It’s not a virus at all. NOTLD states that it’s radation brougth back from a satellite returning from Venus. More correctly, a satellite returning from Venus emits a strange sort of radation and then the dead start popping back to life.
I saw Romero talk about the “new” zombies and while he said they were indeed getting smarter, he didn’t give a reason for it. Nobody thought to ask either (I think we were just releived that they weren’t running marathons).
If you want to read the movie as a critique of imperialist politics, the moral is that the natives are smarter than you think and cooperation may be better than eradication/enslavement.
Just to make you happy you’re not in film studies anymore: Various mini-essays on the phallic gaze and Romero’s zombie movies.
That’s pretty much what Romero said on the commentary track for Land of the Dead. (Though that movie does have a cameo of a character from Dawn of the Dead, now one of the living dead.)
Posted by Chairman Pow; spelling corrected:
Yeah, but that’s so patently stupid that I prefer to think of it as a red herring.
If I may throw my own horse hockey theory out, it could be because these zombies are fresher and have a bit more grey matter upstairs than the first zombies.
In NOTLD, the zombies are majority buried and have been there for a while. Things aren’t quite what they used to be up top.
In DOTD, most of your zombies are ole school but there are more newer ones with more recently used brains.
In DayOTD, the slower and less fresh brained zombies are on the decline and more new zombies with the brains near fully intact are around. They have memories because their brains have not decomposed.
In LOTD, it’s almost all fresh brained zombies. Their brains are slowed a bit due to oxygen deprivation from death, but they still have quite a bit going on. They’ve had time to get used to things and can devote the remaining stuff they have into slightly more advanced concepts.
Now that’s some grade A pseudoscientific bullshite right there. I’ll take that No-Prize if ya don’t mind.
Now that I think on it, this part doesn’t make much sense. Any dead cells would’ve been re-animated so the oxygen loss wouldn’t matter. However, it is possible that whatever force is giving life back to the cells simply doesn’t work as well. The brains of the new zombies are more intact so everything still works, but the new life force just isn’t as good as the old. They don’t move as fast. The cells likely can’t replenish themselves as quickly so they look mildly rotten. And they think slower. They can still plan, reason, etc. but most higher functions are beyond them.
There. It’s sciency and thoroughly fictiony. Now I want my no-prize.
Remember when NOLTD was made, there was the specter of nuclear war hanging over his head rather than viruses, which is a more “modern” sensibility. The radiation thing was also common in the B-movies that Romero loved.
