 Happy Zombie Day, and welcome to my cast. It's a bungalow! Join me today as we take a look at the history of zombie movies and how we got from this to this. And, what's next for the zombie genre? Or, is it dead? I know, I know! I didn't ask you. When most of us think of zombie movies, we think of corpses digging their way out of the mud to eat human flesh. But the first zombies to appear on film are actually quite different, and their origins come from Haitian voodoo. Tell me more about these voodoo zombies! Haitian zombies are the recently deceased, or even sometimes a living, controlled by magic to be used as a puppet in some sort of evil scheme. Thank you. First ever zombie movie is considered to be 1932's white zombie. Doesn't sound like white zombie to me! It stars Bella Lagosia as an evil voodoo master who turns a young woman into a zombie to join his army of zombies that are in his command. This sounds nothing like The Walking Dead. White zombie was a low-budget film filmed in only 11 days which received mostly negative reviews but was still able to influence decades worth of voodoo zombie movies such as King of the Zombies. I walked with the zombie, the zombies of Moro Tao and Plague of the Zombies. I lived through two plagues! The 1950s saw the birth of the atomic zombie which were zombies created by science rather than voodoo. Again, to carry out some sort of evil deed by a mad scientist or aliens. As you can see the influence of science fiction is starting to creep in and we saw movies such as Creature with the Atom Brain, Plan 9 from Outer Space and Teenage Zombies. With a female mad scientist? As you can tell, most of these zombie films from the 30s into the 60s were all low-budget B movies and fittingly enough, another low-budget movie came to change cinema forever in 1968. Astro Zombies. No, not Astro Zombies! Night of the Living Dead, written and directed by George A. Romero and co-written by John Russo. It was originally intended to be a horror comedy called Monster Flick. Astro Zombies. But when they realized they could never get the budget to make the movie they wanted to make, John Russo came up with the idea of dead corpses coming back to life and eating the living. It is the first flesh-eating zombie film giving birth to the era of the Romero Zombies. What about this Russo guy? This is a zombie we all know and love, a slow-moving rotten corpse that moves in hordes and will turn you into one of the living dead if you are bitten. Night of the Living Dead also gave us one of the first on-screen black heroes, Ben, as played by Dwayne Jones, making this one of the most important films in horror history. It went on to influence every zombie movie that came after it. It was one of the highest-grossing, independent films of all time, but the filmmakers saw a little profit as they failed to properly copyright the film. Oh, shit! Shit! After over a decade of copycat movies trying to capitalize on Romero's success, Romero himself returned to the zombie genre to breathe fresh air into it with his own sequel, Dawn of the Dead. I prefer the remake. Excuse me. Ooh. It can be said that Dawn of the Dead is the first epic zombie film and the first to bring social commentary, the human condition, and realistic, strong yet flawed characters to the forefront of the storytelling. In my opinion, Dawn of the Dead is the best zombie movie of all time. I'll drink to that! The 70s were brought to an end by yet another zombie classic with a very confusing title. Zombie Flesh Eaters, aka Zombie 2, aka Zombie. It was a standalone zombie film everywhere else in the world, except for in Italy, where it was coined as the Dawn of the Dead sequel, which was called Zombie in Italy, hence Zombie 2. It was directed by Italian horror legend Lucio Fulci and it brought zombies back to its voodoo origins, but also kept the gore in the rotten corpses from Romero's movies. It also has a scene where a zombie fights a shark underwater, so how can you go wrong? Not to mention a woman getting her eyeball pushed through a splinter of wood. The 80s was a smorgasbord of zombie films. It was ushered in with the introduction of the fast-running tool-wielding zombie in 1980s Nightmare City. Wes Craven brought back Haitian zombies in Serpent in the Rainbow. My balls hurt just thinking about it. The 80s gave us some of the best zombie comedies of all time with Night of the Creeps, Night of the Comet, and Return of the Living Dead, which weaved its way into Romero's lore without actually being part of the series. And in my opinion, it is one of the best horror comedies of all time and the second best zombie film of all time. I'll drink to that! Dead and Buried and Reanimator gave us fresh fun takes of the Living Dead, but nothing really seemed to stick as a turning point or as an ongoing trend in the 80s. The 80s were really just the wild west when it came to zombie films. Yee-haw! The 90s started off with a bang with Peter Jackson's blood-bath zombie comedy Dead Alive, leaving a whole decade trying to live up to its greatness because at this point, zombie films were mostly low-budget, direct-to-video releases. The 2000s saw a resurgence and reimagination of the zombie films. It kicked off with Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later, which some may argue isn't a true zombie film. It's not the Living Dead as a rabies-like virus. Needless to say, its fresh approach and gritty, handheld-camera style of shooting made it a trend-setter. But they're not zombies! You may argue that it's not a zombie film, but you can't deny the 28 Days Later is an excellent and terrifying film that influenced the genre in years to come. In the mid-2000s, there were some very popular zombie video games such as Resident Evil and House of the Dead. These were turned into movies and moved the needle more towards action and away from horror. Perhaps the two most successful zombie movies of this era were The Dawn of the Dead remake, The Original is Better, and Shaun of the Dead, which was a spoof. Both movies were really just using the good name of Dawn of the Dead without really contributing anything new to the genre. Even George Romero couldn't breathe fresh air into it as he was becoming more of a follower than a trend-setter with films such as Land of the Dead, Diary of the Dead, and Survival of the Dead. I like Land of the Dead! Dennis Hopper! Mwah! Actually, sorry, yeah. Land of the Dead is pretty damn good. In the late 2000s, found footage movies such as Wreck and its sequel brought horror back to the zombie genre. Then came The Walking Dead, based off the comic book. The Walking Dead TV series has now been running for over a decade. Though it's not a film, its influence has dominated zombie pop culture since it first aired. At first, it was great to see zombies take to the airwaves. And the gift shops! With complex characters and fantastic acting, it kept the genre alive until it started to get old. If they kill off Dero, I'm not watching! As good as the show is, it hasn't done anything new since Dawn of the Dead. Even though I stopped watching maybe two or three years ago, it owes everything it is to George Romero. The last really great zombie film was 2016's Train to Busan, but let's face it, that movie wasn't doing anything new and exciting either, besides putting zombies on a train. So let me ask you, has the zombie genre gotten stale? If so, what is the new batch of trioxin that will breathe new life into the zombie genre? Personally, I like to see the rebirth of the talking running zombies that we saw in the 80s. Give me something crazy like a gang of biker zombies going town to town, devouring its inhabitants. So just to recap, we've seen voodoo zombies in the 30s and 40s, we've seen atomic zombies in the 50s, flesh-eating zombies in the 60s to the present day, rabid zombies in the 2000s, and not much new since. So, let me ask you, are zombies dead? Yes!