January 8, 2009
Ahh...Zombies!
My roommate and I sat down to watch Night of the Living Dead (1968) which is sort of the grandfather of zombie survivor/horror films. We mistakenly rented the infamous '30 Anniversary' edition which contains bogus added footage at the beginning and end of the film (although it was created by the co-writer of the original screenplay and features the same actor playing a zombie who playing the same zombie in the original version's opening sequence...).Afterwards I thought it would be cool to see every zombie survivor/horror film made. Thats a very unpractical goal, I loved the remake of Dawn of the Dead (2004) by Zach Snyder, who went on to direct 300 and has the Watchmen coming out soon. And I really enjoyed the spoof Shaun of the Dead (2004).
So after doing a little research on wikipedia and the IMDb I was surprised by just how many zombie films have a story that directly links back to the seminal 'Night'. It was so complicated I thought it worthy of a flow chart explaining all the connections.There you have it. In looking these films up, it seems that most of them are probably not so worth watching. But its pretty interesting that one film could spawn 18 (or more) sequels, unofficial sequels, remakes, etc.
If you want to see Night right now, you can for free on Google Video (apparently due to a printing mix-up its been in the public domain for years)
