Just the other day, I was watching the campy yet fun “Return of the Living Dead”, the film that gave us the wonderful cry of “BRAAAAAAINS!!!”
A few weeks ago, I had watched both the original “Night of the Living Dead”, and the 80’s tacular “Dawn of the Dead” original.
I was thinking on the differences between the 2 styles of shambling meatbags…
Romero[ul]
[li]slow moving[/li][li]eats all of their kill[/li][li]mindless[/li][li]method of death- destroy the brain[/li][li]non-aggressive outside of feeding[/li][/ul]
**o’Bannon ** [ul]
[li]Fast moving[/li][li]intent on eating just the brain[/li][li]intelligent… “send more paramedics!”[/li][li]method of death… must be completely destroyed.[/li][li]aggresion outside of feeding unknown, but as they are sentient, they may be more aggressive.[/li][/ul]
That being said, I am now torn on which sort of Zombie I hope comes for us in the emminent Zombie Uprising.
While the Romero zombies would allow for a planned defense, and are easily dispatched in small groups, the o’Bannon zombies may be able to be reasoned with. Maybe.
I would prefer Romero zombies because I’d feel slightly guilty about sitting on my roof sniping at anything that had enough intelligence to be able to speak in complete sentences. Why this makes a difference to me I have no idea. Not that I would refrain from sniping at O’Bannon zombies if they were the ones that came to the party. I’d just, y’know, feel a little guilty about it.
Romero zombies, obviously, since O’Bannon zombies for all intents and purposes can’t be killed, and even if you manage to reduce one to ash, the ash can create new zombies.
By the by, I’d prefer fighting Romero zombies than O’Bannon zombies…the former, if you can reawaken their memories, might be able to be reasoned with, or at least retrained (witness “Bub”). O’Bannon’s Trioxin zombies, on the other hand—well, the problem is, they have their memories and intelligence to begin with. They mostly just don’t give a shit. Not when they can just as easily get fresh brains to dull the maddening, ever-present pain of being dead. (Not to say you couldn’t reach some sort of zombie detante with them, but it’s going to be a lot trickier. And harder to deal with them if you fail, or they turn on you.)
Wait a minute, I call shenanigans. The post that Ranchoth links to is a direct rip of the first post in the thread that Tengu links. Unless ** Master Wang-Ka** is also Doctor-Bedlam on the FVZA board, he got hosed by some poser.
But Romero zombies just arise spontaneously. Anyone who dies automatically becomes a zombie regardless of how they died.
Your best situation is World War Z zombies. Zombies are only created out of people who are exposed to previous zombies and then die. The resulting zombies are slow and mindless and can be killed by a shot to the brain.
Right, so if you’re around someone who’s died you bung a fork through their brainpan before they have a chance to come back. You’re not going to be able to take care of every single dead body that way but with some effort the major threat is going to be contained.
This is what bothers me about the first round of Romero films especially, is this utter failure of society as a whole to take any effective measures against the zombies. I get that the first round are supposed to be all allegorical and such but still.
Not necessarily. RotLD II demonstrated that a massive does of electricity will “kill” an O’Bannon zombie. And then there’s those stun darts they came up with in RotLD 3 (the zombies in 4 & 5 were not O’Bannon zombies). World War Z zombies (let’s call them “Brooks” zombies for consistency) are basically slow moving Snyder zombies. They aren’t any easier to defeat than Romero zombies, but an outbreak would be much easier to control.
Ah… okay, Zack Snyder directed the 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake. For a brief moment, my mind interpreted “Snyder zombie” as a reference to the tool belt-wearing superintendent character from “One Day at a Time.”
1-- Now I’m adding RotLD 2 and 3 to my netflix queue.
2- I suppose one could make a deal with o’Bannon zombies (You leave me alone, and I’ll bring you victims). But that would make one a bad-guy.
Yeah, I think I’m gonna go with Romero zombies. I suppose the maxim “One should not try to negotiate with hordes of cannibal undead” should be coined.
On a side note-- I read on online “survival” LJ that depicted a zombie outbreak. When it was over, it appears that down the line someone had come up with “Brain Spikes”, a silver spike that everyone carried with them, and in the event they died, a ceremony was put in place for the delivery of the brain spike before re-animation. I thought it was a nice touch.
I’m hoping for pre-Romero zombies. Before the original Night of the Living Dead, zombies never hurt anyone – they just walked around all stiff-jointed and wide-eyed and dead and creepy and never hurt anyone. That pretty much agrees with real stories about zombies (although they may have been simply drugged and possibly mentally disturbed or damaged people, as Wade davis had it in his controversial books).
One step between traditional benign zombies and Romero zombies are the space-age zombies of Invisible Invaders, who still didn’t hurt anybody and walked stiffly, but wore nifty suits. And could talk, if need be.
I followed this link, and noticed that I was unaware of the Autumn series of books. The first one is available for free download online. I downloaded it and started to read.
Oh my god it’s bad. Truly terrible writing. Little to no backstory, wooden characters, inconsistent point of view. I gave up about halfway through.
I’ve seen all five Return movies, and all but the first are terrible. Two is basically exactly the same story as 1 (they even use some of the same actors and lines), but much more cheese and less horror. Three is just lame. Four and Five may be worth watching just because they’re so bad. The filmmakers used this guiding principle: American voice talent plus Eastern European actors are cheaper than American actors.