What's the origin of the "Zombie Apocalypse" concept in film/games/fiction/etc.?

[RickJay]

A popular setting for horror fiction, movies, horror-themed games and the like is the ever-useful Zombie Apocalypse. In a zombie apocalypse, the world is unexpectedly overrun by swarms of the living dead, moaning, shambling zombies who go around eating the living.

Zombie Apocalypse fiction usually features a number of plucky survivors attempting to survive in a world full of hideous, cannibalistic ghouls. Many movies, usually named "(Noun) Of the Dead" have been made on this theme, and virtually every horror writer worth mentioning has written at least one story about a world filled with hungry zombies. There's even a book out now that serves as a how-to guide for dealing with hordes of flesh-eating corpses, featuring detailed instructions on constructing zombie-proof shelters, engaging in zombie elimination missions, and the like; if there is anything about dealing with homovorous undead, this guy thought of it. It's a weird book.

Variations on the theme have also been employed, such as the film "28 Days Later," where instead of the walking dead, people were infected with a virus that turned them into mindless killing machines, but the jist of it was the same.

I'm wondering where all this came from. Did someone just come up with the idea and then everyone else ran with it?

[Diogenes the Cynic]

I believe it all stems from George Romero's original Night of the Living Dead. That established the whole genre, as far as I know.

[Revtim]

Yeah, I think before NOTLD zombies were the old voodoo types, and didn't eat human flesh.

[Spoke]

Originally Posted by Diogenes the Cynic

I believe it all stems from George Romero's original Night of the Living Dead. That established the whole genre, as far as I know.

Predating that was I Am Legend, a 1954 horror novel by Richard Matheson, in which a plague causes vampire-like symptoms, and the protagonist is the last man on earth, holding off a vampire horde.

That book spawned two movies: The Last Man on Earth (1964) starring Vincent Price, and The Omega Man (1971) starring Charlton Heston.

[hey alright]

Total guess here, but I would think the inspiration for it comes from the End Times, Book of Revelation, especially chapter 8-12, which mention zombie hordes.

[Spoke]

Originally Posted by spoke-

That book spawned two movies

Correction: three movies, counting the upcoming Will Smith vehicle.

[Backwater Under_Duck]

Oddly enough, just this very month in Reason Online there is an article We the Living Dead
The convoluted politics of zombie cinema exploring this very subject while reviewing three new books on the subject.

the word zombie didn’t appear in the English language until 1889 (in a Harper’s article on voodoo by Lafcadio Hearn) and did not attain currency until the 1920s, propelled by the Haitian-adventure writings of William Seabrook. Hearn and Seabrook made strong efforts to jazz up the vague tales they’d heard in the Caribbean about resurrected dead people working as plantation slaves. Thus, from the start, the reanimated stiff was a modern phenomenon, a figure of Western exoticism as much as an authentic island legend, with tales of blank-eyed field workers, “white zombies,” and witch-doctor mesmerism.

From there it was left to George Romero to set the modern stage with the basic "rules" which all zombie movies seem to follow. Romero, it should be noted was a TV director from Pittsburgh and used to direct "occasional segments from Mr. Rogers Neighborhood."
A discussion of the leftist politics of most zombie movies is part of the deal.

[Ranchoth]

Plus, from another point of view, zombies are rather an ideal opponent—they're human-ish, but not frighteningly strong or cunning, and you can't get in trouble (legally or ethically) for killing them because they're already dead.

By the same token, Nazi Zombies are an even better opponent. No one in the world in their right mind can fault you for killing them.

[Valgard]

Originally Posted by Ranchoth

Plus, from another point of view, zombies are rather an ideal opponent—they're human-ish, but not frighteningly strong or cunning, and you can't get in trouble (legally or ethically) for killing them because they're already dead.

By the same token, Nazi Zombies are an even better opponent. No one in the world in their right mind can fault you for killing them.

There was a movie back in the 1960s or 1970s about people who wash up on an island which turns out to be inhabited by Nazi Zombie SEALs; leftovers from a WW2 plot to create the ultimate submarine soldiers, they could stay underwater forever then rise out of the deep to wreak havoc on land.

It was very cool when I saw it on late-night TV at the age of about 14.

I'm sure that someone here has the name of the flick handy :-)

[DocCathode]

Shockwaves

Mike Mignola also has Nazi scientists constructing an army of 666 corpse robots.

[DocCathode]

Originally Posted by RickJay

I'm wondering where all this came from. Did someone just come up with the idea and then everyone else ran with it?

It comes from the zombie apocalypse of 2112. Scientist wizards of the future beam meson tachyon warnings back to us in our dreams. WE ARE HAVING TRANSMISSION DIFFICULTY. THIS IS NOT A DREAM. These signals occasionally peak at key nexus. One such nexus was an island where a man named John was imprisoned. Another was in Pittsburgh. Next year, an aspiring reality show contestant will fail an audition when she opens her mouth and begins giving dispatches from the frontlines.

We have until 2112 to stop history from happening. Is the future already set, or is our fate mutable? Is there hope, or is each day just another step closer to the day of the dead?

Either that or it was George Romero and Night Of The Living Dead.

[Northern Piper]

Treehouse of Horror VIII has a take on it - Homer is in a bomb shelter when the French drop a neutron bomb on Springfield. Some of the Springfieldians survive as zombies, and chase Homer in a wierd car that sort of looks like the Beverly Hillbillies' truck on acid. Did the Simpson animators just make that up, or are they copying (excuse me, paying homage to) some well-known zombie movie?

[Interrobang!?]

It wouldn't shock me if John Wyndham's 1951 novel Day of the Triffids had some influence on the early expressions of the genre, or at least drew on the same impulses. The threat is carnivorous, semi-sentient plants, but the setting's the same: most of the population's wiped out, and the few survivors have to face an overwhelming tide of shambling hordes keen on eating their flesh.

[msmith537]

Originally Posted by Northern Piper

Treehouse of Horror VIII has a take on it - Homer is in a bomb shelter when the French drop a neutron bomb on Springfield. Some of the Springfieldians survive as zombies, and chase Homer in a wierd car that sort of looks like the Beverly Hillbillies' truck on acid. Did the Simpson animators just make that up, or are they copying (excuse me, paying homage to) some well-known zombie movie?

The car IIRC is a reference to the car the Munsters drove.

The "mutants" (they weren't zombies) were a reference to The Omega Man. In fact the name of the sketch was "The Homega Man".

[The Scrivener]

An early, admittedly imprecise literary precursor is H.G. Wells' The Time Machine, with its vision of a distant future in which humanity has [de-]volved into infantilized Eloi and the subterranean, clever, cannibalistic Morlocks who provide for them in order to feed on them.

The Morlocks aren't zombies: they're very much alive, and the engineers of their survival, but OTOH they're crude humanoids who emerge en masse from beneath the ground to feed on the living... and presumably their hygiene and appearances aren't much better than that of the average zack.

[Larry Borgia]

Originally Posted by Diogenes the Cynic

I believe it all stems from George Romero's original Night of the Living Dead. That established the whole genre, as far as I know.

I agree. Although some interesting precursors to NotLD have been mentioned, this movie is the one that set the mythology.

[Jonathan Chance]

I've been thinking about this as well. This last month has been filled with Zombie-fun for me. I've ended up partaking in:

World War Z
Kirkman's 'The Walking Dead' trade paperbacks
Shaun of the Dead
28 Days Later

For no particular reason, honestly. They've all just popped up on my radar at once.

And of course that gets me thinking of why the zombie zeitgeist is so uniform in its style and symbolism. I get that it all roots to Romero but you'd think there'd be more variation in the genre by now.

[Loach]

Originally Posted by spoke-

Correction: three movies, counting the upcoming Will Smith vehicle.

I have a feeling of dread about this movie. For some reason I see them giving it a happy ending.

[Bosda Di'Chi of Tricor]

Originally Posted by Diogenes the Cynic

I believe it all stems from George Romero's original Night of the Living Dead. That established the whole genre, as far as I know.

White Zombie, starring Bela Lugosi, appeared in 1932.

[Smitty]

Originally Posted by Bosda Di'Chi of Tricor

White Zombie, starring Bela Lugosi, appeared in 1932.

Yes, but that was of the "voodoo zombie" genre. When you think of "zombie" today, you think of the George Romero type.

[Raguleader]

A variation of the "Zombie Apocalypse" genre can be seen in Firefly and Serenity (moreso in Serenity), although the Reavers don't really quite fit the zombie mold.

Spoilers for Serenity, for those few unwashed who haven't seen it yet:

SPOILER:

The Reavers are a large population of humans from the planet Miranda, a modern, relatively new colony world near the edge of known space which was secretly subjected to a large-scale government test of a substance known as Paxilon Hydrochlorate, intended to remove aggressive tendencies from the population, making them easier to deal with (and making conflicts like the rather bloody and involved Unification War a thing of the past).

The Alliance scientists find that the results are rather horrific. 99.9% of the population has their aggressive tendencies eliminated, along with, quite literally, their will to live. Everyone just sits or lays down where they are, and calmly stops eating, drinking, and eventually breathing. The rest of the population, around 30,000 colonists, became hyper-aggressive, killing anyone who hadn't already died, and eventually turning to cannibalism and self-mutilation. In later years, the Reavers become the Boogieman for those who live out on the Rim, occassionally attacking ships and small colonies, raping, killing, and eating most (if you're very very lucky, in that order) and converting the few that remain via torture.

Oh, and I kinda want to see "I Am Legend", I've seen Will Smith do serious, and he can pull it off (he just usually doesn't try). I can't see HOW they'd give it a happy ending, at best, it might have an ambiguous "The Hero, or what passes for one in this film, has escaped with the girl to live another day" ending without any kind of resolution for him.

[Spoke]

Originally Posted by Loach

I have a feeling of dread about this movie. For some reason I see them giving it a happy ending.

I'm with you. I'd be very surprised if it's any good. Wikipedia says it started as a Ridley Scott project back in the 90s, with Arnold Schwartzenegger as the projected lead. Now that might have been interesting.

Originally Posted by Larry Borgia

Although some interesting precursors to NotLD have been mentioned, this movie is the one that set the mythology.

True, although Romero freely admits that he got the idea from I Am Legend. And I Am Legend does feature a post-apocalyptic survivor facing off against a horde of the undead. So I would say that was the prototype, and NotLD is the template.

[Bosda Di'Chi of Tricor]

A better question is:

Why do we care?

What is it about Zombies that captures this particular generation's attention?

Why the screen-time for walking, rotting bodies?

[scotandrsn]

Originally Posted by Bosda Di'Chi of Tricor

A better question is:

Why do we care?

What is it about Zombies that captures this particular generation's attention?

Why the screen-time for walking, rotting bodies?

Because we've outgrown mummy movies.

[Raguleader]

Originally Posted by Bosda Di'Chi of Tricor

A better question is:

Why do we care?

What is it about Zombies that captures this particular generation's attention?

Why the screen-time for walking, rotting bodies?

I think a big part of it is a mix of political correctness and excessive cliche-ness, you really can't go around killing the Indians, killing gangsters has been done to death (largely as a result of the efforts of Charlie Bronson, who has single-handedly killed most of the gangsters and drug dealers in the world already), and the political atmosphere doesn't really lend itself lately to single-handedly killing swarms of Fundie Muslim Terrorists with high-explosives and automatic weapons anymore. That said, killing rich white terrorists is the realm of Jack Baur, and Chuck Norris deals with the redneck villains and Bill

So where do we get our excessive gratuitous violence? The Undead. I mean, it's either that or Galaga: The Movie. Sure, a zombie apocalypse is a cliche, but it's in a genre that thrives on cliches, at least for this generation of audience members.

[BMalion]

Originally Posted by Bosda Di'Chi of Tricor

White Zombie, starring Bela Lugosi, appeared in 1932.

Bevare!

[Thudlow Boink]

Originally Posted by Loach

I have a feeling of dread about this movie. For some reason I see them giving it a happy ending.

"And it was all a dream." ?

"And the zombies all lived happily ever after." ?

"And the movie made lots and lots of money." ?

[Gangster Octopus]

That's funny because me and a friend were shoooting the breeze one day and we had an idea for a movie about Zombies, but not the George Romero Zombies, No these zombies would be just like regular people, and the fact that people wouldnn't stay dead was causing all sorts of problems with resources and there was also whatever -ism one could have against zombies (metabolism?). We actually saw it as a comedy.

[DragonChild]

Originally Posted by Bosda Di'Chi of Tricor

A better question is:

Why do we care?

What is it about Zombies that captures this particular generation's attention?

Why the screen-time for walking, rotting bodies?

In addition to what Raguleader said, I think there's a few other major things in play. Zombies are stupid but usually strong and numerous, which means that a group of heroes can easily defeat them, if the heroes play smart. This sets a good level of action for a film, book, RPG, or whatever. The heroes, usually normal, everyday people, still do cool and exciting stuff. A lot of the Romero films have also focused on human interaction more than actual zombies. As long as the survivors play smart and get along, they'll be alright. It's when those social conventions break down that there's an issue.

That, and in a zombie movie, unlike other action movies, social conventions have broken down. People are free to do whatever they can get away with - which, keeping in mind that the heroes are normal people, can be cool. You can watch a zombie movie and see yourself doing the same things, in a way.

I think it's the combination of all of these - merciless violence, human interaction, everyday people outsmarting stronger foes, and the breakdown of social conventions in a "realistic", modern world that make the zombie genre so unique. If you're looking for those things, there's nowhere else to really turn.

[Bosda Di'Chi of Tricor]

Some part of me wants to interpert the Zombies as a symbol for something else.

But I honestly can't quite put my finger on what.

[NDP]

Originally Posted by Bosda Di'Chi of Tricor

A better question is:

...

Why the screen-time for walking, rotting bodies?

Because they work cheap and are non-union.

[Cemetery Savior]

Originally Posted by Bosda Di'Chi of Tricor

Some part of me wants to interpert the Zombies as a symbol for something else.

But I honestly can't quite put my finger on what.

Not to play Psych 101, but I always interpreted it as the release form all responsibility, and (to a slightly lesser extent) the relinquishment of control.

How nice would it be to have all responsibility and accountability taken away for a while, your only goal to find and/or eat (brains)?

Alternately, they can be viewed as an easily (one-on-one) beat-up bully, thereby fulfilling all of our inner 4th-grade geeks.

-Cem

[BrainGlutton]

Originally Posted by Ranchoth

Plus, from another point of view, zombies are rather an ideal opponent—they're human-ish, but not frighteningly strong or cunning, and you can't get in trouble (legally or ethically) for killing them because they're already dead.

By the same token, Nazi Zombies are an even better opponent. No one in the world in their right mind can fault you for killing them.

Nazi zombies riding dinosaurs!

[DragonChild]

Originally Posted by Bosda Di'Chi of Tricor

Some part of me wants to interpert the Zombies as a symbol for something else.

But I honestly can't quite put my finger on what.

Does it have to be a symbol for one thing only? They could be used as a metaphor for what happens from uninhibited science, the mindless masses of the world that it seems uselss to go against, or in one case, the current war. Trying to pin down zombies in the zombie apocalypse genre as meaning one thing is like trying to pin down dragons of the fantasy genre as meaning one thing. You first need to define which zombies you're talking about. Too many authors have used them to mean too many different things.

[control-z]

Zombie mutilation is cool because it satisfies our appetite for mayhem and destruction. Killing and mutilating humans = bad (for most people.) Killing and mutilating zombies = good. Good for them because you're hopefully putting them to rest, and good for the humans who are trying to survive.

[BMalion]

Look, I gotta go, can we continue this later? I'll meet you at the Winchester.

[Zebra]

I was Chanel surfing the other day and on one of the Spanish language channels there was a movie of Lucha Libre or Masked Wrestlers fighting zombies. It was called 'The Castel of ?" I wish I had seen the whole movie. It was really fun.

[Sean Factotum]

Originally Posted by DragonChild

Does it have to be a symbol for one thing only? They could be used as a metaphor for what happens from uninhibited science, the mindless masses of the world that it seems uselss to go against, or in one case, the current war. Trying to pin down zombies in the zombie apocalypse genre as meaning one thing is like trying to pin down dragons of the fantasy genre as meaning one thing. You first need to define which zombies you're talking about. Too many authors have used them to mean too many different things.

Agreed. Zombie hordes are an easy metaphor for many things. And either you beat them through cunning and cooperation, or they crush you in the end.

[Miller]

Originally Posted by Bosda Di'Chi of Tricor

Some part of me wants to interpert the Zombies as a symbol for something else.

But I honestly can't quite put my finger on what.

Well, "death" would be the obvious answer. The zombie horde is an in-your-face reminder of your own mortality, without any sort of reassurance of an afterlife or eternal reward. Ghosts, for example, are scary, but they're also evidence for the existence of a soul, that after we die, some part of us goes on. Vampires, at least in the Stoker mold, are the same. If Dracula is damned, then that means there must be grace for at least some of us. And his reaction to a crucifix indicates that there's some validity to the concept of a Christian afterlife. The more modern "vampire as protagonist" stories that jettison the religious component of the vampire myth are merely replacing it with a different sort of immortality. Sure, a vampire can kill you, but it can also bring you back with superhuman abilities, eternal youth, a trendy black wardrobe, and all sorts of other great side-benefits.

The zombie horde is different. There's usually no supernatural background to it. The zombies are either the result of science gone awry, or are presented with no explanation at all. It brings us face-to-face with death without any comforting evidence that the universe is anything other than random and pitiless. It also presents death in a way few of us like to confront it. There's always something faintly ridiculous about zombies. They aren't sexy and cool, like a vampire, or mysterious and otherworldly like a ghost. The archetype of the zombie horde isn't a charming European aristocrat or a beautiful spectral woman. It's an overweight housewife with a pink teddy bear sweater and a gaping head wound. Like real death, being turned into a zombie robs you of your dignity, and turns you into something that is at once ridiculous and repulsive, like the pile of zombies trying to claw its way up the down escalator in Day of the Dead. This fusion is so effective that even movies that are supposed to be comedies, such as Shaun of the Dead, are still highly effective as zombie movies.

The other potent cross-fertilization in this genre is the plague aspect: death as contagion. It's not enough that the zombies kill you, they turn you into one of them. And not through ritualistic seduction, like a vampire, but by random idiot chance. A superficial bite wound, often received during a moment of victory, and the sickness is in you. You're already "one of them," even though you're not dead yet. And then there's nothing you can do but wait until you turn on the rest of the survivors, or put a gun to your head and end it quickly.

Lastly, there's the human commentary. The zombies aren't evil. They're a force of (un)nature, apocalyptically deadly, but wholly unmotivated by desire or intent. Essentially, a human-sized virus. But the destruction they entail creates a backdrop in which "normal" humans become monsters themselves. The naked confrontation with death inevitably brings out the basest reactions of the survivors. Faced with the total collapse of society, people quickly revert to the worst sorts of barbarism. Essentially, the zombie horde destroys you even if it never catches you, by revealing you to be an uncivilized animal who will violate any principle or ethic in order to survive. Although, like all monster movies, the zombie apocalypse film is ultimatly moralistic: the characters who most eagerly pursue their own survival over the common good of his fellow survivors, the more graphic his eventual demise at the hands of the zombies will be.

[Raguleader]

Originally Posted by Miller

Lastly, there's the human commentary. The zombies aren't evil.

This reminds me of a scene from an episode nearish the end of Season 4 of Angel. Evil super powerful demon attacks the offices of Wolfram and Hart, and everyone he kills comes back to life as a zombie (but only this one time, everyone else he ever kills stays good and dead).

Anyhow, our heros are trying to escape from the offices, and just as they're about to make their escape, one of them sees one of the recurring bad guy characters near the head of the zombie horde. He runs up to the guy, slices the zombie lawyer's head with an axe (killing him for good), and then runs back to escape with his friends.

His explanation? "I hate seeing someone I know like that. Even someone I know I hate." The fact that some of the zombie horde may very well be people you know, people you like or love, or even the asshole who took the last can of beats at the grocery store this morning, can have an affect on you by making them more individual and "real" and less "that indistinguishable mass of bad guys that we just hosed with the flamethrower".

[Equipoise]

Damn, that was a great post Miller! I am in awe.

[Bosda Di'Chi of Tricor]

Originally Posted by Zebra

I was Chanel surfing the other day and on one of the Spanish language channels there was a movie of Lucha Libre or Masked Wrestlers fighting zombies. .

"Chanel surfing"?

You were using perfume?
To cover up the zombie stink, mayhap?

[BrainGlutton]

Originally Posted by RickJay

Variations on the theme have also been employed, such as the film "28 Days Later," where instead of the walking dead, people were infected with a virus that turned them into mindless killing machines, but the jist of it was the same.

Thing is, though, the concept only works if the cause of the phenomenon is supernatural. If there were a virus like that and you caught it . . . you wouldn't live 28 days. In fact, you'd probably die of thirst or hunger in a week or two. Think about it.

[Shirley Ujest]

Originally Posted by RickJay

A popular setting for horror fiction, movies, horror-themed games and the like is the ever-useful Zombie Apocalypse. In a zombie apocalypse, the world is unexpectedly overrun by swarms of the living dead, moaning, shambling zombies who go around eating the living.

Zombie Apocalypse fiction usually features a number of plucky survivors attempting to survive in a world full of hideous, cannibalistic ghouls. Many movies, usually named "(Noun) Of the Dead" have been made on this theme, and virtually every horror writer worth mentioning has written at least one story about a world filled with hungry zombies. There's even a book out now that serves as a how-to guide for dealing with hordes of flesh-eating corpses, featuring detailed instructions on constructing zombie-proof shelters, engaging in zombie elimination missions, and the like; if there is anything about dealing with homovorous undead, this guy thought of it. It's a weird book.

Variations on the theme have also been employed, such as the film "28 Days Later," where instead of the walking dead, people were infected with a virus that turned them into mindless killing machines, but the jist of it was the same.

I'm wondering where all this came from. Did someone just come up with the idea and then everyone else ran with it?

In a world gone mad with economic down turns, car bombings,WMD's, missing white women, rampant obesity, Anna Nicole's Unsurprising Death and Whose her baby's Daddy? I am thankful for the Real Issues of life like THIS being asked.

This Magnificent Question is the kinda genius that keeps me subscribing to The Dope year after year.


I bow to your greatness, sir.

[Miller]

Originally Posted by BrainGlutton

Thing is, though, the concept only works if the cause of the phenomenon is supernatural. If there were a virus like that and you caught it . . . you wouldn't live 28 days. In fact, you'd probably die of thirst or hunger in a week or two. Think about it.

I can't think of any movies of the zombie holocaust genre that have involved any supernatural elements. I'm sure there are a few out there, but almost invariably, the zombie plague is either wholly unexplained, or the result of a scientific experiment gone horribly wrong.

[The Scrivener]

Originally Posted by Gangster Octopus

That's funny because me and a friend were shoooting the breeze one day and we had an idea for a movie about Zombies, but not the George Romero Zombies, No these zombies would be just like regular people, and the fact that people wouldnn't stay dead was causing all sorts of problems with resources and there was also whatever -ism one could have against zombies (metabolism?). We actually saw it as a comedy.

I haven't seen it yet, but I believe Robin Campillo's Les Revenants [2004] more or less fits your bill, even if it may be more a [melo-]drama than a comedy.

And that film in turn sounds like it could've been very loosely inspired by Will Self's 1991 gently comic short story "The North London Book of the Dead," in which a forty-ish man discovers that his mother, though deceased and cremated, is enjoying an afterlife in a modest basement apartment in a rather dull neighborhood in Crouch End. These living dead are zombies, but they're perfectly ordinary -- even banal -- in their behavior. Their society is self-administering, with its own telephone book, real estate agents, and so on.

A key difference between the short story and the film might be that Self's [un]dead aren't assimilationist, per se -- they're content to avoid their loved ones, live in unfamiliar neighborhoods to prevent their discovery, and not advertise their true nature.

[GIGObuster]

Originally Posted by Zebra

I was Chanel surfing the other day and on one of the Spanish language channels there was a movie of Lucha Libre or Masked Wrestlers fighting zombies. It was called 'The Castel of ?" I wish I had seen the whole movie. It was really fun.

Santo contra los zombies? (1961)
[English version: The Invasion of the Zombies]

http://www.wam.umd.edu/~dwilt/santozom.htm

But more likely it was El Castillo de las Momias de Guanajuato
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0273144/

Regarding the "mummies" of Guanajuato:

http://www.mummytombs.com/mummylocat...guanajuato.htm

The Guanajuato mummies were discovered in a cemetery of a city named Guanajuato northwest of Mexico City (near Léon). They are accidental modern mummies and were literally "dug up" between the years 1896 and 1958 when a local law required relatives to pay a kind of grave tax.* You could pay the tax once (170 pesos) and be done with it; this option may have appealed to wealthier individuals. But you were also allowed to pay a yearly fee (20 pesos); this would have appealed to less wealthy families. However, if the relatives could not pay this yearly tax for three years, the body (which had, by the way, become accidentally mummified) was dug up from the cemetery and (if the fee still wasn't paid) placed on display in El museo de las momias. [Of course, what if the person's family had moved from town--or what if the person was the last person from their family? Well, it didn't matter; the law was the law!]

Fortunately, in 1958, the law was changed. Although no new bodies have been exhumed, the museum still displays the original mummies.

According to an article in the Arizona Republic (November 1, 2005), the mummies began attracting tourists in the early 1900s, "when cemetery workers began charging people a few pesos to enter the ossuary building where bones and mummies were stored. But business really took off after the 1970 movie Santo Versus the Mummies of Guanajuato, starring masked wrestler Rodolfo Guzmán Huerta."

And all that reminded me that in 1932 besides White Zombie, the original The Mummy was also released, AFAIK Lugosi's zombies were more related to the zombies from Haiti (slaves in a trance, the people not quite really dead) I do wonder if the Mummy's walk and mood at the time of reanimation was the influence for future undead behavior.

[Kamino Neko]

Originally Posted by GIGObuster

And all that reminded me that in 1932 besides White Zombie, the original The Mummy was also released, AFAIK Lugosi's zombies...

Nitpick: The Mummy was Karloff, not Lugosi.

[GIGObuster]

Originally Posted by Tengu

Nitpick: The Mummy was Karloff, not Lugosi.

I know.. that came a little bit confusing. I meant to say indeed that in White Zombie Lugosi's Zombies were walking around like in a trance, Karloff's The Mummy was more (Romero) zombie like when it got out of the sarcophagus.

BTW if you have the time and the bandwidth, you can check the original White Zombie in Youtube, (warning: terrible sound quality)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0z6j1Hhqbxk

[Kamino Neko]

Originally Posted by GIGObuster

I know.. that came a little bit confusing. I meant to say indeed that in White Zombie Lugosi's Zombies were walking around like in a trance, Karloff's The Mummy was more (Romero) zombie like when it got out of the sarcophagus.

OK, that's clearer. Gotcha. Nitpick retracted.