MovieChat Forums > Night of the Living Dead (1990) Discussion > Least menacing zombies of all time?

Least menacing zombies of all time?


Barbara put it best: "They're so slow. We could just walk right past 'em and we wouldn't even have to run."

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To me, they looked dead-ish and fresh. They didn't look cheesy. They didn't look too dark. They didn't look too light. They looked perfect. I heard somewhere that Savini studied recently deceased corpses before filming.

Losing an illusion makes you wiser than finding a truth. ~Ludwig Börne

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Yeah, but they still aren't menacing.

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Okay...

Losing an illusion makes you wiser than finding a truth. ~Ludwig Börne

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I'm guessing you're a fan of the running zombies of DotD 2004 and 28 Days Later. Personally, I prefer the slow moving zombies of Romero's original "Dead Trilogy." Simon Pegg (from Shaun of the Dead) wrote a great article about the merits of slow zombies. The URL is posted below:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/nov/04/television-simon-pegg-dead-set

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I'm guessing you're a fan of the running zombies of DotD 2004 and 28 Days Later.


No.

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So what makes these zombies any less threatening than other slow zombies?

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They seem physically weaker and not as aggressive. Look at how Barbara handled Uncle Rege and that female zombie with a doll.

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lol Thats what Ifind so funny about all these stupid ass romero movies with there arthritis dying for there asper cream zombies. HAHA This movies are so hilarious and cheezy and dumb alone but I mean you really call those a threat to nothing more then maybe a blind deaf really chubby guy. But then again he could just belly flop them. I mean try puting some REAL ZOMBIES in this crappy movies like Return of the Living Dead ones they tear through *beep* anything and you got to burn them to ashes to STOP THEM.

Hell yeah. ginger rusty griswald in this movie ain't doing *beep* with her bb gun.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TzcANOHiDo

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lol Thats what Ifind so funny about all these stupid ass romero movies with there arthritis dying for there asper cream zombies. HAHA This movies are so hilarious and cheezy and dumb alone but I mean you really call those a threat to nothing more then maybe a blind deaf really chubby guy. But then again he could just belly flop them. I mean try puting some REAL ZOMBIES in this crappy movies like Return of the Living Dead ones they tear through *beep* anything and you got to burn them to ashes to STOP THEM.


Try putting some real zombies in this movie? By "a real zombie", I assume you mean a person who has died or is already dead, who, through some form or another, has come back to life, right?

Do me a favor, look up the definition of "rigor mortis". Actually, I'll save you the time.

rigor mortis: noun - Latin for "rigidity of death" - the stiffness of joints and muscular rigidity of a dead body, caused by depletion of ATP in the tissues. It begins two to four hours after death and lasts up to about four days.

After rigor mortis ends, the muscles and tendons begin to decompose and rot. So, if a person were to come back from the dead as a "real zombie", they would hardly be able to walk upright, much less run, as you seem to think.

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[deleted]

Dawn of the Dead 78 has much more lame zombies. They were just people painted blue, and made the Living Dead 90 zombies look like sprinters.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qj7fRpcXRI

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No, they didn't. In many scenes they were just standing there in one spot, slowly... rotating around the human were running between them.

The only sprinters were the kid zombies at the gas station.

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Assuming whatever caused them to return back to life didn't also affect and/or reverse the process of rigor mortis.

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"lol Thats what Ifind so funny about all these stupid ass romero movies with there arthritis dying for there asper cream zombies. HAHA This movies are so hilarious and cheezy and dumb alone but I mean you really call those a threat to nothing more then maybe a blind deaf really chubby guy. But then again he could just belly flop them. I mean try puting some REAL ZOMBIES in this crappy movies like Return of the Living Dead ones they tear through *beep* anything and you got to burn them to ashes to STOP THEM."

And yet, if it wasn't for those "stupid ass" Romero movies there would be no Return of the Living Dead, or any of the post-NOTLD zombie films. The REAL ZOMBIES you speak of came about because of Romero's films. Look at any zombie film before Romero and you'll see the difference(and I'm not bashing those, but they're a completely different kind of zombie than what Romero created)

And by the way, Return of the Living Dead was created by John Russo and Russ Streiner- Russo co-wrote the original NOTLD, and Russ played Barb's brother in the original, and both produced the remake.

I collect dead pigeons then I press them between the pages of a book.

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... did you watch Return of the living dead or do you just always use your ass to do the talking? Tell you what though. If/when hell fills up, you'll probably be the first to go.

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Yea, I agree about the female zombie w/ the doll. Barely any threat at all. Seems like a waste of time and energy fortifying that farmhouse all night with a man like Cooper being so uncooperative. Maybe Ben saw that in hind sight, right before he turned.

You can't go on blaming yourself forever. Just blame yourself once, then move on.

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Hey thanks for that link. It was a very good article that made alot of sense. But fast zombies are here to stay. Just realize that the funny thing about track-star zombies is that film makers have to find a way to slow them down. Just watching a blur streaking towards a character will also become boring after awhile. So film makers always have to include scenes where they are chained or in cages. In essence fast zombies are nothing more than vampires or demons. As long as they slap the name zombie on them who cares?

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I know I'm late in this thread but that was a really good article.

Here's to "The Walking Dead" putting slow zombies back on the map!

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There weren't any zombies in '28 Days Later'.

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There weren't any zombies in '28 Days Later'.
That depends on whether you choose to hang your definition of a "zombie" on the literal cessation of life functions or the figurative death of the personality and ego of the rage infection. They act like zombies in any other zombie movie. By your definition, the zombies in Zombieland weren't zombies either.

Put your money where your stumps are.

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Savini has seen a lot of corpses as a combat photographer in Vietnam.

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Ahhh but let me ask you this!? Could you walk right past them without even running?

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Thing is though, people get tired......zombies don't.

You've gotta stop to take a break eventually :/

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True, but people overlook what I like to think of as the 'true' menace of the Romero zombie.
"Everyone who dies gets up and kills!"
Think about that, for a second. With the Dawn'04 zombies, if you can get away, if you can find some safe place with no zombies, like some bunker under the earth, safe from infection, they you're safe. You and your Significant Other can live down there for as long as your supplies hold out.

But, with a Romero Zombie, all it takes is your SO to choke on a peanut, and now you have a zombie in your base. Your buddy Od's on some drugs he found? Another zombie. He bites his gf? Now you have 2. The only way to be safe from them, TRUELY safe, is to be away from everyone else.

"Yes, it's the Apocalypse alright. I always thought I'd have a hand in it."

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But that's how zombies are supposed to be. Slow IS menacing. It's a threat in the distance, patient and unrelenting. It's actually quite symbolic, even of the living. Their threat is in numbers and in their mindlessness. If zombies really did ever exist, actual undead people that were reanimated, and not rabid people like in the 28 franchise, then slow shamblers would be accurate. The enjoyable book The Zombie Survival Guide pretty much got everything right.

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[deleted]

Oh stop with that "they weren't zombies" nonsense. If you want to get technical, Romero's "zombies" weren't zombies either. They were ghouls of some sort.

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Lone zombies are not very menacing. It's the fact there are more of them as time goes on that makes them dangerous, and that's when they mob you.

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[deleted]

The guy in Bravo's 100 scariest movie moments put it best: "They're not fast. They're not smart. It's just that there are so many of them."

In the dark they can't see how many are out there nor exactly where they are. They also couldn't carry a sick child very far and they would have gotten tired. Zombies don't need rest of food. If they didn't find another place to hole up in they would have been screwed.

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