Steve Niles guest blogs on Mania!

A guy who writes about Zombies has instant awesomeness points from me. BANG!

I saw panels from the comic book and it FINALLY showed the "zombies" (they ain't really dead) munching on some hapless living victims; which was my only complaint about 28 Days Later. Not that I wanted gratuitous cannibalism gore but that was missing from the movie and I felt the zombies were nothing more than a crazed angry mob who would just beat the hell out of you--now if they ate you there was a sense of sickening dread to the apocalypse.

Well yes... They really are not zombies. They happen to just be normal people that go crazy because of the virus. I am curious of why they do not end up attacking the other people infected, but... when I start to think about that I try and distance myself because I make the movie a little less fun.

i don't know, boyle definitely made a point of having his "zombies" throw up copious amounts of blood, and i thought that was the shit

I looooooooove Zombie movies but whether they're technically Zombies or not, and even when they are, it's not the only thing that draws me to these films. Romero's Night of the Living Dead series, 28 Days, et cetera they appeal to me more as "post-apocalyptic" films.

Even that term's not strictly accurate either since the apocalypse is not so uh apocalyptic.

(the consistent element in both the Dead and 28 series is actually plaque/virus - in Romero's series it's implied the Zombie 'virus' came from outer space -Ed)

And then there are those Zombie movies that are probably the most faithful to the original Zombie concept: a tribal-witchdoctor/Voodoo inspired chemically induced near-death/walking-dead state.

But whatever type of Zombie it's the Post-Apocalyptic-Environment oriented films that I love, technically should probably call them LORD OF THE FLIES movies: the breakdown of society, the anarchy, the mutant pocket sub-societies that form in the aftermath, and the attempts at social reconstruction in the face of that anarchy, that's what's cool about these movies to me.

Using a shotgun you got from a smashed display case in the now baron local mall and blowing away the infected/mutants/zombies to get to that look at society? that's just sweet sweeeeet icing on the cake.

*pause*

*chk chk*

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA