Do we really need more zombie movies? Just as one is opening — the Nazi zombie flick Dead Snow — another gets a trailer: the zom-com Zombieland, starring Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone and Oscar nominee Abigail Breslin. Also, according to the IMDb page, Bill Murray has a cameo as a zombie. After the brilliant Shaun of the Dead, there’s not much need for more zombie movies, especially humorous zombie movies, but I can’t help but be excited about this thing. Hopefully that tongue-in-cheek narration is heard throughout the movie and not just in the trailer, in which it’s employed hilariously.
Anyway, as entertaining as Zombieland looks, it’s certainly contributing to the potential over-saturation of the genre. Somehow, though, zombie movies aren’t as threatened, no matter how many examples are made, as some other types of movies. Vampire plots, for instance, are too common these days. And apocalyptic scenarios in general (which does include zombie stories) are excessively prevalent (today’s other most popular trailer is for Roland Emmerich’s destructoporn flick 2012, which also features Harrelson). Yet we always think most films would be better if they had zombies. The real question may be, then, do we really need more non-zombie movies?
Lets see what the film blogs have to say about this trailer after the jump:
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Is the end of the world nigh? It sure seems that way. Even if the economic situation wasn’t enough of a harbinger of doom, this swine flu pandemic is a sure sign of the apocalypse. Or so it would appear through the media attention. Yes, the outbreak is tragic, and it is certainly a serious concern. And necessary, non panic-inciting developments must be reported. But when we read about how the flu might affect the box office for X-Men Origins: Wolverine, the news coverage has clearly gone a little overboard.
We’re not saying that we should ignore the topic; in fact if there’s anything we’ve learned from Hollywood’s treatment of plots involving widespread disease and infection it’s that turning a blind eye and/or burying the story will come back to bite us on the ass (or any other part of the body that a zombie can sink its teeth into). But fearmongering isn’t helpful either. That’s another thing the movies teach us.
So, what do we do if we want to get out of this latest flu scare alive? We rent some films, and we learn how to survive from both the characters who endure and the characters who perish. Fortunately for you, we’ve already watched the films and are willing to share their lessons.
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Publisher Quirk Books and author Seth Grahame-Smith have come up with the best way to make a literary work more accessible since the creation of Classics Illustrated comic books: they’ve added “all-new scenes of bone crunching zombie action” to Jane Austen’s 19th century novel Pride and Prejudice. This new version, out in stores this May, is titled Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Classic Regency Romance – Now With Ultraviolent Mayhem! And if you didn’t think it was a masterpiece before, chances are you will now.
Could we do the same thing to classic films? Well, the technology to add extraneous enhancements to movies exists. Just check out The Curious Case of Benjamin Button for proof. But like Pride and Prejudice, we’d need to “enhance” films in the public domain if we wanted to get away with it. Fortunately, there are hundreds of such titles (see a list at Wikipedia), some of which actually already have zombies (Night of the Living Dead, White Zombie, Revolt of the Zombies, and in a way the “scientific” film Experiments in the Revival of Organisms).
Avoiding the majority of public domain movies already consisting of horror and science fiction elements, we’ve come up with ten great classic films that would be even greater with the addition of zombies.
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When you gather with your loved ones this week, be sure to give extra thanks for that turkey or soy-based equivalent on which you’re about to dine. Times are hard, but for most of us, we’re still able to eat. Nevertheless, we need to prepare for the even tougher times that inevitably lay ahead. As countless movies attest, desperate times call for desperate measures at the dinner table. Like cannibalism.
The circumstances under which “eat or be eaten” becomes the rule vary widely. Plenty of films have taken on this ancient taboo; in fact, a search for the tag “cannibal” on Spout.com yields eleven pages of results. For your holiday viewing pleasure, I’ve narrowed the list down to ten.
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“From the grave of Queer Cinema emerges the gay zombie movie, in the form of German-Canadian co-production Otto; or, Up with Dead People,” declares 
