Zombie movies, like reanimated corpses, refuse to die. And although the makers of the sequel “28 Weeks Later” don’t want you to call it a zombie film, it pretty much is. Here are five memorable films from five decades that feature the beloved flesh-eaters, and some reasons why they stand out in what has become a crowded field of undead flicks.
’28 days later’
2002
In his edgy movie — in which a band of rogue soldiers turned out to be as dangerous as the undead — Danny Boyle digitally filmed London as a wrecked wasteland, into which coma patient Cillian Murphy awakens, unaware that the Rage virus has turned England into a living hell. The sight of Murphy in hospital scrubs on the deserted Westminster Bridge became an immediate movie icon.
Innovations: Once bitten by an “infected,” a person instantly goes berserk. And instead of shuffling along, these monsters run.
Dead Alive
1992
Also known as “Braindead,” Peter Jackson’s maniacal zombie epic is considered one of the goriest movies ever. It’s also (for the iron-stomached, anyway) hilarious. Timothy Balme plays a mild-mannered fellow whose mom gets turned into a zombie from a bite by a Sumatran rat monkey. In his attempts to protect dear old mum, he unwittingly turns half the neighborhood into the undead.
Memorable line you will never hear in another movie: “Your mother ate my dog!?”
Re-Animator
1985
Based on an H.P. Lovecraft story, Stuart Gordon’s tongue-in-cheek schlocker is the tale of an unhinged scientist (Jeffrey Combs) who develops a formula to reanimate the dead — only to have it be turned against him by a rival doctor, who uses the stuff to bring an army of corpses back to life.
Scene you wish you could forget: The decapitated but reanimated villain uses his disembodied head to lick the naked young heroine.
Dawn of the Dead
1978
The world is overrun with zombies, and a handful of survivors barricade themselves inside a shopping mall … where every material good is available to them. They start to go crazy. George A. Romero’s follow-up to “Night of the Living Dead” was shot in color (emphasis on red) with amped-up gore and a broadened scope that satirized American consumerism.
Legacy: It set a high bar for the ick factor. A still-alive biker has his intestines unraveled and eaten like spaghetti.
Night of the Living Dead
1968
Sure, “I Walked With a Zombie” preceded it by 25 years. But Romero’s low-budget shocker is the movie that turned the hungry undead into perennial movie stars and launched a genre. With its ill-fated African-American lead (Duane Jones), the movie also snuck in a political message that encompassed both civil rights and the Vietnam War.
Legacy: Who can forget the line, “They’re coming for you, Barbara”?
