My Top 10 Favorite Pieces of Zombie Media

From vampires to werewolves, hellish demons to Frank N. Furters Frankensteins, Halloween is chocked full of memorable creatures that always make a few appearances every year in entertainment, be it through books, TV, video games, or movies. Nowadays, though, a lot of Halloween time monsters that used to scare the Holy Water out of me have turned into things that wouldn’t even scare my mother, and that’s saying a lot.

Vampires now sparkle, wear fancy scarves and preach the joys of queefing abstinence. Werewolves have been either delegated to remakes of classics, or to the previously stated Twi-Hard movies as muscular Native American teens. Frankenstein has been MIA for years now (Van Helsing doesn’t count) and that essentially has left one ghoul to take over as top terror. The Zombie.

Personally, I’m just fine with that. While I would love to see some real vampires take the spotlight away from Twilight, and would equally love to see a new serial killer take control away from Jigsaw, at least I’ve had good ol’ zombies to entertain me for the last decade or so. Read after the jump to see my top ten pieces of zombie media after the jump!

10. Day of the Dead – I guess that I should spoil your day by telling you guys this tidbit: I have not seen Night of the Living Dead yet. I’ll probably have viewed it by this Halloween, though. Anyways, Day of the Dead is a film that has two of my favorite characters in any horror film in gigantic asshole Captain Rhodes and the only gun-wielding zombie that I could ever appreciate, Bub. This is full of memorable moments, but nothing tops [Spoilers] Captain Rhodes ultra-violent death and last words. [Warning, the video below is pretty violent.]

9. Left 4 Dead – There are quite a few zombie video games floating around out there, but none are fun to play in my eyes than the those of the Left 4 Dead series. Whether it be online or with a group of three pals, there’s probably nothing that gets you closer to actually being in a zombie apocalypse (No 3-D glasses necessary). While the frantic gameplay is certainly easy to get into, nothing pleases me more than being the big Cajun black guy (Left 4 Dead 2) and slicing up baddies with a samurai sword.

8. Braindead – Before the Lord of the Rings series made him the richest man to ever visit New Zealand, Peter Jackson had a thing for making very, very, very gory films. His masterpiece from the early days is Braindead, which is like Shaun of the Dead, you know, if that movie got two syringes of cocaine injected in it’s mouth ala Boardwalk Empire (Watch that show). I don’t need to say much more, outside of that the disease is spread through rat-monkeys that were bred from tree monkeys being raped by plague rats, just watch the above scene and then go watch the whole thing right away. Oh, and a priest doing kung-fu. And this video.

7. Michael Jackson’s Thriller – I dare any of you to try and watch that video without getting your groove on. It just can’t f*cking be done!

6. Zombieland – I think it’s easy to say that you could put goofy Jesse Eisenberg (Trevor’s Hollywood doppelganger), insanely good looking Emma Stone, and batshit insane Woody Harrelson into any sort of situation and I would see that movie the second it comes out (My idea? A Holocaust comedy-musical). Bonus points for having the greatest cameo of all time in Bill Murray.

5. The Walking Dead – Of all the comic book series that I’ve read, The Walking Dead is by far my favorite, and even though the only other comic books I’ve read were Kick Ass and nothing else, I bet I can continue to stand by that claim. The Walking Dead doesn’t really break any new ground for the first few books in the series, but once it gets to a chick with two pet zombies and a samurai sword, things really take a step up on the awesome-ness level. This is being at number 5 because I’m pretty damn sure that the AMC series (created by Frank f*cking Darabont) is not going to suck either.

 

via Warming Glow

4. 28 Days Later – Nope, I don’t care that the violent things in 28 Days Later are just rabid humans. They look pretty zombie-ish, and that’s good enough for me. 28 Days Later isn’t just great because of the horror, but also thanks to some stellar camera work and a chilling score. Ooooh, adjectives are fun.

3. Shaun of the Dead – As if there weren’t already enough reasons to love British people, movie magician Edgar Wright teamed up with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost to make the best damn zom-rom-com around. It’s also the first installment of the “Blood and Ice Cream Trilogy” which was then followed by Hot Fuzz. The third film has no current release date, but it’s supposedly dealing with the end of the world. I can’t wait!

2. Dawn of the Dead (Original and Remake) – Yeah, normally I’m a little whiny girl when it comes to remakes, but Zack Snyder isn’t your everyday average remake director. He took George A. Romero’s classic film, gave it a modern spin with fast zombies (Which are way scarier than the shuffler zombies in my opinion) and gave us on of the few remakes that is just as good as the original, if not better.

1. World War Z – If you were to tell me that the writer of one of the most interesting pieces of zombie fiction would be the son of Mel Brooks, I probably would have laughed in your face and then yelled “Ludicrous speed!” I bet that a lot of people were a little more than shocked when Max Brooks, son of the comedy genius, published instead World War Z. While his previous book, The Zombie Survival Guide was more tongue-in-cheek to the zombie apocalypse, WWZ was dead serious, and in more instances than one, downright disturbing. Perhaps the biggest reason why WWZ is such an amazing novel is how chilling it is in it’s sheer realism. The book is just chocked full of different looks at how an apocalyptic moment affects people from all over the world. The only part that could probably be describedas cartoonish is the story involving a blind man that manages to kill hordes of zombies with his sword by smelling them. Damn, what is it with zombies and their ever-present need to get sliced by Asian blades? More reasons for WWZ to be number one will arrive in the future, when a movie starring Brad Pitt arrives. Color me excited!

 

First images related to the film. Don't mind my girlish squealing.

Runner-ups: Dead Rising, Plague of the Dead, Night of the Living Dead, Zombie Strippers (not really), ‘Zombie’ by The Cranberries (Also not really)

[That’s it for zombie media. If haven’t seen, read, or played anything on the list above, do it right freaking now!]