A summary of funeral films and zombie films

Although there are many characters in horror movies, such as mummies, werewolves and vampires, the most modern role should be zombies. The original zombie refers to the corpse awakened by voodoo witchcraft, but it is the representative works night of the living dead and night of the living dead that give zombies a new form and life. Since then, zombies have become the best spokesmen for spreading terror, and they have begun to show their protagonists in many horror movies.

Voodoo and Zombies

It is said that the first movie about zombies was White Zombie, which was released on 1932. This movie set in Haiti describes the wizard played by the famous actor Bela Lugosi, who awakens a large group of zombies through voodoo and makes them operate the machines of the sugar factory day and night. Bela Lugosi plays a wizard who viciously turns all the beautiful white women who come to the island into zombies. However, the zombies inside have no sense of terror except pity. Of course, what this drama wants to convey is not the fear of zombies eating people, but the psychological fear of turning people into zombies. Therefore, the protagonist of this play is not a zombie, but Bela Lugosi himself.

Since the beginning of this drama, although several movies with the theme of zombies have been released, zombies still rank second in the film and have not officially become the protagonist. Another early zombie movie, I Walk with a Zombie, I i walked with a zombie, is also based on a stage similar to Haiti, and its content is also centered on white women who become zombies. But the source of horror in this drama is not zombies, but the creepy voodoo drum melody. 1966, The Zombie's Plague, released by the famous British production company Hammer Files, was still used as labor in the play. However, the most noteworthy thing about this drama is that after the young doctor dreamed that his wife was turned into a zombie in a nightmare, hordes of zombies poured out of the grave, which became the standard for all zombie movies in the future. Of course, the unique atmosphere of this drama when describing zombies is also intriguing.

For the actual voodoo zombie belief, we can have a detailed look at the Great serpent and the rainbow written by Wade Davies. This book was also adapted into the film serpent and the rainbow by director wes Craven on 1988. According to this book, in fact, the witchcraft of making zombies is to use some kind of poison to make the victim fall into a state of suspended animation coma, and then when the victim wakes up from the coma, people around him and the victim will have the illusion of death and resurrection. It is said that the main toxic components are extracted from the venom of puffer fish. When the victim enters a state of suspended animation, his brain function will be destroyed, and even after waking up, his consciousness will become trance, and he is essentially a zombie. Therefore, under the background of black social culture in the West Indies, zombies do exist, and local residents are convinced of this. Voodoo originally belonged to the religion of black slaves in the West Indies, and it was also the spiritual pillar against the white ruling class. The evil, cunning and zombie-using images we see in the movies today reflect the anxiety and hatred of the white society in Europe and America against the rising resistance of slaves. 1932, the first zombie film "White Zombie" was filmed at the time when the United States ruled Haiti by force. During this period, many residents of the West Indies immigrated to the United States, so voodoo gradually penetrated into the black American society, and the fear of voodoo among white people was born.

Thanks to Wade Davis' research, it gave voodoo and zombies a brand-new glory, and also influenced all the horror movies in the future. Voodoo Dawn released by 1990 was obviously influenced by serpents and rainbows. The play is set in the black working society in the West Indies, which is the cotton supply area in the southern United States. Of course, the protagonist in the film is a voodoo wizard.

1968 George A. Romero's "night of the living dead" was well received, which made the zombie away from voodoo and became a monster with a new image. This is only two years before and after the zombie disaster produced by Hammer Pictures. Because of the appearance of night of the living dead and night of the living dead, zombies have become the new favorite of modern horror movies.

The basic principle of building zombies because of night of the living dead is as follows: Unknown factors make god sleeps. Zombies themselves don't have any consciousness and thinking ability, and they rely entirely on instinct. (night of the living dead night of the living dead, resurrected by cosmic radiation) Zombies like to eat human flesh. Attacking humans to find living human flesh is the only instinctive purpose of zombies. Zombies get infected. People who have been bitten by zombies will become zombies after death. Family members or relatives who acted with them a second ago, because of being bitten, slowly turned into zombies to attack themselves, just like a bottomless pit of fear. Zombies don't die. Because he is dead, no matter how to hurt his body, the zombie will move on. If you want to stop the zombie from moving, all you have to do is break his head or set fire to him. There are groups of zombies who raise their hands and walk slowly with unsteady steps, and then they are driven into a closed space by the panic and inner entanglement brought by the living. Such a scene has also become a necessary scene for all zombie movies in the future. The zombie image created by George A. Romero George A. Romero gradually became popular all over the world in 1970s. Children shouldn't play with dead things. This is 1973 filmed by director bob clark in the United States. It tells the story of a group of performers who go to an island on the east coast and use spells to revive the dead. This drama perfectly interprets the role of zombie with very good black humor, and because of this, this drama will become one of the classic masterpieces in the eyes of horror fans in the future. 1974, Italy and Spain jointly created "Let the Sleeping Body Lie", because the ultrasonic wave generated by the insect repellent revived the dead, and the bridge section in the second half of the hospital was even more impressive. But this play is obviously influenced by night of the living dead and night of the living dead.

1979 George A. Romero's zombie movie Zombie Dawn, the second part, has set off a global upsurge, and a large number of similar works have sprung up all over the world. In such a flood trend, the only outstanding work is Zombie 2 by Italian horror master lucio fulci, who is already disgusting and famous for his horror. On an island in the Caribbean, a large number of zombies wake up because of the curse of voodoo. In addition to making people feel extremely oppressive and panic, it seems to pierce their eyes? The unprecedented cruel description of eating human flesh is also unprecedented. In addition, the romantic scenes unrelated to the plot in zombie movies and the first fight between zombies and sharks also fully show the unparalleled creativity of this Italian master.

Of course, countless B-level and even C-level zombie movies also stimulated the market at that time. In addition, the Crusaders became zombies, tombs for the blind, zombie lakes, places where Nazi soldiers became zombies, supernatural powers and so on. Some of them are historical (? ) Sex zombie movies fill the whole horror movie. There are so many movies about zombies that people can't imagine. Even some vampire or werewolf movies will be run over by zombies. Until the movie "The Return of the Living Dead" directed by Dan o'bannon (1985), zombies finally broke through the tradition of many years, and they could talk and move forward quickly. The most amazing thing is that you can't die without thinking.

Zombie age

George A. Romero George A. Romero's Zombie Trilogy, except for the performance full of urgency, clearly depicts the characters and metaphorical plot content, which is beyond the reach of all similar works at that time. The most important thing is that his works fully reflect the situation at that time. The sense of killing in night of the living dead reflects the social reaction of American society to the Vietnam War. Zombies who lost their humanity and were cruel and miserable, and self-defenders who killed zombies with weapons to get extreme pleasure, clearly described the decadent spiritual world of the United States at that time. In the second work Dawn of the dead, a huge supermarket is used as a stage for a long-term struggle against crowded zombies. This work is aimed at the fact that the United States has gained a stable and peaceful consumer society after the Vietnam War, but its heart is still decadent and helpless, creating an ironic effect. By the third work "Day of the Dead", zombies have spread to every corner of the world, and only helplessness and despair survive, which reflects that George A. Romero, an 80-year-old representative, has lost confidence in the future under the environmental damage and nuclear threat. It is precisely because George A. Romero's zombie films are closely related to the changes of the times that they can produce the same * * * sound as the audience.

Why can zombies become the new favorite of horror movies?

Zombies are different from other monsters in horror movies because zombies themselves are individuals without self-awareness. Although Frankenstein is an artificial monster made of corpses (people? But Frankenstein has the same self-awareness and feelings as human beings. Mummies are resurrected as corpses like zombies, but they are purposeful activities because they still retain the memory of this life. It's an instinct to eat human flesh-no, it should be said that the physiological reaction is more appropriate, and there is no memory before death, which is the obvious difference between zombies and other monsters. I remember reading in a report that George A. Romero George A. Romero said in an exclusive interview with a TV station that "many friends from all over the world want to be guest zombies, and they all want to be weird and disgusting zombies." Why? Because they also like to eat the living. "As you can see from this sentence, zombies are so attractive. In fact, the zombies in George A. Romero's George A. Romero movies are fans from all over the world who love George A. Romero. Everyone is happy to be a zombie in the film. It's not hard to imagine how happy zombies feel when filming.

In the movie "Day of the Dead", a zombie named Bob was raised by a doctor for experiments. The zombie still kept a fragment of his memory before he died, so he sometimes acted like a "human". Seeing the behavior similar to "human" in the materialized zombie, his presence impressed the audience and even made a good impression on the zombie. The pleasure of finally becoming a zombie after longing, or the affection for the zombie's similar "human" behavior, is the basic reaction of our modern people to the material situation in the long-term material life. Today, we live in an environment surrounded by machines and objects, which is brought by the ever-changing technology, and only allows mechanical civilization or computer civilization to quickly penetrate into our lives. In the past, the supremacy of human nature, which emphasized the absolute value of human beings, has gradually disintegrated with the ringing of the alarm bell. Just as the culture of Cyberpunk is gradually rising under such changes, zombies may just represent the end of the supremacy of human nature. Maybe zombies are a metaphor for our humanity.

2. George A. Romero.

George A. Romero, known as the father of modern horror movies, was the first person to endow zombies with spirit. Before him, zombies were limited to the bodies operated by voodoo with religious consciousness and poison, and had no more artistic value except the horror stunt of walking dead, which shocked human nature. It was not until the birth of 1968, A. Romero, that the special category of zombie movies was really created. Romero not only gives zombie movies a strong political irony, but also brings more profound human thinking and religious implications.

1940 On February 4th, George A. Romero was born in new york and studied at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. After graduation, he began to shoot short films and commercial advertisements, and in the late 1960s, he founded Image Ten with several friends, each of whom invested $6.5438+0 million to shoot the most influential horror film night of the living dead in the United States. Black-and-white movies, with an investment of only $6,543.8+0,000, not only earned a box office far above the cost, but also became a Cuit classic in the early 1970s, and was selected into the Library of Congress with a price of 654.38+0.99. However, after that, Romero's works were quite low-key and little known.

1978, Romero returned to the theme of zombies and filmed Dawn of the Zombies. He decided to leave Image Ten to distribute the film in a wider channel, but as a result, he and his investors lost the profit of video sales. The film investment was 6.5438+0.5 million USD, and the global box office exceeded 40 million USD. In 2003, dawn of the dead was rated as the most classic Cuit movie by Entertainment Weekly.

With the success of dawn of the dead, Romero was able to increase his shooting budget and have the strength to invite better filmmakers to join. 198 1 cooperated with ed harris who became famous in the future. The following year, he began to adapt Stephen King's novels for the first time and filmed his ghost show with Hollywood characteristics.

In the late 1980s, Romero gradually went downhill. Festival of the Dead (1985) was not only ridiculed by film critics, but also the box office was bleak. Later, several other films were still unsatisfactory. Romero had to give up until 2005. After the zombie trilogy night of the living dead, dawn of the dead and Death Day, Romero finally returned to the Jianghu and filmed Land of the Living Dead, a sequel to Lost Out of the Cage, which topped the box office in its first week. The difference between zombies and zombies

Zombies and zombies are easy to confuse, but this is limited to China (once again showing the power of Chinese). Zombie and zombie are both "zombies" in English, because there is no such word in foreign cultures. When they say "zombies", they mean zombies. Then let's officially talk about the difference between zombies and zombies! Zombies have no intelligence! This is the most open point from zombies, not that zombies have no intelligence at all, but that they can only rely on instinct and the intelligence of cell biology. Zombies are different. Some of them are very clever, and some of them can do magic. We'll talk about these later. It is impossible to tell whether there is intelligence or not, which is also an important difference between "whether it is parasitic by parasitic organisms". Zombies are mostly parasitic by parasitic organisms such as "viruses" and "crab hunting", and they rely on the instinct of an animal to feed and spread (this can be found in the chapter on zombie types in the encyclopedia Zombies (also written by me)), while zombies have nothing to do with science. It is related to the legendary fiend and superstition (such as "Zongzi" in the ghost blowing lamp, "raising corpses to drive them out" in folklore, "happy ghosts crossing the street" and so on). Whether it has the ability to mutate is very important. Zombies have no ability to mutate. Zombies are available (everyone still knows this very well, so I won't give examples one by one). This mainly shows that zombies can have intelligence and even form a society. There are deep levels between them, such as advanced zombies (vampires, "Tai Sui" in "Ghost Blowing Lights"; Intermediate, such as some zombie wizards, or some lower vampires; Inferior, such as some magical resurrected bodies, have different blows to these two kinds. Zombies can only attack the head, but they have effects on the whole body (creatures like people, transformed from people or corpses, just like people and elves). Zombies are impossible (I don't believe in magic and witchcraft in the world), and biochemical zombies are very likely to appear. These six points basically distinguish the difference between zombies and zombies, but it doesn't mean that all zombies can be classified like this. We can create a combination, for example, a corpse can be intelligent and hierarchical, because these two creatures are human YY, and no one cares about your YY. So there is no limit to creativity, and it is not bad that you have created new kinds. 1. night of the living dead, night of the living dead (1968).

Film Review: night of the living dead is not only a low-cost funeral film model, with a budget of only 1 10,000 US dollars, but also successfully created various zombies with horrible images. It not only established Romero's status as the godfather of zombies, but also provided an excellent model for zombie movies. At the same time, it also establishes the behavioral characteristics of zombies, such as unconsciousness, eating the flesh of the living, and collective activities at ordinary times. People bitten by zombies will become zombies.

2. Dawn of Zombies (1978)

Film Review: night of the living dead established the basic mode of funeral films, while Dawn Ten Years Later was a technical upgrade. Tom savini, Romero's royal makeup artist, established a new industry standard for funeral films with fine makeup techniques, and completely established Romero's leading position in the field of funeral films. Romero's funeral movies are not only scary, but also seek meaning for the existence of zombies, such as trying to domesticate zombies and educating them to become creatures that can live in peace with human beings. Similar discussions have run through Romero's funeral films since then, including dead island, which was criticized as decadent and old-fashioned. Later, many funeral films also tried to do similar philosophical and ethical discussions. In 2003, dawn of the dead won the reputation of the most evil movie in history, and was also remake by Zack Snyder who directed The Three Hundred Warriors and The Prophet.

3. Brain death (1992)

Film Review: Zombies Crossing the Line broke the conventional zombie killing methods such as head shooting, burning and neck twisting, and these living dead people were to be chopped into 10,000 pieces. This breakthrough provided Peter Jackson, who was still a low-budget B-class film director at that time, with n ways to kill zombies, and at the same time, the film's nausea index was raised to an unprecedented level. Losing a piece of meat and popping a hole are all pediatrics. At the end of the slaughterhouse massacre, the high point was completely detonated. Some critics say that even zombies themselves will be disgusted to death.

4. 28 days after "Shocked 28 Days" (2002)

Film Review: 28 Days of Sudden Change is an absolute funeral film, and it also has obvious temperament differences with American B-class funeral films. It also shows the empty capital after the disaster. Compared with new york in "I am a Legend", London in "After Twenty-Eight" is more real because of its documentary style. Tragedy, escape, mutual help, eschatology, darkness of human nature, eternal hope in darkness, and political torture all have Danny Paul's film language, which makes this British-made funeral film occupy a relatively important position in many zombie movies.

5. Shaun the Zombie (2004)

Film Review: There is no shortage of plasma, and there is no shortage of hungry zombies who gnaw at the human body and greedily gnaw at the heart and stomach. Sean, a British otaku, brought two inspirations to deal with the sudden zombie incident. First, he can use tools flexibly. Even without AK-47, 38, or even a shotgun, he can still pick up a spade and vinyl record in the garden and slap it on the forehead of a zombie who was a neighbor yesterday and turned into a different kind today. Secondly, no matter when you sprinkle, you should have a good buddy, who usually stays on the sofa with you, drinks beer, eats melon seeds, talks nonsense, stays at home together, and is happy together. When you are carrying a cricket bat and playing zombie encirclement with your girlfriend and partner, even if you are overweight, he will follow you around the world without hesitation. Even if he is unfortunately infected with ptomaine in the battle, you will never leave, although there is a chain around your neck. Therefore, nonsense is not necessarily unreliable, it is just a very strong optimism.

6. Funeral in Tokyo, Tokyo Zongbi (2005)

Film Review: There are finally zombies in Tokyo. It's just nonsense, spoof, a little more casual and casual. It satirizes those powerful and traditional zombie movies in an extremely life-like way. If you are surrounded by a large group of zombies who may end up dead at any time, you certainly won't be in the mood to sigh at the supermarket shelves that you didn't notice the new variety of potato chips you like, and you won't ask people to blow up the "glass pyramid" built by the rich to isolate zombies because you can't resist the temptation of yogurt, but Lost Wave in Tokyo has been played boldly and crazily. Of course, it's not only fun, but also very melancholy in the spoof, not yet.

7. Resident Evil Resident Evil 2002

Film Review: In the movie version of Resident Evil, a classic zombie series game among video game fans, the scope of "mourning" is no longer limited to human beings. All living things, such as dogs, can become extremely aggressive "zombies". Zombies' faces have also been upgraded, and there really is a maw similar to cannibalism. In addition, zombies also have an organization, business chaebol Ann grella. This story setting with centralized metaphor has moved the "political power" usually hidden behind the scenes in this type of film to the stage. Handsome and sexy Milla Jovovich not only has to deal with zombies as chess pieces, but also has the ultimate goal of killing Ann grella's big Boss.

8. Fido the Zombie Fido (2006)

Film Review: This zombie originated from the radiation of cosmic dust storm, and the victim was a rural town in the 1950s. Business-minded companies collect dangerous zombies and domesticate them into gardeners, milkmen and so on. A noble friendship developed between the little boy and the zombie nanny. Without the bloody violence of traditional funeral films, there is more warmth of "the world has its own true feelings". A zombie comedy is presented in a playful way, which opens another way of thinking for zombie movies besides Sean Zombie and Tokyo Zombie.

9. I am a Legend (2007)

Film Review: The zombies in the film have the characteristics of vampires. They hide in the dark during the day and are afraid of the sun. Once the sun sets in the west, they will go out in groups and surround the living. But these former human beings, their physiology changed due to the environment, and the raging plasma and boundless violence in the B-level funeral film are not the protagonists of this film. Will smith, the "only" survivor, plays the hero Robert Nayville, and the emptiness and loneliness brought by the last days are the core of I am a legend. The focus of narration and discussion in I am Legend is no longer how to escape from life under the mouth of a zombie, but to present the most real and deadly psychological state of the end of the world. So when Robert was crying with his companion dog in his arms and talking to the plastic doll in the video store, the fans of funeral films experienced another kind of relatively gentle comfort: moving.

10. Planet of Terror (2007)

Film Review: Terror Planet, a tribute to the Mill movie, successfully highlights the characteristics of corpse movies, and its translation in Hong Kong is the best proof. Is still caused by Resident Evil's death, but the zombie on this horrible planet is estimated to be the most capable to make people vomit, with pustules, a gun boom in the past, viscera and intestines flesh and blood brains scattered like flour. As for Quentin's "oxidation" JJ, it is obviously an upgrade to the zombie experience. The shrew who put the machine gun on the amputation is not only the routine setting of funeral films, but also reflects the imagination of b-film lover Rodriguez.