Zombie Makeovers

There is a trend in the movie industry to convert old films into DVD format.  It’s a great trend; it allows new audiences to enjoy the classics and old audiences a way to watch their favorites.  When they convert them into this new format, they usually also make them high definition, which can be both bad and good.

A lot of old horror films don’t really translate well into high definition.  Most of them didn’t have large budgets, so their special effects might have been a little cheesy.  When they are converted to high def, this cheesiness becomes readily apparent.  The film gets dated, and sometimes it’s hard to watch.

Not all films have this problem.  In fact, I recently rewatched Day of the Dead (which is one of my all-time favorite zombie films), and it had been converted to bluray.  It was amazing how well the special effects held up.  You have to hand it to Tom Savini, he really knew what he was doing.

 The blood, gore, and intestines looked fantastic on the screen.  The people were torn apart and it looked horrifically real.  It was what a zombie film was supposed to be.  It was so very exciting to watch.

I don’t mind CGI effects, they’re fine.  They’re part of the evolution of film making.  But there is something to be said for “the old way” with mannequins and gallons of red dye and probably entrails from the butcher shop.  Adds a sense of realism to the film.

Gospel of the Living Dead

My research has led me to my friend Kim Paffentroth's book, Gospel of the Living Dead.

In it, he uses theology and Dante's Inferno to critique George Romero's zombie films.  It's incredibly fascinating.  So far, the thought that has stuck with me is this:

"It is not bad enough for our band of survivors that they are surrounded by walking corpses who will never go away until they have torn the humans limb from limb and eaten them alive, for on top of this threat, the humans constantly fight amongst themselves.  Without heroic qualities or virtues, our human protagonists are as much a threat to one another as the living dead are to them." (pg. 32).

He is referring to Night of the Living Dead in this passage, but it really applies to any zombie film.  I've always had a vague notion of how the characters interact with one another in the films, constantly fighting both themselves and the zombies, but it never really occurred to me how prominent the in-fighting was until after reading this.  It's almost ridiculous how the humans interact with one another.  And it's not just in Romero's films.  A lot of other zombie flicks also employ this technique.

Now, I realize that humans don't always get along with one another.  But at the same time, a crisis or disaster usually brings out the best in people.  Earthquakes, hurricanes, typhoons, bombings, they all bring people together to work for a cause and help our fellow human beings.  Yet when it comes to zombies, we are ready to tear each other's throats out.  It's interesting.

Granted, the point of the films is to show how destructive we humans are and how we aren't that much different from the walking dead.  There is a thin line between us and the undead.  We are primal and driven by base desires.  The only difference between us and the zombies is that we have the ability to make a conscious choice not to act like that.  But how often do we make it?

My Latest Zombie Pictures

I received the holy grail of pictures recently:  George Romero with my zombie books.  My friend Jerrod Brown was kind enough to get these for me, and I was incredibly excited when they showed up in my inbox.  I hope you enjoy them as much as I do!

George Romero

Hare Krishna zombie

The Walking Dead zombie

Another The Walking Dead zombie

World War Z: Max Brooks Talks Zombies

(Max Brooks, author of zombie books, World War Z and The Zombie Survival Guide. C. Verstraete photo)

(Note: this is a two-part story. See part 2 at Zombie Pop)

Max Brooks Still Talks - and Fears - Zombies

By Christine Verstraete

Max Brooks is a man of two natures.

   There is the serious Brooks, the man who talks about zombies and links them with real life issues. Then there is the entertainer who gets his point across with wry and often hysterical humor.

  But in whatever persona he is, to this author of the still popular zombie books, World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War and The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead, zombies are more than just scary monsters. They are real life--just in another form and body. And that real stuff is what actually has kept him interested in the whole zombie thing for the past decade.

   "It's fear," he said in a phone interview Friday prior to his lecture appearance at Harper College in Palatine, Ill. "For me, they're a global threat."

   Global meaning real life disasters - the floods, the earthquakes, the Katrinas, that can turn life into an apocalypse at any moment. That is the underlying message of his books, Brooks says: "I like writing about stuff from a real perspective. The only part of a zombie story that should be unreal should be the zombies."

   That message is what he tries to share in the countless lectures he's done across the country since his first book, The Zombie Survival Guide, was published in 2003. He does not take ideas of an apocalypse or natural disaster lightly and says neither should we. Those zombie preppers you read about? Extreme, maybe, but not as crazy as you might think. Being prepared is the one thing they do have right, Brooks says. He can relate.

   "The nice thing is zombie peppers have a kit ready for natural disasters," he says. "...I had an earthquake prep kit as a kid. A student journalist asked me, 'what if you have it wrong?' What's wrong about if you don't know how to purify water, you will die...? Zombies are Katrina. It's all how you look at it."

   How Brooks looks at it is with humor, natural for a guy who was a writer with Saturday Night Live (SNL) from 2001 to 2003. And being the son of legendary actor Mel Brooks must have rubbed off, too. Such credentials certainly helped him make the jump to author, right?

   Wrong.

   Brooks wrote the first book, The Zombie Survival Guide, thinking it would fail - and it almost did. "I thought it was a book that would get stuck in a drawer," he says. "Who would want to buy a real survival guide on something that wasn't real?"

   Being linked to SNL actually made it worse, he adds: "That hurt me. It haunted me the first years of publication. I was at a big disadvantage. (Bookstores) put it (the book) in the humor section. The hardcore (zombie) fans thought I was pissing on them. The humor fans expected a joke book and didn't get it."

   The solution? Brooks began his lectures as a way to promote the book and thanks to a genius suggestion by wife Michelle Kholos, things turned around.

   "I started the lectures to hand-sell the books," he says. "She suggested I go directly to the Better Homes and Gardens of Horror, Fangoria, and ask to plead my case. They did an interview."

   These days he's been doing so many lectures, "I don't know how many," that he says he and his wife had a serious talk. "It was getting to the point, I was afraid to be away from my family (for too long). My son is eight-years-old. He needs a dad more than we need a zombie author."

   So, he may begin cutting down on the lectures, but he hasn't stopped writing or working on other projects. Nor has he left the zombies behind. Just out is a new comic based on his short story, The Extinction Parade.

    The first of a 12-part series tells the story of a zombie plague through the eyes of vampires. Or as he says, again relating back to his preparedness theme, "vampires have always been at the top of the food chain so they never developed survival skills. With zombies, they realize, what are they going to eat? It's an exploration of the downside of privilege, people who don't know how to work, don't know how to struggle, don't know how to (survive). You can apply this to an actual disaster. There is nothing cool or sexy about it. Zombies are just the catalyst."

 * Read more about Max Brooks' Lecture: Zombie Facts, but Funny:

   Zombies and preparing for that zombie apocalypse were never so funny, not unless you are Max Brooks, former Saturday Night Live (SNL) writer and author of the popular zombie books, World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War and The Zombie Survival Guide.

  **  Read the rest at ZombiePop.

Student "zombies" added some "reality" to the lecture event. (Photos: C.Verstraete)

Author Catt Dahman talks zombies - and the Titanic

Today, prolific author Catt Dahman talks about her latest take on zombies - and the Titanic! (Love that cover!)

About Titanic QED In 1912, the Titanic hit an iceberg and over the course of a few hours, plunged to the bottom of the sea, leaving a fraction of the passengers and crew to bob about the frigid sea in small lifeboats. The others, husbands, fathers, third class passengers froze to death in the icy water, but they were the lucky ones; there was much worse in the sea that fateful night.

Behemoths, leviathans, a hundred-foot megaladon and other flesh-devouring creatures broke the boundaries that night, crossing over into our world to prey. As the Old Ones slumbered, the beasts of Lovecraftian lore broke free to terrorize and consume the innocent.

Written as H.P. Lovecraft would tell the tale, Titanic QED explores the untold story of the night the Titanic sank.

Here's Catt!

              I have been labeled a “zombie writer” and I am one. I have a nine-book Z is for Zombie series being released by Severed Press right now and they are going to pick up the others that go with the series including he first book, X is for Xombie.  

              But I am also a horror writer, first and foremost. I have several very scary books available that are about a family of cannibals, Helen of Troy as  vampire,  a curse and serial killer, and about..well…crazed, violent people/rain/ the end of the world. In addition, Severed Press has me on another four-book contract for stories about “bad fish.”

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           Titanic: QED was just released and is about the sinking of the Titanic during a time when Lovecraftian creatures and a megaladon make the catastrophe much worse. A giant, hungry shark going after the people in the water is the very least of the terror. I had fun combining classic Lovecraft with a shark and Titanic because they don’t go together, and yet, they mesh seamlessly. (Check out the assorted Titanic pix on her page.)

             I have been writing these for 30 years, but have been actively in the business for only a year. For some reason, I was grabbed very quickly by a publishing house and have done well enough to write full time. My degree is in psychology and education and I taught literature at a college for a while, but stopped teaching to write full time.

* See Catt's Amazon page

                Zombies, in true Romero and Walking Dead rules, are a vehicle of storytelling. I don’t list a ton about prepping or weapons or such, but I tell a very intense story with my series about loyalty, the right to decide one’s own terms for life and death, maternal love, morals, and how shades of gray matter as much as the typical good vs. evil ideals. 

             My series begins with old  retired men and how that, even in the worst circumstances, have wonderful stories and experiences that matter again in an apocalypse. My characters have feet of clay as they are sometimes scared, selfish, or depressed. I have heroes and I have cruel bigoted characters, men and women, strong, weak, old and young, black, white, brown, gay straight…everyone gets a voice when I write.

                I can’t say my series has a happy ending, but it also isn’t a typical zombie-story either. It is as real and fair as possible and sadly, that isn’t always happy. I am kind of becoming known for endings that are a little brutal and realistic, but when dealing with the intricacies of the human mind, we find some scary endings.

                I became interested this past year in getting my writing out because I feel some fans want my raw, honest style. I kept reading glittery, happy stories and sure, they make us feel good, but it’s like too much ice cream. I felt there should also be some hard core food topped with salsa hot enough to strip paint off a barn. That was my goal: to seriously break a few rules and push boundaries and make the reader as uncomfortable as possible. I have a need to get into a reader’s comfort zone and blow it wide open with terrifying images and disquieting words. If a reader feels as if I have crawled into his mind and dug around, leaving him to worry and ponder the ideals I set in print, then my day is done. There was a need to write about people, using zombies as the least terrifying issue as they rip and tear through the human population.

                My publisher, Severed Press, is great. My editor suggests themes that he knows I will fly with in very new ways and that’s why we work well together. I can say this: there is no one writing as I write that pulls no punches. Richard Laymon, Edward Lee, Ira Levin, and Thomas Tryon who all make the reader feel comfortable and cozy and then push them off a cliff of the story have influenced me. They can take the ordinary and make it very frightening.  I am just fortunate to have Gary Lucas at Severed Press, a great copy editor, and supportive family, fans, and friends pushing me to scare people.

                I am from Texas and most of my stories happen in and around my state because only here do we find characters this rich, funny, and amazing. 

Zombie Points of View

The other day at work, my coworkers and I were stuffing envelopes with reports to mail out.  My one coworker, Tamara, who also happens to be a writer, and I got on the topic of zombies.  She asked me how I felt about the recent trend of creating stories from the zombie's perspective. 

Honestly, it doesn't bother me.  It's another viewpoint in a genre that has been done for a long time.  It's meant to change things, shake up the mundane.  Personally, I think if it can be done well, do it.  However, I think the normal definitions of "zombie" would have to change.  After all, being inside a creatures head that thinks about nothing but braaaaaains or doesn't think at all, that's going to get boring really fast.

I then mentioned that I personally would probably never do a story like that because I'm a purist.  The only zombies I write about are George Romero zombies.  And then I had to stop myself and backtrack.  The next zombie story I'm going to write has zombies who aren't traditional.  They have the ability to think and be trained, much like Bub.   

I got to thinking about the zombie genre and how us authors try to keep things fresh and exciting.  It made me realize that there's nothing wrong with the "traditional" stories, but it's also going to be fun to explore a whole new side to the zombie.  Heck, even George Romero toyed with the idea of smart zombies.  The bottom line is if it can be done well, if you enjoy doing it, do it.  Who's to say what you're doing is wrong?