Zombie Evolution

I was watching the 1936 film Revolt of the Zombies the other day, and it occurred to me how much zombies have changed since then. The typical zombie of today, since at least Night of the Living Dead (1968), is a dead person who has come back to life with a hunger for human flesh. He usually serves no master, but is a freelance perpetrator of horror. His origins may be mysterious, but if they are spelled out at all, they are usually scientific (eg, virus, satellite) rather than religious.

None of this holds for the zombies of Revolt of the Zombies, a not particularly good movie that is nevertheless instructive for the study of zombie evolution. Revolt's creatures are living people who are called zombies because they have fallen under the hypnotic spell of an archaeologist, played by Dean Jagger years before he became the loveable retired general in White Christmas (1954). What is horrible about these zombies of the 1930s is that they have lost their wills, not that they are undead or cannibalistic. The mechanism for making them into zombies has to do with ancient Cambodian writings of a vaguely religious nature.

With so many differences, it is hard to believe that the same word, "zombie," should apply to both species of monsters. But both are called zombies, and with reason. The link between them is the transformation of personality from something recognizably human to something inhuman, an unnatural lack of normal human appetites, whether that lack is marked by a loss of will or a hunger for human flesh. To signify this shared inhumanity, both types of zombies have similar glassy-eyed stares. Also, you can shoot them both in the chest, and they won't die.

Most zombies before Night of the Living Dead were voodoo-related; Revolt of the Zombies stands out for having gone all the way to Cambodia for its zombie origins. Regardless, Revolt of the Zombies is more typical of the zombie movies of its time--with their will-less, obedient zombies serving a master--than of the zombie movies of our time. By introducing the idea of cannibalistic, anarchic zombies, Night of the Living Dead marked a great leap forward in zombie evolution.

Zombies have kept evolving since then, becoming faster and smarter in many movies rather than shambling and stupid. What they will become next depends on the next movie. Perhaps a reboot of Revolt of the Zombies?

George Ochoa
Author
Deformed and Destructive Beings: The Purpose of Horror Films

The Significance of "Dead Snow"

While there might be a way to make a serious movie about Nazi zombies, Dead Snow (2009) is not it. It is horrific and exciting, but also tongue-in-cheek, even camp. Yet even a funny zombie movie can contain a profound significance. The significance of Dead Snow is, to paraphrase Santayana: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to be eaten by it.

The normals in Dead Snow are young Norwegians all but devoid of historical memory. They are medical students, looking ahead to bright futures, enjoying the toys of their upper middle-class present, such as their snowmobile and their cabin in the snowy mountains. Their memory extends back only as far as Hollywood movies from the 1980s, such as The Terminator and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Their interests, like those of many horror movie young people, are largely confined to beer and sex.

A strange, older wanderer tries to warn the young people in the cabin about the danger around them by telling them a story about the Nazi occupation of Norway in World War II, and the peculiar fate of the Nazis in this region. The medical students are dismissive, and the wanderer dismisses them as spoiled brats. He is not far off. The kids go so far as to play with Nazi gold they find under their cabin. Then the Nazi zombies attack.

Like all zombies, the Nazi zombies wear hideous dead-person makeup, but it is even grayer and wrinklier than usual, as if they have been frozen in this wilderness for six decades. They still wear their Nazi uniforms and follow orders like Nazis. However, the key difference between them and the young people is that the zombies are true to the historical past. For them, World War II never ended. They remember and preserve the predatory dream they were fighting for, even if they are reduced now to nothing but eating Norwegians. The Nazi zombies are, in this sense, heroic. They demand that a younger generation remember what took place in the historical past--even if the only way to force them to remember it is to devour them. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to be eaten by it.

The Nazi zombies are, of course, not purely heroic. As zombies, they are horrible: deformed destructive beings. And as Nazis, they are the embodiment of evil. But the horror movie as a genre is always working contrapuntally, causing the audience to feel revulsion for the same creatures that are causing them delight, and making them think about the underside of whatever they claim to believe. The Nazi zombies are evil, but they are disciplined and wear their uniforms proudly. They remember what the young people have not even worked to forget.

George Ochoa
Author
Deformed and Destructive Beings: The Purpose of Horror Films

Phagic Nightmares

Many horror movies are based on the idea of the normal characters (the normals) being eaten by the abnormal ones (the deformed destructive beings, or DDBs). These are phagic stories, tales of being eaten. This is true of zombie movies, and partially true of vampire movies, where what is consumed is only a part of the victim, blood. Berserk biota, natural non-human creatures acting strangely, are always munching on humans: sharks (most famously Jaws [1975]), anacondas, piranhas, rats, resurrected dinosaurs, man-eating plants, and so on. Alien monsters, such as the creature in Alien (1979), also seem to have a taste for humans. So do cannibals, such as in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974).

These movies suggest an insight into the nature of DDBs. Every species that has evolved has to procure food, and most species (aside from most green plants) do it destructively, by devouring some other living thing. Every species that has evolved is deformed with respect to its ancestors: it evolves through deformation. Therefore most species are DDBs, or monsters. Humans are no different. We are monsters to all the animals and plants we eat. A good horror movie would be set in a slaughterhouse, from the point of view of the cow. In fact, that movie was made, with humans standing in for cows: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

Horror movies--at least the phagic ones under discussion here--are like recurrent nightmares we have been having since our evolutionary childhood, the prehistoric days when there were many more creatures around that could eat us. Even today, when there is little danger of being eaten, we know that we could be eaten: that we are no less vulnerable to teeth than the animals we ingest. And we know that we survive by eating, giving us cause for both delight and guilt. Unless we ever become indigestible or cease digesting, our phagic nightmares are likely to continue.

George Ochoa
Author
Deformed and Destructive Beings: The Purpose of Horror Films