Vanity Fair has up a great Q&A with horror movie master George A. Romero on the occasion of Survival of the Dead, his fifth sequel to his 1968 classic Night of the Living Dead. First off, Romero dispels the notion that zombies eat brains. While his many cinematic undead have feasted on flesh, he insists they’ve never sampled gray matter. Romero also makes the interesting point that movie zombies have gotten fleeter of foot — like in 28 Days Later and Zombieland — since the days of his lumbering, staggering monsters: He blames videogames for the new need for speed. Also? He’s really pissed that John Landis got to direct Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video instead of him. Zombies are back in vogue these days, but for me, Romero’s Dead is still the gold standard. Do you agree? Will you be catching Survival of the Dead?
May 28
2010
05:25 PM ET
George A. Romero in 'Vanity Fair': Turns out, zombies do not eat brains
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So Romero is saying zombies don’t eat flesh…but they can ride horses in “Survival of the Dead.”
Riiiiiight.
Flesh, yes. Brains? No. And I’m sure riding horses is faster than lumbering!
Whoops…I swear, my reading comprehension switch isn’t broken…I meant to write “brains” in my original comment instead of “flesh.”
With the single exception of Romero’s original Night Of The Living Dead and Dawn Of The Dead, I prefer the fast zombies. I’m just not that scared of something that I could get away from if I calmly and briskly walk away.
The whole eating brains thing never made sense because there wouldn’t be any new zombies. If the brain is destroyed, you kill the zombie, so no brain eating.
Besides, how do they break through the skull? At least all the flesh they eat is above the bone!
Perhaps, because they are alive when their brains are eaten, they need brains when they become zombies. And, maybe they crack the skull like a nut by bashing it against something hard. Then again, maybe it’s just one of those things Hollywood expects you to accept as unexplainable or unnecessary to the storyline.
While I agree that Romero has created the gold standard of zombie movies, I don’t think “Night of the Living Dead” is it…I would say his “Dawn of the Dead” is the zombie movie all other zombie movies are compared to.
I loved the Night of the Living Dead and it’s sequel Dawn of the Dead, but most of his other zombie movies were kind of derivative and thought they were more important than they actually were.
28 Days Later is the best zombie movie made, in my opinion. Slow zombies just aren’t scary…only kinda funny. Fast zombies? Friggin terrifying. 28 Weeks Later was quite good too.
28 days later was cool in the beginning, but it just got lame after that. The Dawn of the Dead remake was fantastic.
28 Days Later is not a zombie movie. To be a zombie you have to have undead, the infected in 28 Days Later never died to become undead, so it doesn’t count. And scary isn’t about making you jump, it’s about the eerie and the creepy. Yeah, the fast zombies make you jump, but the slow zombies just creep me out. Not to mention that a lumbering beast makes more sense for something that is decaying.
come on, i know they were ‘rage infected’ but they were zombies.
i agree, the dawn of the dead remake was quite good. No one smart would go to a mall, though. I don’t know, slow zombies…meh. Shaun of the Dead sort of destroyed them for me.
28 Days Later was eerie, especially at the beginning when he wakes up to an empty, dead london. that part was great. The quiet moments in that film were very unsettling. I’m not saying it was perfect (the third act sort of fell apart for me) but i do think it was truly scary.
Zombie means undead, if they did not die they are not zombies. There’s a reason why they are never refered to as zombies in 28 Days Later, they are infected. And the movie itself is eerie, I do really enjoy the movie although I do completely disagree about the third act which was an excellent social commentary about the falling apart of society in the midst of turmoil. It was the rage virus on a social scale.
I was watching 28 Days Later again last night. I loved it before, but some stuff hit me that didn’t make sense. Like the father has bowls all over the roof, hoping it will rain so they have water. But as soon as they leave, they stop at fully stocked grocery store and take all kinds of supplies, including bottled water. Why didn’t they just bring it back to their apartment rather than risking the long trip into the unknown?
Zombies don’t technically have to be the reanimated dead. There are Voodoo traditions of zombieism that consist of turning a living person into a zombie without that person ever dying.
(Although my personal opinion is that the “infected” in 28 Days Later are not zombies, by any measure– yet I still love that show; 28 Weeks Later was great, too).
28 Days Later = plague movie NOT zombie movie.
Stefan: Even that requires someone to reach a near death experience. The zombification process usually began after the person was infected with a poison that made them appear dead. After which their tribe would bury them, or perform their death ritual and leave them be until the tribe that poisoned them brought them back with the antidote, lobotomized them and used them as slaves. So, in a way, to anyone who would have seen them after the process, they would seem like a reanimated corpse.
Oh, and “slow zombies aren’t scary”? Romero’s Night of the Living Dead is a terrifying movie!
I’m always dubious of people who claim that they laugh at horror movies… It just seems to me that they are trying to convince themselves of their own bravado…
Romero is without a doubt King of the Undead. I’ve been a fan of the horror genre my entire life, and did a blog posting recently about the attraction of horror movies to gay men like myself.
Mark S. King
MyFabulousDisease.com
i prefer the slow zombies too. the scare factor is that yes you can outrun them but they will eventually get you due to sheer numbers. the fast ones are just not fair!
First of, 28 days later is not a zombie movie. Hell, is not even a good movie. second, slow zombies are much scarier, they may be slow but certainly persistant. George A. Romero made 3 amazing zombie movies (night of the living dead, dawn of the dead and the extremely underrated day of the dead) and a good one (land of the dead). Unfortunately he stumbled with diary of the dead, but regardless, I’m looking forward to seen his new movie. Oh and yeah, I shook hands with the man once, awesome day that was…
I don’t care if zombies run, walk, or crawl. As long as they’re craving human flesh, I’m there.
come on EW, we already knew that from Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me when he was the Not My Job guest. All of your writers seem pretty educated, so why the hell isn’t there more NPR listening/referencing around here?? NPR is an essential part of culture, especially the pop part!
I’ve seen a few zombie movies, but Romero’s first was the best. Not because of the zombies, they were just the canvas. The real picture was about all the other things going on: racism, teen sexual awakening, apocalyptic paranoia. Nice!
Which makes Shaun of the Dead also a riot!
I dunno. Running zombies take a bit of fun out of zombie movies. Sure, the recently dead will move quickly compared to their long-dead counterparts, but those who have been dead for weeks or months and not dispatched by survivors? They’re going to slow down. Doesn’t change the fact that I’m more than likely going to see Survival of the Dead some way or another. Probably just going to wait for DVD, like I did Land of the Dead.
Ghouls eat brains, not zombies.
Will definitely see Survival of the Dead in theaters. I think George Romero continues to get better. Land of the Dead, especially, deserved to be a bigger hit than it was. It was a great action movie that showed what Romero can pull off with a bigger budget.