters the body and calls the corpse by name. When the corpse responds, the bokor enslaves him/her by holding the bottle under the nose of the future-to-be zombie. The obedience of the dead creature is then ensured by being given a secret concoction; the zombie is kept "alive" with a bland soup called bouillie. (Flint 2009: 11)

"Literary" zombies

Early zombie tales, generally set in the West Indies, have the creature revived by elaborate voodoo ceremonies. Lacking a will of their own, these sleepwalking automatons are made to serve the evil master who reanimated them from their graves. A common theme in this subgenre is that technology and human nature are incompatible; many zombies are revived by quasi-scientific means, including the use of powers from outer space in some of the most far-fetched science fiction stories. (Spratford&Clausen 2004: 34)

In Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's Schalken the Painter (1839), the young female protagonist is forced into an arranged marriage with a particularly unresponsive and distressing man, who we subsequently learn is actually dead.

After the zombie stories published by George W. Cable in his collection Old Creole Days (1879), the next landmark is definitely Howard P. Lovecraft's Herbert West--Reanimator, first published as a six-episode serial entitled Grewsome Tales, in Home Brew, February-July 1922, then reprinted in Weird Tales (March, July, September, November 1942, September, November 1943). (cf. Joshi&Schultz 2001: 110)

Being obssessed with the idea of bringing corpses to life, Dr. West starts making strange experiments for which he desperately needs freshly buried corpses he digs from cemeteries, especially those which, after the plague epidemy in Arkham, were buried unbalmed. West succeeds in making a serum which he injects into the corpse of Alan Halsey, the late Dean of the Miskatonic University medical school. Unfortunately, Halsey comes back as some kind of murderous raging creature:

Eight houses were entered by a nameless thing which strewed read death in the wake--in all, seventeen maimed and shapeless remnants of bodies were left behind by the voiceless, sadistic monster that crept abroad. A few persons had half seen it in the dark, and said it was white and like a malformed ape or anthropomorphic fiend. It had not left behind quite all that it had attacked, for sometimes it had been hungry. (Lovecraft 2008: 188)

Just after the end of a boxing match in Bolton, West gets his hand on a gorilla-like negro with "abnormally long arms which I could not help calling fore legs, and a face that conjured up thoughts of unspeakable Congo secrets and tomtom poundings under an eerie moon" (Lovecraft 2008: 191). Injected with the same serum, the dead ex-boxer comes back from his hastely-made grave as another murderer, this time the victim being a child:

Looming hideously against the spectral moon was a gigantic misshapen thing not to be imagined save in nightmares--a glassy-eyed, ink-black apparition nearly on all fours, covered with bits of mould, leaves, and vines, foul with caked blood, and having between its glistening teeth a snow-white, terrible cylindrical object terminating in a tiny hand. (Lovecraft 2008: 193)

In the climaxing scene, West is actually disemboweled by an undead horde led by an army Major killed in 1915 in Flanders, an officer on whose decapitated corpse West made his repulsive experiments. These revengeful creatures are given weird and chilling portraits. First, in the Sefton Asylum:

[A] body of silent men had entered the grounds and their leader had aroused the attendants. He was a menacing military figure who talked without moving his lips and whose voice seemed almost ventriloquially connected with an immense black case he carried. His expressionless face was handsome to the point of radiant beauty, but it had shocked the superintendent when the light fell on it--for it was a wax face with eyes of painted glass. Some nameless accident had befallen this man. A larger man guided his steps; a repellent hulk whose bluish face seemed half eaten away by some unknown malady. (Lovecraft 2008: 203)

Another chilling scene is the final one, when the dead enter West'a laboratory by breaking the wall:

I saw a small black aperture, felt a ghoulish wind of ice, and smelled the charnel bowels of a putrescent earth. There was no sound, but just then the electric light went out and I saw outlined against some phosphorescence of the nether world a horde of silent toilling things which only insanity--or worse--could create. Their outlines were human, semi-human, fractionally human, and not human at all--the horde was grotesquely heterogeneous. They were removing the stones quietly, one by one, from the centuried wall. And then, as the breach became large enough, they came out into the laboratory in single file; led by a stalking thing with a beautiful head made of wax. A sort of mad-eyed monstrosity behind the leader seized on Herbert West. West did not resist or utter a sound. Then they all sprang at him and tore him to pieces before my eyes, bearing the fragments away into that subterranean vault of fabulous abominations. West's head was carried off by the wax-headed leader, who wore a Canadian officer's uniform. As it disappeared I saw that the blue eyes behind the spectacles were hideously blazing with their first touch of frantic, visible emotion. (Lovecraft 2008: 204)

Lovecraft also wrote two other rather similar short stories. In the Vault (The Tryout, November 1925) an undertaker's feet break through a coffin lid and his ankles are bitten by the coffin's rather disturbed resident. Cool Air (Tales of Magic and Mystery, March 1928) is a weird narrative about a certain doctor Munoz who, although dead for eighteen years, succeeds in being very much "alive" and "working" thanks to keeping a constant temperature of 56[degrees] Fahrenheit in his apartment by using an ammonia-based refrigeration system.

Henry S. Whitehead's Jumbee (Weird Tales, September 1926) is in fact a conversation between a certain Granville Lee who retires to the West Indies after his lungs have been damaged during World War I. Fascinated with local legends, particularly those referring to the jumbee, a kind of zombie, Lee gets in touch with Da Silva, a native who accepts to describe his encounter with the disembodied spirit of an old acquaintance. After dying, this spirit came to Da Silva to warn him about an imminent danger to come both from some ghostly figures whose legs end at the ankle, and an old woman, a sheen, a kind of weredog.

Two particularly significant narratives in the evolution of zombie literature were Seabrook's The Magic Island, and Roscoe's A Grave Must Be Deep.

Theodore Roscoe (1906-1992), an American writer of adventure, fantasy and pulp narratives, published in Argosy (December 1934--January 1935) the novel A Grave Must Be Deep, a chilling mystery of Haitian black magic. Here, the reader finds out that "a zombie is one who has died but is not dead. A corpse resurrected by witch doctor's magic from the grave. A living dead who returns as the slave of some master, who may labor in the field or walk unseen with silent steps on errand of revenge." (Roscoe 1989: 15)

The story develops after the death of the rich Proudfoot Eli, supposedly killed by a zombie in his chateau on the Morne Noir estate. Aware of the possible unpleasant "consequences," he made certain interesting requests in his will:

Burial shall take place no sooner or later than three days after death. The funeral be of Voodoo ritual conducted by the hougan, Papa Leo, in manner of the Service Legba. That I shall be buried in my rosewood coffin in the assigned spot chosen by me on the morne, the grave to be exactly ten feet deep and the monument immediately mounted on the grave. That an iron stake exactly eleven feet long shall be driven down into the grave through the exact heart of the buried casket. (Roscoe 1989: 20)

The funeral convoy is lead by the Haitian priest, chanting, wearing "a wreath of yellow daisies on his head," carrying "a dead white goat under his arm, a big red candle in his hand" and being followed by "four black stevedores in nightshirts" (Roscoe 1989: 21). Under "a cheesy moon" lurking behind "curdled clouds" and a gray landcape, "at the bottom of the compound the drums were going like express trains, hurrying the black priest with the candle, the sweating pallbearers, the trailing crowd" towards the grave near a "great tree standing lonely against the sky" (Roscoe 1989: 22). And here the burial ritual begins:

Papa Leo, the hougan, hung the dead goat on a limb of the dead tree; then stood over the grounded coffin, waving the dripping candle and singing gulaba-gulabagulaba-gulaba like a wattled turkey, while the four pallbearers bayed on their knees: 'Moon li mort! Moon li mort!'which was Haitian for 'the man is dead.' [...]

I wasn't sorry to see the coffin lowered down the grave, to hear the hollow thump of earth-clods on the cover. But then we must stand there till the grave was filled, the mound levelled off, the earth packed hard; stand there and watch the business of the iron stake. Maitre Tousellines, a shade lighter in color than before, fetched that solid crowbar from behind the tree. The gravediggers produced sledge hammers. Papa Leo held the monstrous spike in place.

Whang, bang, whang, bang! You've seen them drive tent-pegs in the circus? But this wasn't the circus. This was a new grave high on a night-swept bluff and an iron post sinking into the dirt. When but three feet of stake remained above ground, its point encountered a subterranean obstruction down below. Peter turned away, and I wish I had. The hammer blows fell harder; there was a sudden give--a sort of whuff!--and the stake drove level to the ground.

"Dormie pafoom " M'sieu Proudfoot!" was Papa Leo's benediction. Maitre Tousellines crossed himself, and echoed the blessing. 'Let the dead sleep sweetly--'. (Roscoe 1989: 22)

The American writer could not help bringing to his readers an account of the Haiti history and religious conceptions, and that was why he quoted at length from an old vellum-bound book, Histoire de Culte Vodu, written by a certain Hugo Catraville in 1848:

Although the religion of Haiti is nominally Catholic, Voodoo is practiced by the majority of natives, and Africa still casts its shadow across the Caribbean. Macandals, ouanga charms, talismans are commonly worn by the Haitian negro; drums sound nightly in the hills. Contrary to popular belief, Voodoo is an established religion with a highly organized theology and priesthood. Priests are known as papaloi, priestesses as mamaloi, there is also a higher priest called the hougan.

The Voodoo religion, in a manner somewhat similar to Christianity, is divided into two distinct branches or creeds, Service Petro and Service Legha, which in no circumstance must be confused with the Culte des Mortes, the dreadful Society of the Dead which claims to sorcerous power over corpses and is feared by Voodoo and Christian worshippers alike. [...] The sorcerers, known as bocors, hold secret meetings in the jungle, feast on human hearts, cast magic spells, and, it is claimed, have been known to raise the dead from their graves and enslave them in their power. The living corpses, called zombies, pass year after year in hopeless slavery, victims of their inhuman masters, lost souls robbed of either life or death.

White men who have seen zombies tell with terror of their sluggish, obedient movements, their mute mouths, their glazed, sad eyes. Haitians live in constant fear of the Culte des Mortes. So it is we see in Haiti graves by the roadside, on the hill, in the open where no sorcerer may dig for the body. So it is we see relatives of the dead on guard for twenty-four hours in the cemetery. It is also believed that the beating of the Rada drums, the suspension of a dead goat in a near-by tree or the driving of a stake through the body in the grave (a custom not unlike that employed by the peasants of Rumania, Russia and Transylvania to ward off werewolves) serves to frustrate the evil Death Cult. (Roscoe 1989: 33)

As a result of sensationalist reporting and Hollywood's need to exaggerate for the sake of entertainment, the concept of voodoo was radically altered in many media representations, becoming just an evil power akin to black magic. As the public's interest in Haiti dissipated, these dark, supernatural elements--zombies in particular--retained their allure, and zombie-themed films ended up taking center stage. (Kay 2008: 4)

After the staging of the Kenneth Webb's Zombie (1930)--and especially because of some advertisements--there appeared a theme that would recur not only throughout early zombie fiction, but also in movies such as White Zombie, namely a white woman being threatened by a black figure with arms outstretched. The zombie threat to the white woman became an almost universal theme in early zombie fiction, and even as zombies moved out of Haiti, the image of the white woman endangered by a zombie would remain there (Kee 2011: 15)

With very few exceptions, in early zombie fiction, the physical body of a victim of zombification rarely showed any signs of harm; further, the physical changes engendered by zombification were usually not overly dramatic or permanent. It was rather the mind, the embodied self, that was most affected. One's free will was at stake, as it could be devoured at any time; thus, zombies became an allegory for some social problems out of the control of the human beings, such as the Depression, the World Wars, the Cold War, the atomic age. (Kee 2011: 22-23)

Manly Wade Wellman (1903-1986) published in Weird Tales (March 1940) The Song of the Slaves, a classic and chilling short story of a revenge coming all the way to Charleston from under the deep waters of the Atlantic Ocean. The revenge is first implied in a song the slaves are chanting on the deck of a ship heading to America:

Though you carry me away in chains, I am free when I die. Back will I come to bewitch and kill you. [...] Hailowa--Genda! Haipana--Genda! (apud Jones 1993b:47)

Forced by the imminent encounter with a British ship-of-war to throw all the chained slaves into the ocean, Gender returns to his plantation only to be haunted by the ghostly faces of the black Africans-turned out zombies, and be thrown from the bluff into the water firmly tied to the slaves' chain:

Scratch-scratch-scratch; it sounded like the stealthy creeping of a snake over rough lumber. That scratching resounded from the window where something stole into view in the candlelight. [...]

The palm of a hand, as grey as a fish, laid itself on the glass. It was wet; Gender could see the trickle of water descending along the pane. Something clinked, almost musically. Another hand moved into position beside it, and between the two swung links of chain. [...]

A face had moved into the range of the candlelight, pressing close to the pane between the two palms.

It was darker than those palms, of a dirty, slaty deadness of color. But it was not dead, not with those dull, intent eyes that moved slowly in their blistery sockets ... not dead, though it was foully wet, and its thick lips hung slackly open, and seaweed lay plastered upon the cheeks, even though the flat nostrils showed crumbled and gnawed away, as if by fish. The eyes quested here and there across the floor and walls of the parlor. They came to rest, gazing full into the face of Gender. [...]

The face had not fallen. It stared at him, a scant yard away. Between the dull, living eyes showing a round black hole, where the bullet had gone in. But the thing stood unflinchingly, somehow serenely. Its two wet hands moved slowly, methodically, to pluck away the jagged remains of the glass. [...]

The shoulders beneath the face heightened. They were bare and wet and deadly dusky, and they clinked the collar-shackle beneath the lax chin. Two hands stole into the room, their fish-colored palms opening toward Gender. [...]

As he turned his back, the singing began yet again, loud and horribly j'aunty--not at all as the miserable slaves had sung it. He gained the seaward door, drew it open, and looked fully into a gathering of black, wet figures, with chains festooned among them, awaiting him. [...]

Figures surrounded him, black, naked, wet figures; dead as to sunken faces and flaccid muscles, but horribly alive as to eyes and trembling hands and slack mouths that formed the strange primitive words of the song; separate, yet strung together with a great chain and collar-shackles, like an awful fish on the gigantic line of some demon-angler. All this Gender saw in a rocking, moon-washed moment, while he choked and retched at a dreadful odor of death, thick as fog. (apud Jones 1993b: 54-56)

In Dennis Wheatley's Strange Conflict (1941), when asked to look into how the German U-boats seem to know exactly when and where the supply convoys in the Atlantic will be, the Duke de Richleau and his usual adventure companions find out that a voodoo practitioner from Haiti is travelling on the astral Plane to gain such secret information.

The possibility of using government-controlled zombies for unpaid labour is suggested by R[onald] Chetwynd-Hayes (1919-2001) in The Ghouls (1975). The portrait of such a creature is described in vivid touches, the throaty and almost unintelligible words seeming to be a very important element:

The stranger had forgotten to close his mouth. The lower jaw hung down like a lid with a broken hinge. His threadbare, black overcoat was held in place by a solitary, chipped button. A frayed, filthy red scarf was wound tightly round his scrawny neck. He presented a horrible, loathsome appearance. He also smelt.

The head came round slowly and Mr Goldsmith saw the eyes were now watery, almost as if they were about to spill over the puffy lids and go streaming down the green-tinted cheeks.

Oosed o love hore.'

The voice was a gurgle that began somewhere deep down in the constricted throat and the words seemed to bubble like stew seething in a saucepan. [...]

The head twisted from side to side. The loose skin round the neck concertinaed and the hands beat a tattoo on the chair arms. [...]

The legs, clad in a pair of decrepit corduroy trousers, moved back. The hands pressed down on the chair arms, and the tall form rose. He shuffled towards Mr. Goldsmith and the stomach-heaving stench came with him. [...]

The face was only a few inches from his own. The hands came up and gripped the lapels of his jacket and with surprising strength, he was gently rocked back and forth. He heard the gurgling rumble; it gradually emerged into speech.

'Oi ... um ... dud ... Oi ... um ... dud ... ' [...]

The face had taken on a deeper tinge of green; the eyes were possibly more watery and seemed on the point of dribbling down the cheeks. The mouth was a gaping hole where the black tongue writhed like a flattened worm. The babbling sound cascaded up the windpipe with the threatening roar of a worn out geyser.

'G-oot dr-oosed....' (apud Jones 1993b: 58-59, 64)

Hugh B. Cave (1910-2004) lived in Haiti after World War II and became a real authority on voodoo practices, writing a considerable amount of nonfiction on the subject and incorporating authentic voodoo lore into some of his subsequent novels. Legion of the Dead (1979) is an excellent example; an outsider falls in love with a local girl, earning the ire of the locals who employ zombies in their efforts to get rid of him. In The Evil (1981)--in fact the expanded booklength variant of the novella Mission to Margal (rough draft, 1980; revised form, 1993)--a legless man, dwelling in the remote jungles of Haiti, uses irresistible mental powers to bend others to his will; to destroy the source of such inhuman powers the plot makes use of voodoo magic and zombies. A sequel, The Evil Returns (2001), recapitulates the original story, and adds mind control to the mix. Voodoo is also central to Shades of Evil (1982), but this time without zombies; instead, an evil spirit that manifests itself within a gaseous cloud emerges from the swamps to claim its victims. In Disciples of Dread (1989) a man whose brother is a secret agent with psi powers hides from conspirators in Jamaica, only to discover that he has become the target of voodoo magic; he must match his own abilities against those of a houngan who has chosen him as a victim. Voodoo is allied with the hero in The Lower Deep (1990) when a mysterious force from somewhere in the ocean enslaves the sleeping minds of villagers, drawing them out on mysterious and often deadly missions. The Restless Dead (2003) involves voodoo only peripherally, as an expert on the subject helps a troubled family defeat the inhuman creatures who live secretly beneath their home. (D'Ammassa 2008: 210)

In Green Eyes (1984), Lucius Shepard imagines a team of Louisiana-based scientists that found a curious way of reanimating corpses by injecting them with bacteria extracted from graves; called Bacterially Induced Artificial Personalities, these zombies showed some effects, the most important being the bioluminescent threads form in their eyes, and their limited life-span, sometimes to be counted in days.

In Robert R. Mc Cammon's Eat Me (1989) all the living in the world have died and only the dead still walk the earth. They have learned to speak again and have begun to imitate their old lifestyles, although in very distorted ways. The protagonist is Jim, one of the living dead, who wonders one night just when it was that love died in the world. He is lonely and without purpose, and his wandering takes him to a restaurant that has now become a kind of singles club for the living dead, where rats are currency and dancing is dangerous because the patrons' decaying bodies are beginning to fall apart. There he meets a shy dead girl, Brenda, and the two go through a gentle parody of our contemporary dating ritual, eventually leaving together to go to her room. Traditional sex is, of course, impossible for the dead, so they pleasure themselves in the only way possible, by beginning literally to eat one another. The two individuals are becoming one in a way that is impossible to the living, but at the moment of their consummation they are caught up in a terrible storm that fuses them together and finally stills their unnatural lives forever. Another of their kind stumbles over the remains and realizes that, through their final act of love, they finally escaped the world of the living dead into one of the truly dead. (D'Ammassa 2008: 202-203)

In Voodoo Dreams (1993), Jewell Parker Rhodes describes the atmosphere of New Orleans in the mid-nineteenth century, bringing to the fore the notorious figure of Marie Laveau, the voodoo queen, worshipped and feared by whites, Creoles, free blacks or African slaves. The plot of Bentley Little's The Walking (2000) is set in a town founded by witches whose dead rise from their graves and amble around.

"Cinematic" zombies--the beginnings of a visual saga

Since the 1930s zombies have been best represented in the seventh art. I Walked with a Zombie often details the miseries conjured by "black" magic--powerful knowledge stored away in the hearts and minds of slaves brought over from Africa. Landed Europeans surrounded by acres of unhappy Africans represent a setup full of potential, and when voodoo is used to flip the power structure, repressed sex and violence walk the fields at night. The allure of the "forbidden" other race becomes literally magical and so blameless, and all sorts of violent urges become understandable and even permitted when caused by the dark arts rather than the oppressive and unjust society. (Penner, Schneider & Duncan 2012: 144)

Physically repellent, brutish, and usually mindless, zombies offer the theatre audience a spectacle of death unmitigated by the attractiveness or charisma possessed by other monsters such as vampires, ghosts, or mummies. (Hutchings 2008: 345)

The first zombie movie was the independent production of White Zombie (released July 28, 1932), with a budget of just $50,000--as compared with the Universal ones for Tod Browning's Dracula, $355,000, or Karl Freund's The Mummy, $192,000 (Kay 2008: 6). Jealous Haitian plantation owner Charles Beaumont (Robert Frazer) uses a voodoo powder to transform Madeline Short (Madge Bellamy), newly wed to his visiting friend, Neil Parker (John Harron), into one of the living dead. In this "dark, Gothic fairy tale" (Jones 1999: 412), suggested by Seabrook's The Magic Island, Bela Lugosi made a memorable role as the zombie master 'Murder' Legendre who, using drugs, zombifies the locals or anyone crossing him, transforming them onto mindless muscles to work on his plantation or to assist him in every kind of sinister deeds. White Zombie presented a scenario in which white characters abroad encounter strange native customs and are either overwhelmed by these or --in the case of Legendre--exploit them for nefarious ends. The zombies themselves were in essence slaves, with their climactic assault upon their white master functioning as a coded social rebellion. The racial dimension of this was never far from the surface, but the foreign location helped to disavow any connection with contemporary reality. Other American zombie films of the 1930s and 1940s followed a similar pattern in their emphasis on a white-centered touristic or colonial experience of non-American cultures. (Hutchings 2008: 345)

In the opening scene of White Zombie, a group of pale figures lumber toward the road where a coach has stopped; the coachman spies them, then spurs his horses into action, yelling "Zombies!" As he later helps his two passengers from the coach, he explains his haste in leaving the earlier scene: "They are not men, monsieur," he says. "They are dead bodies. Zombies! The living dead. Corpses taken from their graves and made to work in the sugar mills and fields at night" (apud Kee 2011: 17) Here, we get to the very heart of zombies: They are not men. In one phrase, the coachman has summarized one possible reason the zombie fascinated 1930s America: it cast an entire group of people as beings without humanity, reducing them to an animalistic state and fantasizing that these beings could be made to work endless hours, thus supplying the rest of the world's needs (cf. Kee 2011: 17). Zombification functions in this movie as a tool of oppression, Legendre considering that zombies "do not mind hard work" (apud Krzywinska 2009: 54). Moreover, "the evocation of voodoo, necrophilia, and sexual slavery provides the type of sensationalist content that has long been associated with exploitation cinema." (Krzywinska 2009: 54)

King of the Zombies (released May 14, 1941) with its "dark, late-at-night feel not untouched by dread" (Newman 1994: 43) has a rather strong claustrophobic atmosphere given by both the isolated island situated somewhere between Cuba and Puerto Rico, and the old dark house to be found in its jungle. Overhearing a radio message in German, the pilot James McCarthy (Dick Purcell) deliberately crash-lands his plane near a desolate graveyard. Attracted by the sound of some distant drums, McCarthy, his friend Bill Summers (John Archer), and Bill's black valet Jefferson Jackson (Mantan Moreland), get to a sinister dark mansion to be greeted by a certain Dr. Miklos Sangre (Henry Victor), a voodoo-practitioner foreign agent, an avid collector of skulls and voodoo artifacts, always garbed in cloak and ceremonial mask during the voodoo soul-transferance rites called the Rites of Transmigration. Sent to the servants' quarters, Jackson meets not only Momba, the black butler, Samantha, the cook, Tahama, an ancient domentic and a voodoo priestess, but also two zombies. Later on, McCarthy and Jackson are attacked by other zombies; being bitten, McCarthy turns up in a deep trance and is pronounced dead. Sangre's niece, Barbara Winslow (Joan Woodbury) succeeds to bring out Jackson from her uncle's deadly influence by seasoning his meal with salt. After a secret voodoo ceremony is interrupted, Sangre shots McCarthy three times without effect before tumbling backwards into a pit. The zombies are all black, stone-faced, marching around like windup dolls, their gazes usually directed upwards. (Weaver 1993: 41-44).

I Walked with a Zombie (released March 17, 1943) was, in its director's own words, a horror tale about a "Jane Eyre in the West Indies" (apud Gifford 1973: 163). Arriving on the island of St. Sebastian, the nurse Betsy Connell (Frances Dee) falls in love with her employer, the wealthy plantation owner Paul Holland (Tom Conway), whose wife Jessica (Christine Gordon) is a zombie. Astonished, Betsy discovers that the place is a strange world in which people cry at births--because in slavery times, babies were entering a life of misery--, and rejoice at death because through death they were freed. After an insulin shock treatment fails to "cure" Jessica, Betsy takes her to Houmfort, the location of the island's voodoo ceremonies, incredibly quiet, without any frightening elements--just drumming and dancing. After a native tests Jessica's state by stabbing her in the arm with a sword and drawing no blood, Betsy is taken into the witch doctor's hut only to find out that the voodoo high priest is Mrs. Rand (Edith Barrett), Paul's mother, who justifies her making Jessica a zombie by declaring that she has wanted to avoid the incoming disasters in the family after finding out that Jessica intended to run off with Wesley, Tom's brother. In the end, the inevitable voodoo doll is used by the shaman to make Wesley stab Jessica with an arrow. (Fischer 1991: 668-670).

Valley of the Zombies (released May 24, 1946), unfolding the story of the mad undertaker Ormand Murks (Ian Keith) and his fixation for blood transfusions, still remains in film history today for some chilling dialogue lines, for instance:

In my former profession, death was an everyday occurrence. I began to wonder, would it be possible for a man to appear to be dead, and still be alive? The thought fascinated me, it became an obsession. I gave up everything to find the answer. And at last I found it, in the land of voodoo rites and devil potions--the Valley of the Zombies! (apud Weaver 1993: 262)

Zombie films throughout the world

The walking dead could not be missing in the ever increasing boom of the Mexican horror films in the 1950s and 1960s. In Benito Alazraki's Santo contra los zombies /Invasion of the Zombies (released May 31, 1962), zombies are automatons created by a mad scientist to carry out his nefarious orders (Tombs 1997: 139). The creatures are tough, seem perfectly healthy, and cannot be stopped by bullets. In Cementerio del terror/Cemetery of Terror /Zombie Apocalypse (released December 12, 1985) a cop (Hugo Stiglitz) is haunted by nightmares of the vicious satanic killer Devlon (Jose Gomez Parcero), whom he shot dead in the line of duty. Some teenage girls and boys arrive at an abandoned but inexplicably well-lit house in the middle of a cemetery. Here, one of the boys finds a book of satanic rites and suggests stealing a dead body; breaking into the morgue, they find the body of Parcero, whom, unfortunately, they start resurrecting. And the undead Parcero looking silly, soaked to the bone in his clothes, with frizzy hair and a gray complexion--starts killing again, ripping throats, slashing the stomachs completely open, or impaling the teens with axes. (Kay 2008: 131)

In the 1960s the image of the cinematic zombies changed, perhaps starting with The Plague of the Zombies (released January 9, 1966), a Hammer production with a budget of about 100,000 (Hearn&Barnes 2007: 96). Although figuring again zombies as voodoo-created slave laborers, director John Gilling (1912-1984) also made them look more visceral and aggresive than they had ever been presented before (Hutchings 2008: 345-346). The plot revolves around a wealthy British landowner, Squire Clive Hamilton (John Carson), who returns from Haiti with some voodoo drummers and a vast knowledge of zombie voodoo practices. The story begins in a Cornish village where the local young doctor Peter Thompson (Brook Williams) sends for his old instructor, Professor Sir James Forbes (Andre Morell), after a series of unexplained deaths. Soon, the sinister Hamilton becomes a suspect both because he owns a nearby mine where inexpensive, mindless workers are needed, and because he has a tendency to slice people with glass shortly before they die unexpectedly. There are some interesting scenes (Hamilton cutting the finger of Sylvia, Professor Forbes's daughter, on a wine glass and secretly storing a drop of her blood in a vial; the burning of Hamilton's estate; a fantastic green-tinted nightmare sequence in which the rotting dead burst out of their graves in the churchyard), and some shocking, gory ones (Forbes cuts off with a shovel the head of the zombie Alice, just returned from the dead, in full view of her shocked, grief-stricken husband Thompson; Thompson's nightmare in which zombie hands claw at the grave and dig themselves out of the ground; a large group of zombies, one carrying Alice's head, converge on the unfortunate doctor just as he wakes up from his nightmare; after finding the secret passage into the mine, Sir James sets the controlling zombie doll aflame, which sets fire to all zombies and kills Hamilton and his minions). Roy Ashton's zombie effects are excellent; the main zombie is a menacing threat with sunken eyes and cheekbones, sharply angled eyebrows, and rotten, pointy teeth that accent his imposing build. (Fischer 1991: 471-472; Kay 2008: 48-49) The Spanish films of the 1970s and 1980s were a sublimation of certain forbidden elements--sex, religion, politics--into horror films. For example, in the plots of the various Blind Dead films of Amando de Ossorio (1918-2001), one can find a not too subtle reference to the notion of the old Spain of the Templars rising out of its grave to strike back at the decadent young generation (Tohill&Tombs 1995: 65)

La noche del terror ciego/Tombs of the Blind Dead (released April 10, 1972) takes liberties not only with the legends of the Haitian zombies, but also with the history of the Knights Templars. In this very popular "atmospheric horror film" (Weldon 1983: 67), Ossorio describes the Templars as devil-worshipping villains who seek eternal life by sacrificing young females and drinking their blood. Once the townspeople discover their activities, the knights are hanged and left out for the crows to peck out their eyes. A thousand years later, when travelling across the countryside with two friends, the young Virginia White (Maria Elena Arpon) stumbles upon the Templars' resting place. Their dried corpses rise to attack her, or anyone else who tries to find her. The risen Templars are unique creations, beautifully grotesque skeleton-like beings that wear hoods and ride on undead horses in search of blood. The eyeless hunters move slowly, following their victims' screams, or, if the hunted try to keep quiet, their heartbeats. Shocking scenes include the three-minute sequence in which the Templars follow some escapees onto a passing train and butcher every man, woman, and child on board, or the flashback to the Templars' time among the living when a young woman is stripped, tortured, and sliced open before the knights suck the blood from her veins (Kay 2008: 65-66). After a battle between the townspeople and the horse-riding corpses on the occasion of the five hundredth anniversary of the Templars' execution, much of the action in El ataque de los muertos sin ojos/Return of the Blind Dead (released October 29, 1973) takes place in a church. The atmosfere is creepy, and there are some gory sequences, including a decapitation by sword, a man impaled on a spear, and some severed limbs. (Kay 2008: 73-74) Considered by some critics the best of the entire series, La noche de las gaviotas/Night of the Seagulls (released October 9, 1975) depicts the "exploits of its ancient skeletal villains" (Kay 2008: 87). Dr. Henry Stein (Victor Petit) and his wife Joan (Maria Kosti) arrive at a small seaside fishing village to be met by very rude and unfriendly locals. Soon, besides the ever growing anger of the townsfolk, they have to confront the undead, bitter and unstoppable Knights Templars. Shocking scenes include stabbings, a live victim thrown off a cliff, and some nasty killings. (Kay 2008: 87)

Jorge Grau's Spanish-Italian Non si deve profanare il sonno dei morti/Let Sleeping Copses Lie (released November 28, 1974) foreshadowed the extremely violent zombie movies of the 1980s. The action takes place in the small English town of Windermere. The zombie problem is due to the government's Agriculture Department, specifically the Experimental Section, which is developing a new machine that uses ultrasonic waves and radiation to control insects and other primitive forms of life. Coming out of a crypt in a chapel graveyard, zombies moan loudly, their hollowed, echoed groans producing a chilling sound effect; the walking dead tear apart every encountered living, ripping out intestines and eating them in full color. The climactic hospital carnage is the nastiest sequence; in one scene a secretary has her chest torn right off, and in another an axe is driven into the forehead of a shocked doctor. (Kay 2008: 84)

From the late 1970s onwards, a series of Italian zombie films took the graphic gore and the cannibalistic tendencies to new levels, but reduced almost completely any social or political implications.

In this respect, the director known worldwide was Lucio Fulci (1927-1996). In Zombi 2/Zombie (released August 25, 1979)--budget about $490,000--the walking dead are purely fantastical creatures with traditional Haitian roots, but with strong cannibalistic tendencies. The make-up and the special effects are impressively gory, as they were intended to: exploding bullet squibs, torn flesh, a long wood-splinter impaled in Olga Karlatos's eye, an underwater fight scene between a zombie and a shark, a scene in which the dead creature grasps the living shark and struggles with it, attempting to bite it, before the sharp teeth of the huge fish tears off one limb. In Paura nella citta dei morti viventi/City of the Living Dead (released August 11, 1980) a priest hangs himself in a churchyard cemetery, thus opening a gate to hell through which the dead return to earth to murder the living in the most vicious ways possible. The New York reporter Peter Bell (Christopher George) teams up with a psychic medium, Mary Woodhouse (Katriona MacColl) to close the gate before it remains permanently open. Shocking scenes include a pickaxe swung down into a casket, missing Woodhouse's forehead by inches, brains squeezed by zombies, a drill press is used on a person's head, flesh is torn out--but without being eaten, a woman vomits up her intestines, worms stuck up on faces (Fischer 1991: 464; Kay 2008: 105). E tu vivrai nel terrore! L'aldila/The Beyond (released April 29, 1981) retakes the motif of opening gates/doors to hell through which evil dead creatures return to earth; as compared to to previous film, this time the opening is done accidentally by an unlucky plumber who is working to the renovation of an old hotel in Louisiana. Shocking scenes include eye gougings, glass impalings, sulphuric acid burning through flesh, a tarantula attack that ends with some of the critters exposing ridiculously large fangs and digging them into their incapacitated victims.

Cannibal zombies

The radical change in zombie cinematography came with George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead. Independently-shot with only a $ 114,000 budget (Fischer 1991: 640; Jones 1999: 278; Kay 2008: 54), this 96-minute black-and-white cult film was released on October 1, 1968; the total box office was about $30 million (cf. Forbes, October 30, 2013). Although loosely inspired from Richard Matheson's novel I Am Legend (1954), Romero changed the "identity" of his "monsters," making them act not like vampires, or "traditional" zombies, but as ghouls, the demons from the Arabian folklore which were usually found in the graveyards eating cadavers.

Romero redefined and modernized zombies by relocating them within his contemporary American society, without any connection whatsoever with the Haitian voodoo; at the same time, he was the first director to make zombies cannibalistic creatures, sparing no gory details (for instance, when zombies are gorging themselves on intestines) in depicting their consumption of human flesh. In Romero's conception, the zombie "became an expression of normality itself, of who we were or could become" (Hutchings 2008: 346), or as Peter, a surviving trooper, put it "they're us, that's all" (apud Verevis 2009: 246); thus, the director intelligently explored the social significance of this kind of undead creature, making it "emphasize humanity's nightmare from itself" (Royer 2005: 15). Without being influenced by any outside power (voodoo master, mad scientist), Romero's disturbing and grotesque zombies always follow only their own will, moving as a group toward a very simple and essential--although horrifying--purpose, namely, the human flesh.

The critics' approaches to Night of the Living Dead were different.

From artistic and structural viewpoints, this terrifying shocker "with gore, priceless dialogue and a refreshing lack of scientific explanations, romance, or happy endings" (Weldon 1983: 514) was based on the classic horror themes of the hostility of the living dead (zombies) toward the living, and of the defence of the house by its legal owner. The sealing of the Pennsylvania farmhouse against the attack of a colective force is similar to that in Hitchcock's The Birds; Romero's zombies act much the same as Hitchcock's birds in that their threat is not a matter of individual strength but of en masse attack, obsessive and unyielding. The source of the nightmarish terror does not spring from the hideously distorted faces of the living dead, nor from the possibility that such creatures can exist, but from the continuous efforts of the walking dead to achieve their goal of eating human flesh, no matter how many of them are killed for good in their attempt. (Solomon 1976: 146-148)

From a social viewpoint, this nihilistic perspective--"nothing survives or is worthwhile --liberalism, brotherhood, family, love, integrity, faith, not even heroism" (Derry 2009: 76), pointed out that what was proliferated here was not the principle of death, but that of the living dead creatures who, increasing their numbers by geometric progression, kept arising to kill the living; unfortunately, at the end of the film, one more element appeared, namely, the inhumanity of the living--in this case, the policemen who mistook the real hero Ben (Duane Jones) for a zombie, thus killing him while they were mechanically shooting in the head any of the remaining walking dead. With a plot "ruthlessly nihilistic and stiflingy claustrophobic" (Met 2009: 173), the movie reflects the 1960s America divided both by the increasingly unpopular Vietnam war and the racial tensions, touching on "the dark side of the human condition, from primal fears (of otherness, the internal body, death) to social taboos (cannibalism, matricide, and incest)" (Met 2009: 174). It was also considered "a Vietnam apocalypse, with documentary-style sequences of flesh-eating ghouls being snuffed by cheerfully professional National Guardsmen." (Newman 1999: 176)

In Dawn of the Dead (released September 2, 1978)--alleged budget $1.5 million, highly inflated from about $500,000 by the producer Richard Rubinstein with a view to increase the selling of the foreign copyrights (Kay 2008: 9091), and a worldwide box office of about $55 million--zombies have thrown the United States into chaos; leaders ineffectually debate defense tactics on television while cities are literally overrun. Peter (Ken Foree) and Roger (Scott H. Reiniger) are two SWAT team members who, knowing they cannot stop the overwhelming zombies, decide to flee to safety. With Stephen (David Emge) and Francine (Gaylen Ross), they commandeer a news helicopter and fly to a well-stocked shopping mall, where they barricade themselves in with an endless supply of weapons, clothes, food, and video games. As the weeks and months pass, the survivors forget about the zombies and become complacent and eventually bored in their privileged, solitary existence within the mall. Their cozy world comes to an end when marauding bikers decide to loot the mall, and Stephen's overwhelming desire to protect what he feels are his rightful possessions leads to the rampaging return of the forgotten zombies waiting outside just to feed on human flesh. Some graphically shocking scenes feature a zombie walking around with an IV needle in his arm, exploding heads--including that of a man blown up into a million red fragments, very much like the insides of an exploded watermelon--, helicopter blade decapitations, machetes and screwdrivers shoved into faces, gory disembowelments. And there are some interesting remarks. The first is made by Peter when remembering the apocalyptic disaster his voodoo priest grandfather told him about: "When there's no room left in hell, the dead will walk the earth" (apud Fischer 1991: 646). The second one is also made by Peter and implies the possibility that zombies start showing some signs of intelligence by remembering something from the past: "They don't know why--they just remember ... remember they want to be here [in the mall, our note]. They're after the place." (apud Fischer 1991: 646)

In Day of the Dead (released July 19, 1985)-budget $3.5 million, box office about $34 million --zombies have overrun the world, but a few governmental scientists have found sanctuary in an underground army base under the command of the megalomaniacal Captain Henry Rhodes (Joseph Pilato). Led by the mad Dr. Matthew Logan (Richard Liberty)--nicknamed "Frankenstein" for his surgical dissections of zombies--, the scientists, including the stern Dr. Sarah Bowman (Lori Cardille), are angry at the military's lack of support for their strange experiments meant to determine how much of a zombie's body can be lost before the creature is really dead (memorable is the extremely gory scene in which everything but the brain is stripped away and the zombie is still "alive" (Fischer 1991: 652). Logan attempts to train and keep under control the docile zombie Bub (Sherman Howard), who shows glimmerings of intelligence and seems fascinated by razors. The movie greatly capitalized on horrifying make-up and special effects made by Tom Savini and his team (dirty, gray-skinned and decaying zombies, torn apart and eaten human beings while still alive, realistic limb and head prosthetics combined with pig intestines).

The fourth installment in Romero's zombie mythology, Land of the Dead (released June 18, 2005)--budget $17 million (Kay 2008: 249), box office about $47 million--explicidly shown the overtaken of humanity by the walking dead. The remaining human beings live within a walled city bordered by three rivers, the rich ones in the luxury skyscraper Fiddler's Green, the poor ones in the slums. Outside, zombies--known as "walkers" or "stenches" (Kay 2008: 250) are evolving; they learn rudimentary skills and show more signs of intelligence than expected; however, they look more battered, desiccated and skeletal than in the other installments. For better visual gory effects, Greg Nicotero used the computer-generated imagery (for instance, for showing bloody head shots as realistically as possible) together with live elements.

Diary the Dead (released February 15, 2008)-budget ranging from $2 million to $3 million, box office around $6 million--looks like a documentary shot by the film student Jason Creed (Joshua Close), determined to make an authentic account of the rising zombies. Shocking scenes include zombies killed by various methods (heads pierced with arrows, split in half, or burned through with acid, chests pierced by IV poles, eyeballs poped by defibrillators, entire bodies severed at cheekbones by shotgun bullets); there is also a scene of some ghostly staggering around at the bottom of a swimming pool. (Kay 2008: 282)

Romero has always described his zombie films --especially the original Dead trilogy--as an allegory of revolutionary change overtaking a complacent and corupt operative society seen in three moments everyone has to live in: the night, the dawn, the day (Verevis 2009: 245). The second and third installments "take the undead apocalypse of Night of the Living Dead as far as it can go and hint that a tougher, but kinder, world could arise from the flesh-eating remnants of the sick society." (Newman 1999: 183)

After Romero's films, zombies were seen as walking corpses devoid of intelligence that were not controlled by anybody else, were often rotting, had a purple or blue colored skin, and were frequently feasting on the brains or flesh of living human beings. Modern zombies--such as those in 28 Days Later (2002) or Dawn of the Dead (2004) --are capable of moving very fast, and, by bitting the humans, are infecting them with an incurable virus which transform those still living into the traditional mindless and soulless creatures; the only way to kill these zombies is to destroy their brains.

The zombies' never-ending cinematographic saga ...

In Dead & Buried (released May 29, 1981) --budget about $6 million (Kay 2008: 120)--Gary A. Sherman moved the traditional Caribbean zombies into a New England town. Any visitor coming to town is violently killed by the locals, only to return to life as residents who behave as if nothing bad or evil has happened to them. The sheriff Dan Gillis (James Farentino) finds books on witchcraft and voodoo in his schoolteacher wife's drawer and discovers that she has been giving her students lessons in the occult, and making references to a tribe in central Peru whose members were under the complete control of a voodoo master. The walking dead look like perfectly normal people and they do not eat flesh; instead, they douse their victims with gasoline and set them on fire, they brutally slash faces and throats, they shoot acid into a man's nostrils, or, due to Stan Winston's exceptional special effects, they realistically plunge a hypodermic needle into a man's eye.

Dan O'Bannon's The Return of the Living Dead (released August 16, 1985), with a budget of $4 million and a box office of about $14 million, is known to have introduced the concept of brain-eating zombies--not only flesh-eating ones--in black comedies. The story begins at Uneeda, a medical supply warehouse storing, among other things, medical cadavers. Freddy (Thom Mathews), a young trainee, is given a tour by veteran worker Frank (James Karen). The two accidentally crack a misplaced military canister and are sprayed in the face with the experimental chemical Trioxin, which has the nasty side effect of raising the dead. As the gas leaks outside, Freddy's punk friends are waiting for his shift to end across the street in a nearby cemetery, where they suddenly come face-to-face with zombies a different kind, for that matter. They cannot be stopped by any means; they continue to move and attack even after being beaten with pickaxes, saw into individual pieces, or impaled right in the brains. The dead can also talk (albeit slowly), and they are on a hunting spree through Louisville, Kentucky, in search of a very specific part of their victims' bodies, namely, the brains. The make-up effects are terrific, especially the Tarman, a bulging-eyed creature, coated in a black, tarry substance, "one of the best-looking zombies in history." (Kay 2008: 146)

In Re-Animator (released October 18, 1985)-budget $900,000, box office about $2 million-director Stuart Gordon (1947-) loosely inspired from Howard P. Lovecraft's novella and confined the zombie action in the morgue of the Miskatonic University, the walking dead, be they bright yellowed or purple-skinned being only interested in tearing the living apart. The creatures can be stopped only when their brains are destroyed, not even when medical saws or drills are used against them.

The megalomaniacal Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs) uses a reanimating serum to create crazed, out-of-control corpses staggering about, some of their body parts, intestines included, perambulating on their own. Speaking about the film, Gordon Stuart said that it is about "conquering death. I mean Herbert West's dream is something that all doctors have shared, and that is to prolong life as long as you possibly can. They used to believe that when your heart stopped, you were dead. [...] Now what they're calling death is defined as 'brain death,' which happens six to 12 minutes after the heart stops. West is trying to conquer brain death. What he is trying to do is prolong that six to 12 minutes as long as he possibly can so that a person who has died, even though their brain has never received any blood or oxygen can be brought back. [...] Even if there is brain damage, it's still better to have that person living than dead." (apud Fischer 1991: 488)

There are plenty of striking gory scenes. Using a shovel, West decapitates the villainous Dr. Carl Hill (David Gale), then reanimates his body and head separately, but the head keeps falling over until West impales it on a bill spike; not discouraged by having his head cut off, Hill has his body carry his severed head in a tray. Later, in the film's "most Dantean set piece" (Atkinson 2009: 306), Hill sexually abuses the gurney-tied, naked spread-eagled Megan Halsey (Barbara Crampton) by using his decapitated head held in his hands. After the zombies are injected with West's reagent, their innards burst out of their bodies and attack, the intestines wrapping around the victims like tendrils.

Brian Yuzna's sequel--Bride of Re-Animator/ Re-Animator 2 (released October 1989 in Spain, July 8, 1990 in England, February 22, 1991 in New York) with a budget of $2.5 million--did not have the anticipated success, especially because of certain script slips (for instance, at the beginning West is alive in South America). West (Jeffrey Combs) and Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott) busy themselves with reanimating different combinations of body parts, succeeding to make another Frankenstein's bride, one "skinless, sewn-together and grotesquely muscled" (Kay 2008: 185). Jeffries Combs retakes the part of Dr. Herbert West in the $3 million budget Beyond Re-Animator (released April 4, 2003). Fascinated by West's work, the young doctor Howard Phillips (Jason Barry) takes a position at the same penitentiary where the West has been incarcerated for the past thirteen years. The two secretly begin work on new ways to raise the dead, and not before long West develops a way to insert personalities into his zombified patients, producing walking dead with split personas who believe they are a rat one minute and another character the next. Shocking scenes include ear chewings, a flesh-boiling electrocution, a decapitation, reanimated inmates with exploding intestines.

In John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness (released October 23, 1987)--budget about $3 million, box office about $14 million--the main villain in a seven million year old life-form still living as a green gunk liquid in a Plexiglas canister in the basement of a Los Angeles church. When some graduate students and research scientists try to find out the nature of the liquid, they either get killed or squirted in the mouth to become palefaced zombies who start wandering the neighborhood, firing green-tinged blasts out of their mouths and infecting everyone encountered. Shocking scenes include maggots, various other icky insects, bugs completely engulfing and apparently devouring a character, impalements, stabbings, dismemberments, beatings with wooden pieces of furniture, sprayings of satanic goo.

In The Serpent and the Rainbow (released February 5, 1988)--budget $7 million, box office about $19.6 million--, Wes Craven inspired from Wade Davis's nonfiction book, and took zombies back to a realistic environment in Haiti; however, there are some bizarre and disturbing terror scenes, finally revealed as drug-induced hallucinations (hands reaching from the ground and grabbing people to drag them into the soil, corpses rising and approaching the living. Shocking scenes include both the sequences in which Dennis Alan (Bill Pullman), paralyzed by a zombie drug, is buried alive with a roaming tarantula, and some atrocious torture moments.

Night of the Living Dead (released October 19, 1990)--budget $4.2 million, box office of about $6 million--is Tom Savini's remake of Romero's classic. Without much blood or too graphic violence, this movie is remarkable because of the computer-designed prosthetics and make-ups, of the fake limbs, puppets, and of the cloudy contact lenses fitted to the walking dead to realistically create "a soulless vacancy behind their eyes." (Kay 2008: 187)

Peter Jackson's Braindead (released August 13, 1992)--budget $1.8 million, box office about $250,000--is sometimes considered "the wildest, wackiest zombie movie ever made--and arguably the goriest film in the history of cinema" (Kay 2008: 195) because, in the director's own estimation, about three hundred liters of blood were pumped every sixty seconds during the climax scene. Young Lionel Cosgrove (Timothy Balme) has always lived with his overbearing mother Vera (Elizabeth Moody), but everything changes when he meets Paquita Maria Sanchez (Diana Penalver) and Lionel wants to live as he thinks fit. Unfortunately, at the zoo Vera is bitten by a Sumatran rat-monkey, a hybrid creature resulted from a monkey and a plague-carrying rat. She grows sick, her ears fall off and puss-filled lesions begin to grow and pop; after dying, she is resurrected as a rapidly decaying, flesh-eating zombie who spreads the infection to others.

For a change, the bite of a chimpanzee, kept in a cage in a Cambridge medical research laboratory, is the cause of spreading a highly contageous deadly virus called Rage in Danny Boyle's post-apocalyptic 28 Days Later, released on November 1, 2002, with a budget of $8 million, and a box office of about $82 million. The ape's blood and saliva transmit the uncurable virus to the entire London population, turning everybody infected into maniacs wandering in a permanent state of murderous rage, their only goal being to tear human flesh apart, further spreading the infection. They look like the classic undead flesh-eaters, with varicose veins, bloodshot eyes, blood and various fluids flowing from their eyes, nose, and mouth. The movie tries to make people understand the dezastruous results of unbridled scientific research concerning modified genetic elements. (Kay 2008: 232-233; Hunter 2009: 385)

In Dawn of the Dead (released March 19, 2004) --budget about $28 million, box office about $102 million--the zombies carry a virus-like infection that can be spread only through bites. The makeups and effects make the walking dead look from fresh and bloody, purple and bloated, to rotting, discolored, and charred. (Kay 2008: 238)

Short Stories and Novellas (selected titles): Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Schalken the Painter, 1839; Edgar Allan Poe, The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar, 1845; Lafcadio Hearn, The Country of the Comers-Back, 1889; E. & H. Heron, The Story of Konnor Old House, 1899; Howard P. Lovecraft, Herbert West--Reanimator, 1922; M. R. James, A Warning to the Curious, 1925; Henry S. Whitehead, Jumbee, 1926; Howard P. Lovecraft, The Outsider, 1926; Howard P. Lovecraft, Pickman's Model, 1927; Seabury Quinn, The Corpse-Master, 1929; Henry S. Whitehead, The Passing of a God, 1931; Garnett Weston, Salt Is Not for Slaves, 1931; August Derleth, The House in the Magnolias, 1932; Vivian Meik, White Zombie, 1933; John Knox, Men Without Blood, 1935; Arthur Leo Zagat, The Crawling Madness, 1935; Thomas Burke, The Hollow Man, 1936; Arthur J. Burks, Dance of the Damned, 1936; Edith Jacobson & Ejler Jacobson, Corpses on Parade, 1938; Rhorp McClusky, White Zombies Walked, 1939; Henry Kuttner, The Graveyard Rats, 1939; Thorp McClusky, While Zombies Walked, 1939; Manly Wade Wellman, The Song of the Slaves, 1940; Ralston Shields, Vengeance of the Living Dead, 1940; Theodore Sturgeon, It, 1940; Day Keene, League of the Grateful Dead, 1941; Anthony Boucher, They Bite, 1942; Gordon Leigh Bromley, American Zombie, 1945; Robert Bloch, The Dead Don't Die, 1951; Robert E. Howard, Pigeons from Hell, 1951; W. Stanley Moss, The Zombie of Alto Parana, 1952; Basil Copper, The Grey House, 1966; Charles Birkin, Ballet Negre, 1967; Harlan Ellison & Robert Silverberg, The Song the Zombie Sang, 1970; David A. Riley, After Nightfall, 1970; Karl Edward Wagner, Sticks, 1974; Ramsey Campbell, Rising Generation, 1975; R. Chetwynd-Hayes, The Ghouls, 1975; Richard Matheson & Richard Christian Matheson, Where There's a Will, 1980; Lisa Tuttle, Treading the Maze, 1981; Charles L. Grant, Quietly Now, 1981; Garry Kilworth, Love Child, 1982; Clive Barker, Sex, Death and Starshine, 1984; Kim Newman, Patricia's Profession, 1985; Les Daniels, They re Coming for You, 1986; Dennis Etchinson, The Blood Kiss, 1987; Brian Lumley, The Disapproval of Jeremy Cleave, 1989; Joe R. Lansdale, On the Far Side of the Cadillac Desert with Dead Folks, 1989; Ramsey Campbell, It Helps If You Sing, 1989; Richard Layman, Mess Hall, 1989; Robert McCammon, Eat Me, 1989; Steve Rasnic Tem, Bodies and Heads, 1989; Chet Williamson, The Cairnwell Horror, 1990; Mort Castle, The Old Man and the Dead, 1992; Gahan Wilson, Come One, Come All, 1992; Nicholas Royle, The Crucian Pit, 1993; David Riley, Out of Corruption, 1993; Graham Masterton, The Taking of Mr Bill, 1993; David Sutton, Clinically Dead, 1993; Hugh B. Cave, Mission to Margal, 1993; Michael Marshall Smith, Later, 1993; Peter Tremayne, Marbh Bheo, 1993; Christopher Fowler, Night After Night of the Living Dead, 1993; Kevin J. Anderson, Bringing the Family, 1993; Karen Haber, Red Angels, 1993; Stephen King, Home Delivery, 1993; Geoffrey Landis, Dead Right, 1993; Mary A. Turzillo, April Flowers, November Harvest, 1993; Michael Swanwick, The Dead, 1996; Dale Bailey, Death and Suffrage, 2002; Yvonne Navarro, Feeding the Dead Inside, 2006; Joe R. Lansdale, Deadman's Road, 2007; Scott Edelman, Live People Don't Understand, 2009.

Novels (selected titles): Gustave Aymard, Les Vaudoux, 1910; Theodore Roscoe, A Grave Must Be Deep, serial 1934-1935, volume 1989; Richard E. Goddard, The Whistling Ancestors, 1936; Dennis Wheatley, Strange Conflict, 1941; Richard Matheson, I Am Legend, 1954; Richard Condon, The Manchurian Candidate, 1959; Ira Levin, The Stepford Wives, 1972; James Herbert, The Fog, 1975; Peter Dickinson, Walking Dead, 1977; Hugh B. Cave, Legion of the Dead, 1979; Robert R. McCammon, Night Boat, 1980; Dennis Etchison, The Fog, 1980; J. N. Williamson, The Houngan, 1980; Piers Anthony, The Magic of Xanth, 1981; Peter Tremayne, Zombie!, 1981; Curt Selby, I, Zombie, 1982; Guy N. Smith, The Undead, 1983; Guy N. Smith, The Walking Dead, 1984; Barbara Hambly, The Ladies of Mandrigyn, 1984; Grant Allen, The Beckoning Hand, 1984; Lucius Shepard, Green Eyes, 1984; Gary Brandner, Carrion, 1986; Joe R. Lansdale, Dead in the West, 1986; Patricia Geary, Strange Toys, 1987; Sheri S. Tepper, The Bones, 1987; Candace Caponegro, The Breeze Horror, 1988; Rick Hautala, Moonwalker, 1989; Shaun Hudson, Erebus, 1990; Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man, 1991; Richard Laymon, One Rainy Night, 1991; Terry Pratchett. Witches Abroad, 1991; Harry Harrison, Bill, the Galactic Hero: On the Planet of Zombie Vampires, 1991; Jewell Parker Rhodes, Voodoo Dreams, 1993; Simon Clarke, Blood Crazy, 1995; Joyce Carol Oates, Zombie, 1995; Michael Slade, Zombi, 1996; Del Stone Jr., Dead Heat, 1996; John Russo, The Return of the Living Dead, 1997; Lucius Shepard, Green Eyes, 1998; S. P. Somtow, Darker Angels, 1998; Michael Reaves, Voodoo Child, 1998; Darrin Brent Patterson, Project Phoenix: Dead Rising, 2000; Bentley Little, The Walking, 2000; Brad Gouch, Zombie00, 2000; Mark E. Rogers, The Dead, 2001; Christopher Fowler, Breathe, 2004; Tim Lebbon, Berserk, 2006; Stephen King, The Cell, 2006; Joe McKinney, Dead City, 2006; Z. A. Recht, Plague of the Dead, 2006; Bryan Smith, Deathbringer, 2006; Dead Sea, 2007; John Karr, Dark Resurrection, 2007; Nathan Tucker, Eve of the Dead, 2007; Sarah Langan, The Missing, 2007; Keith Knapp, Moonlight, 2007; Cherie Priest, Not Flesh Nor Feathers, 2007; George Mann, The Affinity Bridge, 2008; Anthony Giangregorio, Dead Mourning, 2009; Jane Austen, Seth Grahame-Smith, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, 2009; S. G. Browne, Breathers: A Zombie's Lament, 2009; Anthony Giangregorio, Rise of the Dead: A Zombie Novel, 2009; Anthony Giangregorio, Revolution of the Dead: A Zombie Novel, 2009; Cherie Priest, Boneshaker, 2009.

Novels--Series (alphabetically by authors, selected titles)

Hugh B. Cave--Evil: # 1: The Evil, 1981; #2: Shades of Evil, 1982; # 3: The Evil Returns, 2001.

Rhiannon Frater--As the World Dies: #1: The First Days, 2008; #2: Fighting to Survive, 2009; #3: Siege, 2009;

Walter Greatshell--Xombies: #1: Xombies, 2004; #2: Xombies: Apocalypse Blue, 2009.

Brian Keene--Rising: #1: The Rising, 2003; #2: City of the Dead, 2005; #3: Deliverance, 2015.

David Moody--Autumn: #1: Autumn, 2005, revised edition 2010; #2: The. City, 2005, revised edition 2011; #3: Purification, 2005, revised edition 2011; #4: Disintegration, 2011; #5: Aftermath, 2012; #6: The Human Condition, 2008, revised edition 2013.

Joe Schreiber--Star Wars: #1: Death Troopers, 2009; #2: Red Harvest, 2010.

Terry Webb--The Phoenix Gene: #1: The Phoenix Gene, 2007; #2: The Phoenix Gene: Aftermath, 2007.

David Wellington--Zombie: #1: Monster Island, 2006; #2: Monster Nation, 2006; #3: Monster Planet, 2006.

Anthologies (selected titles): Peter Haining, ed., Zombie: Stories of the Walking Dead, 1985; John Skipp, Craig Spector, eds., Book of the Dead, 1989; Martin H. Greenberg, Charles G. Waugh, eds., Back from the Dead, 1991; John Skipp, Craig Spector, eds., Still Dead: Book of the Dead 2, 1992; Stephen Jones, ed., The Mammoth Book of Zombies, 1993; Byron Preiss, John Betancourt, eds., The Ultimate Zombie, 1993; James Lowder, ed., The Book of All Flesh, 2004; James Lowder, ed., The Book of More Flesh, 2004; James Lowder, ed., The Book of Final Flesh, 2004; D. L. Snell, Elijah Hall, eds., The Undead: Zombie Anthology, 2005; John Skipp, ed., Mondo Zombie, 2006; D. L. Snell, Travis Adkins, eds., The Undead 2: Skin and Bones, 2007; D. L. Snell, Travis Adkins, eds., The Undead 3: Flesh Feast, 2007; John Joseph Adams, ed., The Living Dead, 2008; Keith Gouveia, ed., Bits of the Dead, 2008; Anthony Giangregorio, ed., Book of the Dead: A Zombie Anthology, 2009; A. P. Fuchs, ed., Dead Science: A Zombie Anthology, 2009; John Skipp, ed., Zombies: Encounters with the Hungry Dead, 2009; Stephen Jones, ed., The Dead that Walk, 2009; Anthony Giangregorio, ed., Book of the Dead 2: Not Dead Yet, 2009; Paula Guran ed., Zombies: The Recent Dead, 2010; Anthony Giangregorio, ed., Book of the Dead 3: Dead and Rotting, 2010; Anthony Giangregorio, ed., Book of the Dead 4: Dead Rising, 2010; Anthony Giangregorio, ed., Dead History: A Zombie Anthology, 2010; Anthony Giangregorio, ed., Dead History 2: A Zombie Anthology, 2010; Anthony Giangregorio, ed., Love Is Dead: A Zombie Anthology, 2010; Chris Keeslar, ed., My Zombie Valentine, 2010; Christopher Golden, ed., The New Dead: A Zombie Anthology, 2010/Zombie: An Anthology of the Undead, 2010; James Roy Daley, ed., Best New Zombie Tales, 2010; James Roy Daley, ed., Best New Zombie Tales 2, 2010; Stephen Jones, ed., The Mammoth Book of Zombie Apocalypse!, 2010; Anthony Giangregorio, ed., Zombie Buffet: An Undead Anthology, 2011; Anthony Giangregorio, ed., Dead Christmas: A Zombie Anthology, 2011; Anthony Giangregorio, ed., Headshots Only: A Zombie Anthology, 2011; Otto Penzler, ed., Zombies! Zombies! Zombies!, 2011; James Roy Daley, ed., Best New Zombie Tales 3, 2011; James Roy Daley, ed., Zombie Kong Anthology, 2012; Christopher Golden, ed., 21st Century Dead: A Zombie Anthology, 2012; Paula Guran, ed., Extreme Zombies, 2012; Anthony Giangregorio, ed., Gnomes of the Dead: A Zombie Anthology, 2012; Michael S. Gardner, Matt Nord, eds., Zombies Gone Wild! An Anthology, 2012; Stephen Jones, ed., A Clutch of Zombies, e-book, 2012; Stephen Jones, ed., The Mammoth Book of Zombie Apocalypse! Fightback, 2012; Stephen Jones, ed., Zombies! Tales of the Walking Dead, 2013; Robert Helmbrecht, ed., A Quick Bite of Flesh: An Anthology of Zombie Flash Fiction, 2014; Paula Guran ed., Zombies: More Recent Dead, 2014.

Plays (selected titles): Kenneth Webb, Zombie, 1932.

Filmography (selected titles): White Zombie, United States, 1932, producers: Edward Halperin, Phil Goldstone, director: Victor Halperin, writing credits: Garnett Weston, story Garnett Weston, novel The Magic Island William B. Seabrook, cinematography: Arthur Martinelli, film editing: Howard McLernon, special effects: Harold Anderson, make-up: Jack P. Pierce, Carl Axcelle, art director: Ralph Berger, music: Abe Meyer, cast: Bela Lugosi, Madge Bellamy, Joseph Cawtorn, Robert Frazer, John Harron, Brandon Hurst, George Burr MacAnnan, Frederick Peters, Annette Stone, John Printz, Dan Crimmins, Claude Morgan, John Fergusson; Revolt of the Zombies, United States, 1936, producer: Edward Halperin, director: Victor Halperin, writing credits: Howard Higgins, Rollo Lloyd, Victor Halperin, cinematography: Arthur Martinelli, film editing: Douglas Biggs, special effects: Ray Mercer, make-up: Philip Scheer, art director: Leigh Smith, music: Abe Meyer, William Axt, cast: Dorothy Stone, Dean Jagger, Roy D'Arcy, Robert Noland, George Cleveland, E. Alyn Warren, Carl Stockdale, William Crowell, Teru Shimada, Adolph Millard; King of the Zombies, United States, 1941, producer: Lindsley Parsons, director: Jean Yarbrough, writing credits: Edmond Kelso, cinematography: Mack Stengler, film editing: Richard Currier, art director: Charles Clague, set decoration: Dave Milton, music: Edward Kay, cast: Dick Purcell, Joan Woodbury, Mantan Moreland, Henry Victor, John Archer, Patricia Stacey, Guy Usher, Marguerite Whitten, Leigh Whipper, Jimmy Davis, Laurence Criner; Revenge of the Zombies, United States, 1943, producer: Lindsley Parsons, director: Steve Sekely, writing credits: Edmund Kelso, Van Norcross, cinematography: Mack Stengler, film editing: Richard Currier, art director: Dave Milton, music: Edward Kay, cast: Robert Lowery, John Carradine, Gale Storm, Veda Ann Borg, Mantan Moreland, Bob Steele, Mauritz Hugo, Barry McCollum, James Baskett, Sybil Lewis; I Walked with a Zombie, United States, 1943, producer: Val Lewton, director: Jacques Tourneur, writing credits: Curt Siodmak, Ardel Wray, story Inez Wallace, novel Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte, cinematography: J. Roy Hunt, film editing: Mark Robson, make-up: Maurice Seiderman, art directors: Albert S. D'Agostino, Walter E. Keller, set decoration: Al Fields, Darrell Silvera, music: Roy Webb, cast: James Ellison, Frances Dee, Tom Conway, Edith Barrett, James Bell, Christine Gordon, Teresa Harris, Darby Jones; Voodoo Man, United States, 1944, producers: Jack Dietz, Sam Katzman, Barney Sarecky, director: William Beaudine, writing credits: Robert Charles, cinematography: Marcel Le Picard, film editing: Carl Pierson, art director: Dave Milton, music: Edward Kay, cast: Bela Lugosi, John Carradine, George Zucco, Wanda McKay, Louise Currie, Michael Ames, Ellen Hall, Terry Walker, Mary Currier, Claire James, Henry Hall, Dan White, Pat McKee; Valley of the Zombies, United States, 1946, producers: Dorrell McGowan, Stuart McGowan, director: Philip Ford, writing credits: Dorrell McGowan, Stuart McGowan, Story Royal K. Cole, Sherman L. Lowe, cinematography: Reggie Lanning, film editing: William P. Thompson, special effects: Howard Lydecker, Theodore Lydecker, Lewis W. Physioc, make-up: Bob Mark, art director: Hilyard Brown, set decoration: Allan Alperin, John McCarthy Jr., music: Edward H. Plumb, cast: Robert Livingston, Lorna Gray, Ian Keith, Thomas Jackson, Charles Trowbridge, Earle Hodgins, LeRoy Mason, William Haade, Wilton Graff, Charles Cane; Creature with the Atom Brain, United States, 1955, producer: Sam Katzman, director: Edward L. Cahn, writing credits: Curt Siodmak, story Curt Siodmak, cinematography: Fred Jackman Jr., film editing: Aaron Stell, special effects: Jack Erickson, art director: Paul Palmentola, set decoration: Sidney Clifford, music: George Dunning, Hans J. Salter, cast: Richard Denning, Angela Stevens, S. John Launer, Michael Granger, Gregory Gay, Linda Bennett, Tristram Coffin, Harry Lauter, Larry Brake, Charles Evans, Pierre Watkin; Zombies of Mora Tau, United States, 1957, producer: Sam Katzman, director: Edward L. Cahn, writing credits: Bernard Gordon, story George Plympton, cinematography: Benjamin H. Kline, film editing: Jack Ogilvie, art director: Paul Palmentola, set decoration: Sidney Clifford, music: Misha Bakaleinikoff, cast: Gregg Palmer, Allison Hayes, Autumn Russell, Joel Ashley, Morris Ankrum, Marjorie Eaton, Gene Roth, Leonard Geer, Karl Davis, William Baskin; The Dead One/Blood of the Zombie, United States, 1961, producers: Barry Mahon, Brandon Chase, director: Barry Mahon, writing credits: Barry Mahon, cinematography: Mark Dennis, film editing: Alan Smiler, make-up: Richard Kereszi, art director: Stanley Raines, set decoration: Ray Menard, Walt Steinbrenner, cast: John McKay, Linda Ormond, Monica Davis, Clyde Kelly, Darlene Myrick, Lacey Kelly, Paula Maurice, Robert Henderson, Wilson Scott, Joe Burton; Santos contra los zombies/Invasion of the Zombies/Santos vs. the Zombies, Mexico, 1962, producer: Alberto Lopez, director: Benito Alazraki, writing credits: Benito Alazraki, Antonio Orellana, story Fernando Oses, cinematography: Jose Ortiz Ramos, film editing: Jose W. Bustos, special effects: Juan Munoz Ravelo, make-up: Carmen Palomino, art director: Jose Silva, music: Raul Lavista, cast: Santo, Armando Silvestre, Jaime Fernandez, Dagoberto Rodriguez, Irma Serrano, Carlos Agosti, Ramon Bugarini, Fernando Oses; Roma contro Roma/Rome Against Rome/War of the Zombies/Night Star: Goddess of Electra, Italy, 1963, producer: Samuel Z. Arkoff, director: Giuseppe Vari, writing credits: Piero Pierotti, Marcello Sartarelli, story Ferruccio De Martino & Massimo De Rita, cinematography: Gabor Pogany, special effects: Ugo Amadoro, Cataldo Galiano, Paolo Ricci, make-up: Euclide Santoli, set decoration: Giorgio Giovannini, Massimo Tavazzi, music: Roberto Nicolosi, cast: John Drew Barrymore, Susy Andersen, Ettore Manni, Ida Galli, Mino Doro, Ivano Staccioli, Philippe Hersent, Andrea Checchi, Livia Contardi, Matilda Calman; The Plague of the Zombies, United Kingdom, 1966, producer: Anthony Nelson Keys, director: John Gilling, writing credits: Peter Bryan, cinematography: Arthur Grant, film editing: Chris Barnes, special effects: Les Bowie, make-up: Roy Ashton, art director: Don Mingaye, set decoration: Bernard Robinson, music: James Bernard, cast: Andre Morell, Diane Clare, Brook Williams, Jacqueline Pearce, John Carson, Alexander Davion, Michael Ripper, Marcus Hammond, Dennis Chinnery, Louis Mahoney, Roy Royston, Ben Aris; Night of the Living Dead, United States, 1968, producers: Karl Hardman, Russell W. Streiner, director: George A. Romero, writing credits: John Russo, George A. Romero, cinematography: George A. Romero, film editing: George A. Romero, special effects: Tony Pantanello, Regis Survinski, make-up: Bruce Capristo, cast: Duane Jones, Judith O'Dea, Karl Hardman, Marilyn Eastman, Keith Wayne, Judith Ridley, Kyra Schon, Charles Craig, Bill Heinzman, George Kosana, Frank Doak, Bill Cardille, A. C. McDonald, Samuel R. Solito; La noche del terror ciego/Night of the Blind Dead/Tombs of the Blind Dead/Tombs of the Evil Dead, Spain, Portugal, 1972, producers: Jose Antonio Perez, Salvadore Romero, director: Amando de Ossorio, writing credits: Amando de Ossorio; Jesus Navarro Carrion, cinematography: Pablo Ripoll, film editing: Jose Antonio Rojo, special effects: Jose Gomez Soria, make-up: Jose Luis Campos, art director: Jaime Duarte De Brito, set decoration: Juan Garcia, music: Anton Garcia Abril, cast: Lone Fleming, Cesar Burner, Helen Harp, Joseph Thelman, Rufino Ingles, Veronica Llimera, Simon Arriaga, Francisco Sanz, Juan Cortes; La rebelion de las muertas/Vengeance of the Zombies/ Walk of the Dead, Spain, 1973, producers: Ricardo Munoz Suay, J. A. Perez Giner, director: Leon Klimovsky, writing credits: Jacinto Molina [Paul Naschy], story Jacinto Molina, cinematography: Francisco Sanchez Munoz, film editing: Antonio Ramirez de Loaysa, special effects: Manuel Gomez, Eugenio Vizelli, make-up: Miguel Sese, set decoration: Gumersindo Andres, music: Juan Carlos Calderon, cast: Paul Naschy, Rommy, Mirta Miller, Maria Kosti, Aurora de Alba, Louis Ciges, Pierre Besari, Antonio Pica, Elsa Zabala, Monserrat Julio, Ramon Lillo, Norma Kastel, Ingrid Rabel; La orgia de los muertos/ The Orgy of the Dead/Terror of the Living Dead/Beyond the Evil Dead/The Hanging Woman, Spain, Italy, 1973, producer: Ramona Plana, director: Jose Luis Merino, writing credits: Enrico Colombo, Jose Luis Merino, cinematography: Modesto Rizzolo, film editing: Sandro Lena, make-up: Julian Ruiz, Bianca Verdirosi, art directors: Francesco Di Stefano, Eduardo Torre, music: Francesco De Masi, cast: Stan Cooper [Stelvio Rosi], Maria Pia Conte, Dianick Zorakowska, Pasquale Pasile, Gerard Tichy, Aurora de Alba, Leonora Vargas, Jose Cardenas, Isarco Ravaioli, Paul Naschy; El ataque de los muertos sin ojos/Return of the Blind Dead/Return of the Blind Dead, Spain, 1973, producer: Ramon Plana, director: Amando de Ossorio, writing credits: Amando de Ossorio, story Amando de Ossorio, cinematography: Miguel Fernandez Mila, film editing: Jose Antonio Rojo, special effects: Amando de Ossorio, make-up: Jose Luis Campos, set decoration: Eduardo Hidalgo, music: Anton Garcia Abril, cast: Tony Kendall, Fernando Sancho, Esperanza Roy, Frank Brana. Jose Canalejas, Loreta Tovar, Ramon Lillo, Lone Fleming, Maria Nuria, Jose Thelman, Juan Cazalilla; La noche de las gaviotas/Night of the Seagulls, Spain, 1975, producers: Jose Antonio Perez Giner, Modesto Perez Redondo, Jose Angel Santos, director: Amando de Ossorio, writing credits: Amando de Ossorio, cinematography: Francisco Sanchez, film editing: Pedro del Rey, special effects: Amando de Ossorio, Pablo Perez, make-up: Cristobal Criado, Amando de Ossorio, set decoration: Gumersindo Andres, music: Antonio Garcia Abril, cast: Victor Petit, Maria Kosty, Sandra Mozarowsky, Jose Antonio Calvo, Julie James, Javier de Rivera, Pilar Vela, Fernando Villena, Maria Vidal; Non si deve profanare il sonno dei morti/No profanar el sueno de los muertos/Let Sleeping Corpses Lie/Don't Open the Window, Italy, Spain, 1974, producers: Edmondo Amati, Manuel Perez, director: Jorge Grau, writing credits: Sandro Continenza, Marcello Coscia, Miguel Rubio, cinematography: Francisco Sempere, film editing: Domingo Garcia, Vincenzo Tomassi, special effects: Giannetto de Rossi, Luciano Byrd, Juan Antonio Balandin, make-up: Gianetto De Rossi, art directors: Carlo Leva, Rafael Ferri, music: Giuliano Sorgini, cast: Christine Galbo, Ray Lovelock, Arthur Kennedy, Aldo Massasso, Giorgio Trestini, Roberto Posse, Jose Luiz Lifante, Jeannine Mestre, Gengher Gatti, Fernando Hilbeck, Vera Drudi, Vicente Vega, Francisco Sanz, Paul Benson; Sugar Hill/The Zombies of Sugar Hill, United States, 1974, producers: Elliott Schick, Samuel Z. Arkoff, director: Paul Maslansky, writing credits: Tim Kelly, cinematography: Robert Jessup, film editing: Carl Kress, special effects: Roy L. Downey, make-up: Hank Edds, music: Dino Fekaris, Nick Zesses, cast: Marki Bey, Robert Quarry, Don Pedro Colley, Betty Anne Rees, Richard Lawson, Zara Cully, Charles Robinson, Larry D. Johnson, Rick Hagood, Ed Geldart, Albert J. Baker, Raymond E. Simpson; The Dead Don't Die, United States, 1975, producers: Henry Coleman, Douglas S. Cramer, Wilford Lloyd Baumes, director: Curtis Harrington, writing credits: Robert Bloch, pov. Robert Bloch, cinematography: James Crabe, film editing: Ronald J. Fagan, art director: Robert Kinoshita, set decoration: John Franco Jr., music: Robert Prince, cast: George Hamilton, Linda Cristal, Joan Blondell, Ralph Meeker, James McEachin, Reggie Nalder, Ray Milland, Jerry Douglas, Milton Parsons, William O'Connell, Yvette Vickers; Shock Waves/Death Corps/Almost Human, United States, 1977, producer: Reuben Trane, director: Ken Wiederhorn, writing credits: John Kent Harrison, Ken Wiederhorn, cinematography: Reuben Trane, film editing: Norman Gay, make-up: Alan Ormsby, art director: Jessica Sack, music: Richard Einhorn, cast: Peter Cushing, John Carradine, Brooke Adams, Fred Buch, Jack Davidson, Luke Halpin, D. J. Sidney, Don Stout; Dawn of the Dead, United States, 1978, producers: Richard P. Rubinstein, Claudio Argento, Alfredo Cuomo, director: George A. Romero, writing credits: George A. Romero, cinematography: Michael Gornick, film editing: George A. Romero, special effects: Tom Savini, Arthue J. Canestro, Don Berry, Gary Zeller, make-up: Nancy Allen, Jeannie Jefferies, Joseph Pilato, set decoration: Josie Caruso, Barbara Lifsher, music: The Goblins, Dario Argento, cast: David Emge, Ken Foree, Scott H. Reiniger, Gaylen Ross, David Crawford, David Early, Richard France, Howard Smith, Daniel Dietrich, Fred Baker, Jim Baffico, George A. Romero; Zombi 2/Zombie/ Zombi Flesh Eaters, Italy, 1979, producers: Fabrizio De Angelis, Ugo Tucci, director: Lucio Fulci, writing credits: Elisa Briganti, Dardano Sacchetti, cinematography: Sergio Salvati, film editing: Vincenzo Tomassi, special effects: Giovanni Corridori, Giannetto De Rossi, Gino De Rossi, make-up: Giannetto De Rossi, Maurizio Trani, art director: Walter Patriarca, music: Giorgio Tucci, Fabio Frizzi, cast: Tisa Farrow, Ian McCulloch, Richard Johnson, Al Cliver, Auretta Gay, Stefania D'Amario, Olga Karlatos; Paura nella citta dei morti viventi/City of the Living Dead/The Gates of Hell, Italy, 1980, producers: Lucio Fulci, Giovanni Masini, Robert E. Warner, director: Lucio Fulci, writing credits: Lucio Fulci, Dardano Sacchetti, story Lucio Fulci, Dardano Sacchetti, cinematography: Sergio Salvati, film editing: Vincenzo Tomassi, special effects: Gino De Rossi, Franco Rufini, make-up: Franco Rufini, Rosario Prestopino, set decoration: Massimo Antonello Geleng, music: Fabio Frizzi, cast: Christopher George, Katriona MacColl, Carlo De Mejo, Antonella Interlenghi, Giovanni Lombardo Radice, Daniela Doria, Fabrizio Jovine, Luca Paisner, Michele Soavi, Venantino Venantini, Adelaide Aste, Janet Agren; The Fog, United States, 1980, producers: Debra Hill, Charles B. Bloch, Barry Bernardi, Pegi Brotman, director: John Carpenter, writing credits: John Carpenter, Debra Hill, cinematography: Dean Cundey, film editing: Tommy Lee Wallace, Charles Bornstein, special effects: Rob Bottin, Richard Albain Jr., Dean Cundey, James F. Liles, make-up: Rob Bottin, Steve Johnson, Ed Ternes, Erica Ulland, art director: Craig Stearns, set decoration: Tommy Lee Wallace, music: John Carpenter, cast: Adrienne Barbeau, Jamie Lee Curtis, Janet Leigh, John Houseman, Tom Atkins, James Canning, Charles Cyphers, Nancy Loomis, Ty Mitchell, Hal Holbrook, John Goff, Regina Waldon, John Carpenter; Incubo sulla citta contaminata/City of the Walking Dead/Nightmare City, Italy, Spain, 1980, producers: Diego Alchimede, Luis Mendez, director: Umberto Lenzi, writing credits: Pietro Regnoli, Antonio Corti, Luis Maria Delgado, cinematography: Hans Burmann, film editing: Daniele Alabiso, special effects: Franco Di Girolamo, Giuseppe Ferranti, makeup: Franco Di Girolamo, Giuseppe Ferranti, art director: Mario Molli, music: Stelvio Cipriani, cast: Hugo Stiglitz, Laura Trotter, Maria Rosaria Omaggio, Francisco Rabal, Sonia Viviani, Eduardo Fajardo, Stefania D'Amario, Ugo Bologna, Manuel Zarzo, Mel Ferrer; L 'aldila/The Beyond/Seven Doors of Death, Italy, 1981, producer: Fabrizio De Angelis, director: Lucio Fulci, writing credits: Lucio Fulci, Dardano Sacchetti, Giorgio Mariuzzo, story Dardano Sacchetti, cinematography: Sergio Salvati, film editing: Vincenzo Tomassi, special effects: Germano Natali, make-up: Giannetto De Rossi, Maurizio Trani, art director: Massimo Lentini, set decoration: Alfredo D'Angelo, music: Fabio Frizzi, cast: Katherine MacColl, David Warbeck, Sarah Keller, Antoine Saint-John, Veronica Lazar, Anthony Flees, Giovanni De Nava, Al Cliver, Michele Mirabella, Maria Pia Marsala; Dead & Buried, United States, 1981, producers: Robert Fentress, Ronald Shusett, Michael I. Rachmil, Richard R. St. Johns, director: Gary A. Sherman, writing credits: Ronald Shusett, Dan O'Bannon, story Jeff Millar, Alex Stern, cinematography: Steven Poster, film editing: Alan Balsam, special effects: Bill Hansard, James Kagel, make-up: Stan Winston, Vincent Prentice, Edouard Henriques, Zoltan Elek, Ziggy Geike, art directors: Joe Aubel, William Sandell, set decoration: Dennis Barton, Cloudia Rebar, music: Joe Renzetti, cast: James Farentino, Melody Anderson, Jack Albertson, Dennis Redfield, Nancy Locke, Lisa Blount, Robert Englund, Bill Quinn, Michael Currie, Christopher Allport, Joe Medalis, Macon McCalman; Cementerio del terror/Cemetery of Terror/Zombie Apocalypse, Mexico, 1985, producers: Raul Galindo, Rodolfo Galindo, director: Ruben Galindo Jr., writing credits: Ruben Galindo Jr., cinematography: Rosalio Solano, film editing: Carlos Savage, music: Chucho Zarzoza, cast: Hugo Stiglitz, Jose Gomez Parcero, Bety Robles, Leo Villanueva, Rene Cardona, Cervando Manzetti, Andres Garcia Jr., Maria Rebecca, Cesar Adrian Sanchez, Lili Zoto; Day of the Dead, United States, 1985, producers: Richard P. Rubinstein, David Ball, Salah M. Hassanein, Ed Lammi, director: George A. Romero, writing credits: George A. Romero, cinematography: Michael Gornick, film editing: Pasquale Buba, special effects: Howard Jones, Steve Kirshoff, Mark Mann, Harvey Plastrik, Jim Danforth, make-up: Tom Savini, Bonnie Priore, David Kindlon, Everett Burrell, David Smith, Terry Prince, Natalka Voslakov, John Vulich, Howard Berger, Gregory Nicotero, Michael Trcic, art directors: Bruce Miller, Cletus Anderson, set decoration: Jan Pascale, music: John Harrison, cast: Lori Cardille, Terry Alexander, Joe Pilato, Jarlath Conroy, Anthony Dileo, Richard Liberty, Howard Sherman, G. Howard Klar, Ralph Marrero, John Amplas, Phillip G. Kellams, Gregory Nicotero, George A. Romero; Re-Animator, United States, 1985, producers: Brian Yuzna, Michael Avery, Charles Band, Bruce William Curtis, Bob Greenberg, Charles Donald Storey, director: Stuart Gordon, writing credits: Stuart Gordon, Dennis Paoli, William J. Norris, novella Herbert West--Reanimator Howard P. Lovecraft, cinematography: Mac Ahlberg, film editing: Lee Percy, special effects: Bret Culpepper, Richard N. McGuire, make-up: Everett Burrell, John Naulin, Anthony Doublin, Gerald Quist, John Carl Buechler, Drex Reed, art director: Robert A. Burns, music: Richard Band, cast: Jeffrey Combs, Bruce Abbott, Barbara Crampton, David Gale, Robert Sampson, Gerry Black, Carolyn Purdy-Gordon, Peter Kent, Barbara Pieters, Ian Patrick Williams, Al Berry; The Return of the Living Dead, United States, 1985, producers: Tom Fox, Graham Henderson, John Daly, Derek Gibson, director: Dan O'Bannon, writing credits: Dan O'Bannon, story John A. Russo, Rudy Ricci, Russell Streiner, cinematography: Jules Brenner, film editing: Robert Gordon, special effects: Robert E. McCarthy, Kevin E. McCarthy, Peter Kleinow, Gene Warren Jr., Fantasy II Film Effects, make-up: Allan A. Apone, Craig Caton, Tony Gardner, William Munns, Kenny Myers, Robin L. Neal. art directors: William Stout, Robert Howland, set decoration: Ken Kaufman, Robert Lucas, music: Matt Clifford, cast: Clu Gulager, James Karen, Don Calfa, Thom Mathews, Beverly Randolph, John Philbin, Jewel Shepard, Miguel Nunez, Brian Peck, Linea Quigley, Jonathan Terry, Cathleen Cordell; Prince of Darkness, United States, 1987, producers: Larry J. Franco, Andre Blay, Shep Gordon, director: John Carpenter, writing credits: Martin Quatermass [John Carpenter], cinematography: Gary B. Kibbe, film editing: Steve Mirkovich, special effects: Kevin Quibell, Robert Grasmere, Jim Danforth, makeup: Frank Carrisosa, Mark Shostrom, art director: Daniel Lomino, set decoration: Rick Gentz, music: John Carpenter, Alan Howarth, cast: Donald Pleasence, Jameson Parker, Victor Wong, Lisa Blount, Dennis Dun, Susan Blanchard, Anne Howard, Ann Yen, Ken Wright, Dirk Blocker, Jessie Lawrence Ferguson, Peter Jason, Robert Grasmere, Thom Bray, Alice Cooper; The Serpent and the Rainbow, United States, 1988, producers: David Ladd, Doug Claybourne, Rob Cohen, Keith Barish, Robert Engelman, David B. Pauker, director Wes Craven, writing credits: Richard Maxwell, A. R. Simoun [Adam Rodman], The Serpent and the Rainbow Wade Davis, cinematography: John Lindley, film editing: Glenn Farr, special effects: Peter Chesney, Robin D'Arcy, Emmet Kane, Sandra Stewart, Gary Gutierrez, Marcy Page, Image Engineering, Colossal Pictures/USFX, Illusion Arts, make-up: David Anderson, Lance Anderson, Michelle Buhler, James Kagel, Jim McPherson, art directors: David Nichols, David Brisbin, set decoration: Rosemary Brandenburg, music: Brad Fiedel, cast: Bill Pullman, Cathy Tyson, Zakes Mokae, Paul Winfield, Brent Jennings, Conrad Roberts, Badja Djola, Theresa Merritt, Michael Gough, Dey Young, Aleta Mitchell, William Newman, Jaime Pina Gautier, Evencio Mosquera Slaco; Bride of ReAnimator /Re-Animator 2, United States, 1989, producers: Brian Yuzna, Michael Muscal, Paul White, Keith Walley, Hidetaka Konno, director: Brian Yuzna, writing credits: Woody Keith, Rick Fry, Brian Yuzna, novella Herbert West--Reanimator Howard P. Lovecraft, cinematographer: Rick Fichter, film editing; Peter Teschner, special effects: Howard Berger, Screaming Mad George, John Carl Buechler, Robert Kurtzman, Anthony Doublin, Jim Davidson, David Allen, Magical Media Industries, K.N.B. EFX Group, Screaming Mad George Inc., make-up: Howard Berger, John Carl Buechler, Anthony Doublin, Robert Kurtzman, Gregory Nicotero, Brian Wade, Kathleen M. Hagan, art director: Joseph Ressa, set decoration: Philip Duffin, music: Richard Band, cast: Jeffrey Combs, Bruce Abbott, Claude Earl Jones, David Gale, Fabiana Udenio, Kathleen Kinmont, Mel Stewart, Irene Forrest, Michael Strasser, Mary Sheldon, Marge Turner; Night of the Living Dead, United States, 1990, producers: Russell Streiner, Menahem Golan, George A. Romero, John A. Russo, Ami Artzi, director: Tom Savini, writing credits: George A. Romero, John A. Russo, cinematography: Frank Prinzi, film editing: Tom Dubensky, special effects: Kristina M. Horner, Christopher P. Martin, Matt Vogel, Chris Stavrakis, make-up: Everett Burrell, John Vulich, Jerry Gergely, Terry Godfrey, Greg Funk, Rachel Kick, art directors: Cletus Anderson, James C. Feng, set decoration: Brian J. Stonestreet, music: Paul McCollough, cast: Tony Todd, Patricia Tallman, Tom Towles, McKee Anderson, William Butler, Katie Finneran, Bill Mosley, Heather Mazur, David Butler, Zachary Mott, Pat Reese; Braindead/Dead Alive, New Zealand, 1992, producers: Jim Booth, Jamie Selkirk, director: Peter Jackson, writing credits: Peter Jackson, Stephen Sinclair, Frances Walsh, story Stephen Sinclair, cinematography: Murray Milne, film editing: Jamie Selkirk, special effects: Stephen Ingram, Allan Burne, Stuart Conran, Clifford Hughes, Dominic Taylor, Peter Jackson, Grant Wallis, Glen Henderson, make-up: Debra East, Marjory Hamlin, Bob McCarron, Clifford Hughes, art director: Ed Mulholand, set decoration: Kevin Leonard-Jones, music: Peter Dasent, cast: Timothy Balme, Diana Penalver, Elizabeth Moody, Ian Watkin, Brenda Kendall, Stuart Devenie, Jed Brophy, Stephen Papps, Murray Keane, Glenis Levestam, Lewis Rowe, Elizabeth Mulfaxe, Harry Sinclair; Return of the Living Dead 3, United States, 1993, producers: Gary Schmoeller, Brian Yuzna, Andrew Hersh, John Penney, Roger Burlage, director: Brian Yuzna, writing credits: John Penney, cinematography: Gerry Lively, film editing: Christopher Roth, special effects: Thomas Rainone, Susan Cavent, Shaun Smith, Chris Robbins, Greg Hanigan, Nelson EFX, XFX Inc., Wayne Toth Productions, Max Effects, make-up: Steve Johnson, Wayne Toth, Timothy Ralston, Christopher Nelson, Kevin Brennan, art directors: Anthony Trembley, Aram Allen, set decoration: Greg Bartkus, music: Barry Goldberg, cast: Kent McCord, James T. Callahan, Sarah Douglas, Mindy Clark, Abigail Lenz, J. Trevor Edmond, Jill Andre, Michael Dekker, Fabio Urena, Basil Wallace, Anthony Hickox, Pia Reyes; 28 Days Later ..., United Kingdom, 2002, producers: Andrew Macdonald, Robert How, director: Danny Boyle, writing credits: Alex Garland, cinematography: Anthony Dod Mantle, film editing: Chris Gill, special effects: Richard Conway, Bob Hollow, Tony Lawrence, Peter Bach, Clear, MPC, make-up: Andry Garner, Sallie Jaye, Alan Hedgcock, Cliff Wallace, art directors: Mark Digby, Rob Gorwood, Patrick Rolfe, Denis Schnegg, set decoration: Fanny Taylor, music: John Murphy, cast: Alex Palmer, Bindu De Stoppani, Jukka Hiltunen, David Schneider, Cillian Murphy, Toby Sedgwick, Naomie Harris, Noah Huntley, Christopher Dunne, Emma Hitching, Alexander Delamere, Kim McGarrity, Megan Burns, Christopher Eccleston; Beyond ReAnimator, Spain, 2003, producers: Brian Yuzna, Carlos Fernandez, Julio Fernandez, Teresa Gefaell, director: Brian Yuzna, writing credits: Jose Manuel Gomez, Brian Yuzna, Xavier Berraondo, story Miguel TejadaFlores, cinematography: Andreu Rebes, film editing: Bernat Vilaplana, special effects: Screaming Mad George, Pedro de Diego, Javier Jal, Jordi Costa, Laura Maynade, Jaume Vilaseca, SMG Effects, make-up: Karol Tornaria, Maite Tuset, art director: Llorenq: Miquel, set decoration: Deborah Chambers, music: Xavier Capellas, cast: Jeffrey Combs, Tommy Dean Musset, Jason Barry, Barbara Elorrieta, Elsa Pataky, Angel Plana, Javier Sandoval, Santiago Segura, Lolo Herrero, Enrique Arce, Nico Baixas, Simon Andreu, Joaquin Ortega; Dawn of the Dead, United States, Canada, Japan, France, 2004, producers: Marc Abraham, Eric Newman, Richard P. Rubinstein, Michael D. Messina, Armyan Bernstein, director: Zack Snyder, writing credits: James Gunn, George A. Romero, cinematography: Matthew F. Leonetti, film editing: Niven Howie, special effects: Bob Hall, Jim McGillivary, Laird McMurray, Bill McShane, Patrick Coffey, Aaron Weintraub, Mr. X, Inc., make-up: David LeRoy Anderson, Lance Anderson, Barney Burman, Sarah Craig, Toni Garavaglia, Kyle Glencross, Iantha Goldberg, Burton Leblanc, AFX Studio, art directors: Arvinder Grewal, Andrew Neskoromny, set decoration: Steve Shewchuk, music: Tyler Bates, cast: Sarah Polley, Ving Rhames, Jake Weber, Mekhi Phifer, Ty Burrell, Michael Kelly, Kevin Zegers, Michael Barry, Lindy Booth, Jayne Eastwood, Boyd Banks; Land of the Dead, United States, Canada, France, 2005, producers: Mark Canton, Bernie Goldmann, Peter Grunwald, Silenn Thomas, Neil Canton, Steve Barnett, David Resnick, director: George A. Romero, writing credits: George A. Romero, cinematography: Miroslaw Baszak, film editing: Michael Doherty, special effects: Brian Hillard, Brock Jolliffe, Jake McKinnon, Sean Sansom, Greg Behrens, KNB EFX, Rocket Science VFX, Switch VFX, SPIN VFX, makeup: Howard Berger, Gregory Nicotero, Brian A. Jones, Traci Loader, Mary Sue Herron, Neil Morrill, Steve Munson, Scott Patton, Bernie Wrightson, KNB EFX, art directors: Douglas Slater, Arv Grewal, set decoration: Marlene Puritt, music: Reinhold Heil, Johnny Klimek, cast: Simon Baker, John Leguizamo, Dennis Hopper, Asia Argento, Robert Joy, Eugene Clark, Joanne Boland, Tony Nappo, Jennifer Baxter, Boyd Banks, Maxwell McCabe-Lokos, Tony Munch, Shawn Roberts, Tina Romero, Greg Nicotero, Tom Savini.

Critical studies--General & Fiction (selected titles): Zora Neal Hurston, Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica, 1938; Milo Marcelin, Mythologie Vodou, 1949; Maya Deren, Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti, 1953; Milo Rigaud, La Tradition vaudou et le vaudoo haitien, 1953/Milo Rigaud, Secrets of Voodoo, 1969; Alfred Metraux, Le Vaudou Haitien, 1958/Voodoo in Haiti, 1959, reprinted 1972; Robert Tallant, Voodoo in New Orleans, 1977; Wade Davis, The Serpent and the Rainbow, 1985; Wade Davis, Passage of Darkness: The Ethnobiology of the Haitian Zombie, 1988; Arthur C. Lehmann, James E. Myers, eds., Magic, Witchcraft and Religion: An Anthropological Study of the Supernatural, 1989; E. Belgum, Voodoo, 1991; Leslie G. Desmangles, The Faces of the Gods: Vodou and Roman Catholicism in Haiti, 1992; Judith Halberstam, Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters, 1995; Donald J. Cosentino, Sacred Arts of of Haitian Vodou, 1995; Laennec Hurbon, Voodoo: Search for the Spirit, 1995; Deborah Root, Cannibal Culture: Art, Appropriation, and the Commodification of Cultural Difference, 1996; Margarite Fernandez Olmos, Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert, eds., Sacred Possessions: Vodou, Santeria, Obeah and the Caribbean, 1997; David J. Skal, The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror, 2001; Max Brooks, The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead, 2003; Ray Malbrough, Hoodoo Mysteries: Folk Magic, Mysticism and Rituals, 2003; Robert Kirk, Zombies and Consciousness, 2005; Max Brooks, World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, 2006; S. T. Joshi, Icons of Horror and the Supernatural: An Encyclopedia of Our Worst Nightmares, 2007; Niall Scott, ed., Monsters and the Monstrous: Myths and Metaphors of Enduring Evil, 2007; Kenaz Filan, The Haitian Vodou Handbook: Protocols for Riding with the Lwa, 2007; Jennifer Cooke, Legacies of Plague in Literature: Theory and Film, 2009; Karolyn Kinane, Michael A. Ryan Jefferson, eds., End of Days: Essays on the Apocalypse from Antiquity to Modernity, 2009; Rob Saccheto, The Zombie Handbook. How to Identify the Living Dead and Survive the Coming Zombie Apocalypse, 2009; David Flint, Zombie Holocaust: How the Living Dead Devoured Pop Culture, 2009; Daniel W. Drezner, Theories of International Politics and Zombies, 2011; Christopher M. Moreman, Cory James Rushton, eds., Zombie Are Us: Essays on the Humanity of the Walking Dead, 2011; Christopher M. Moreman, Cory James Rushton, eds., Race, Oppresssion and the Zombie: Essays on Cross-Cultural Appropriations of the Carribean Tradition, 2011; Deborah Christie, Sarah Juliet Lauro, eds., Better Off Dead. The Evolution of the Zombie as Post-Human, 2011; Stephanie Boluk, Wylie Lenz, eds., Generation Zombie: Essays on the Living Dead in Modern Culture, 2011; Mambo Chita Tann, Haitian Vodou: An Introduction to Haiti's Indigenous Spiritual Tradition, 2012.

Critical studies--Film (selected titles): Rose London, Zombie: The Living Dead, 1976; John McCarty, Splatter Movies, 1981; John Russo, The Complete Night of the Living Dead Filmbook, 1985; Gregory Waller, The Living and the Undead: From Bram Stoker's "Dracula" to Romero's "Dawn of the Dead ", 1986; Gene Wright, Horror Shows: Horror in Film, Television, Radio and Theater, 1986; Paul R. Gagne, The Zombies That Ate Pittsburgh: The Films of George A. Romero, 1987; Andrew Tudor, Monster and Mad Scientists: A Cultural History of the Horror Movie, 1989; Chas Balun, ed., The Deep Red Horror Handbook, 1989; Steven Shaviro, The Cinematic Body, 1993; M. Luca Palmerini, Gaetano Mistretta, Spaghetti Nightmares: Italian Fantasy--Horrors as Seen Through the Eyes of Their Protagonists, 1996; Loris Curci, Shock Masters of the Cinema, 2006; Bryan Senn, Drums O' Terror: Voodoo in Cinema, 1998; Allan Bryce, ed., Zombie, 1999; Gary Don Rhodes, "White Zombie": Anatomy of a Horror Film, 2001; Peter Dendle, The Zombie Movie Encyclopedia, 2001; Jay Slater, ed., Eaten Alive! Italian Cannibal and Zombie Movies, 2002; Tony Williams, The Cinema of George A. Romero: Knights of the Living Dead, 2003; Tom Ruffles, Ghost Images: Cinema of the Afterlife, 2004; John Martin, Cannibal: The Most Sickening Consumer Guide Ever, 2004; Joseph Maddrey, Nightmares in Red, White and Blue: The Evolution of the American Horror Film, 2004; Jamie Russell, Book of the Dead: The Complete History of Zombie Cinema, 2005, revised edition 2006, fully revised edition 2014; Kim Paffenroth, Gospel of the Living Dead: George Romero's Visions of Hell on Earth, 2006; Mikel J. Koven, Film, Folklore and Urban Legends, 2007; Shawn McIntosh, Marc Leverette, eds., Zombie Culture: Autopsies of the Living Dead, 2008; Ben Harvey, Night of the Living Dead, 2008; Melvin E. Matthews, Fear Itself: Horror on Screen and Reality During the Depression and World War II, 2009; Kyle William Bishop, American Zombie Gothic: The Rise and Fall (and Rise) of the Walking Dead in Popular Culture, 2010; Michael Richardson, Otherness in Hollywood Cinema, 2010; James Lowder, ed., Triumph of the Walking Dead: Robert Kirkman's Zombie Epic on Page and Screen, 2011; Tony Schaab, Anthony Giangregorio, Reviews of the Dead: 25 Zombie Movies to Die for, 2011; Peter Dendle, The Zombie Movie Encyclopedia, Volume. 2: 2000--2010, 2012; Bruce F. Kawin, Horror and the Horror Film, 2012; Ozzy Inguanzo, Zombies on Film: The Definitive Story of Undead Cinema, 2014; Alain Silver, James Ursini, The Zombie Film: From White Zombie to World War Z, 2014.

Documentary Films (selected titles): 100 Years of Horror: Zombies, United States, 1996, director: Tom Forrester; Fear File: Zombies!, United States, 2006, director: Jon Alon Walz; Voodoo Secrets, United States, 2006; The Unexplained Zombies, United States, 2008; The Unexplained: Voodoo Rituals, United States, 2008.

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Lucia-Alexandra Tudor

Gheorghe Asachi Technical University

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Article Details

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Title Annotation:	The world in-between, and the bridge dwellers
Author:	Tudor, Lucia-Alexandra
Publication:	Romanian Journal of Artistic Creativity
Article Type:	Report
Geographic Code:	1USA
Date:	Mar 22, 2015
Words:	21379
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Topics:	Vampires Analysis Voodoo Analysis Voodooism Analysis Zombies Analysis