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A zombie is a reanimated human corpse. Stories of zombies originated in the Afro-Caribbean spiritual belief system of Vodou, which told of the people being controlled as workers by a powerful sorcerer. Zombies became a popular device in modern horror fiction, largely because of the success of George A. Romero's 1968 film Night of the Living Dead.
There are several possible etymologies of the word zombie. One possible origin is jumbie, the West Indian term for "ghost". Another is nzambi, the Kongo word meaning "spirit of a dead person." According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the etymology is from the Louisiana Creole or Haitian Creole zonbi, of Bantu origin. A zonbi is a person who is believed to have died and been brought back to life without speech or free will. It is akin to the Kimbundu nzúmbe ghost. These words are approximately from 1871.
Thirty-something slacker Shaun (Simon Pegg) has no clue what to do with his life or with his relationship with girlfriend Liz (Kate Ashfield).
But when the unthinkable happens and zombies begin to roam the streets
of London terrorizing residents, including his beloved and his mother,
Shaun realizes he must act quickly to save Liz from danger and keep
their relationship from spiraling out of his hands forever. But is it
too late for heroics?
Director George Romero's
low-budget horror classic continues to inspire heebie-jeebies, in part
because of the randomness of the zombies' targets. As dead bodies
return to life and feast on human flesh, young Barbara (Judith O'Dea)
joins a group of survivors in a farmhouse hoping to protect themselves
from the hordes of advancing zombies. But even with assistance in
slowing down and killing zombies, soon only one person remains in the
farmhouse.
Picking up where Night of the Living Dead left off, this classic horror flick from director George Romero begins with zombies taking over every major city in the United States. Running for their lives, Peter (Ken Foree), Roger (Scott Reiniger), Stephen (David Emge) and Frances (Gaylen Ross
) find refuge in a remote shopping mall, only to discover they must fight a motorcycle gang as well as the undead ghouls.
Curiosity overcomes five innocent teenagers vacationing at a cabin in
the Tennessee woodlands, and their cellar-snooping unleashes spirits of
the evil dead. After all his pals have become possessed, flesh-eating
zombies, the one remaining teen (Bruce Campbell) tries to solve the nightmarish mystery and save his friends. Spider-Man director Sam Raimi uses impressively freaky special effects to make this low-budget horror classic.
El Wray (Freddy Rodriguez) and his ex-girlfriend Cherry Darling (Rose McGowan) fight an army of zombies infected with a biochemical weapon unleashed by a psychotic Army lieutenant (Bruce Willis) and an opportunistic scientist (Naveen Andrews). Cult favorite filmmaker Robert Rodriguez directs this extended version of his segment from the double-feature homage Grindhouse. Marley Shelton, Josh Brolin, Michael Parks and Jeff Fahey co-star.
Famed RKO Radio Pictures producer Val Lewton managed to single-handedly
redefine the horror genre in the 1940s, cranking out low-budget,
high-volume box office hits that rarely disappointed audiences -- or
studio execs. This double feature of The Leopard Man (1943) and The
Ghost Ship (1943) -- two creepy tales revolving around the terror of
the living dead -- is the fourth installment of a five-DVD collection
of Lewton's work.
One of the most memorable early works from director Sam Raimi
(Spider-Man), Army of Darkness is the third in a trilogy of hilarious
sci-fi sword-and-sorcery epics. Bound in human flesh and inked in
blood, the ancient Necronomicon, or "Book of the Dead," transports
department store clerk Ash (Bruce Campbell
) and his 1973 Oldsmobile into England's Dark Ages. There, he faces legions of undead beasts in a battle for his life.
Based on the George Romero 1979 gore classic, this remake takes place
as the United States is overrun (after a plague) by millions of corpses
who walk the earth as cannibalistic zombies. A small group of
survivors, including a nurse (Sarah Polley) and a police officer (Ving Rhames),
try to find shelter within a massive shopping mall. But the zombies
have a kind of sense memory and start arriving -- in droves -- for a
shopping spree.Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn (1987)
A
killer virus (it turns those it infects into homicidal maniacs) is
accidentally released from a British research facility. Carried by
animals and humans, the virus is impossible to contain and spreads
across the entire planet. Twenty-eight days later, a small group of
London survivors are caught in a desperate struggle to protect
themselves from the infected.
A virus has leaked out in a top-secret facility, turning all resident
researchers into ravenous zombies and their lab animals into mutated
hounds from hell. Time to clean up, so the government sends in an elite
military task force led by Alice (Milla Jovovich) and Rain (Michelle Rodriguez) to contain the outbreak. But they have just 3 hours before the pathogen becomes airborne and infects the world. …
Fido is a typical movie about the boy next door and his pet -- except
in this case the loyal "pet" is a lumbering zombie named Fido (Billy Connolly). Problems arise when he breaks loose and noshes on the next-door neighbor, forcing owner Timmy Robinson (K'Sun Ray) into damage-control mode while he tries to persuade his parents (Carrie-Anne Moss and Dylan Baker) to keep Fido in director Andrew Currie's imaginative horror-comedy.
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