Zombie Walk Interviews

This local Minnesota news piece goes farther than other items into the reasons why people participate in these zombie walks. I am extremely curious about this phenomenon, and wish I could undertake more in-depth interviews with a number of these individuals. What a field day for a psychology major in need of a thesis.

Zombie Walk:
Death Imitates Art

Faced with a few dozen young people in ragged clothing, mumbling and shuffling, covered in fake blood, the bystanders had to ask: What ... is this? And why is this?
Well, it’s a zombie walk.

But people pretending to be zombies are not the best conversationalists, so mostly they just moaned and sometimes cried “braaaiiinsss,” as zombies are wont to do. And while this was a good hint for the first question, it doesn’t speak to motivation.

Organizer Ben Hodapp, 20, is a huge fan of zombie movies and learned online about people in other cities dressing as zombies and going for a walk.

“I thought it was pretty hilarious,” he said, and thought it would be fun to do himself.

Getting people to dress up like zombies and stumble around Mankato was easier than one might imagine. He just set up a Facebook and people joined. More than 180 people said they were going and hundreds more listed themselves as “maybes.”

In the end, between 25 and 30 people met in the Wal-Mart parking lot at about 5 p.m. Friday afternoon. By 5:30, they were off.

Jeremy Warden, 17, dressed up as a zombie for Halloween last year and came prepared. He even brought a cup with fake blood, corn starch mixed with food coloring, for his compatriots to throw on their face to simulate a fresh meal of blood. He even burned his jeans with a lighter and smeared the ashes over his limbs.

Each zombie had to decide for him or herself what “type” of zombie they’d play. Talking or moaning? Stumbling or sprinting? Flesh-eating or brains only? “Well, I figure zombies don’t remember how to talk, so I’m just going to groan a lot,” Warden said. Some of them walked for three hours under the hot sun but lacked a zombie’s infinite stamina, so a sprint was out of the question.

Hodapp cut his beard into a Fu Manchu mustache, bought a camouflage vest at a thrift store and went walking as a redneck zombie. Chris Menton donned a gown to be an escaped-from-the-hospital zombie. Amanda Kleist wore a blue-green dress, emulating a prom-night zombie.

Hodapp had planned some rules for the group. No harassing passersby. No scaring children. Don’t walk in the street. Don’t get drunk first. “I’d rather not get it shut down for a stupid reason,” he said.

Still, they were asked to stay as in-character as possible, to “keep somewhat of an illusion of a zombie horde,” Hodapp said. They had a route picked out that stuck to Madison Avenue, but in the end the temptation to wander through the mall was too great, just as it was for the zombies in John Romero’s 1978 zombie classic, Dawn of the Dead.

Onlookers’ reactions differed. One mother shielded her child from the group, while another asked for a photograph with her baby, said Kleist, the prom zombie.

Hodapp says he’d like to make the zombie walk into an annual event. There often isn’t much to do in Mankato for people under 21, he said. Hannah Moon, spattered with blood and clutching a torn-up doll, agreed. It’s fun to “dress down,” the 17-year-old said. “Summer can get boring.”

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This coverage was written by Dan Lineham, as posted online at Minnesota's "Mankato Free Press" website on July 25, 2009

Woke Up Dead Online

Woke Up Dead
Jon Heder, the actor who starred in "Napoleon Dynamite" and "Blades of Glory," has announced that his next project will go after an audience of nerd-friendly webheads, Reuters reports. "Woke Up Dead," whose Internet-only webisodes premiere in October 2009, is a sci-fi comedy thrill that will have Heder playing a 20-something college student who wakes up in a bathtub full of water only to find that he's turned into a zombie. "It plays with the conventions of the zombie-horror genre," Heder said. "Drex doesn't believe he's a zombie, but his friends start to realize he may be as he has no heart rate, all his vital signs are gone, and he has this hunger for brains."

The scripted online series, created by John Fascano, is being produced by Electric Farm, with Heder as a co-producer. The show marks Heder’s strut into the world of online programming.

"Woke Up Dead" was developed with Heder in mind as the lead. It will comprise 50 three-minute episodes for online and mobile distribution in the United States. (Does that mean those of us living outside the United States will not be able to watch the program or benefit the program's sponsors?)

The project will combines live-action with limited CGI elements, is a seemingly superb springboard for Electric Farm. The series is being made outside of a deal Stan Rogow, Brent Friedman and Jeff Sagansky’s Electric Farm signed with NBC Universal, which gives the conglomerate domestic rights to the company’s upcoming Internet sci-fi series "Gemini Division," starring Rosario Dawson. Sony Pictures TV International co-produces and internationally distributes "Gemini Division," (which features some elaborate 3-D art) as well as Electric Farm’s first online drama, "Afterworld," a 2.5-D-animated series, on mobile, broadband and traditional television.

Rogow said that "Woke Up Dead" was developed with Heder in mind for the lead. “He will be terrific,” he continued, “he’d always wanted to play a zombie.” "Woke Up Dead" is currently in pre-production and set to be released later this year.

This item taken from Collider.com

Chomp to Show at 2009 Edinburgh Festival

This item is taken from a "teaser" posted at the website for the Scunforth Telegraph newspaper in Britain. Local theater enthusiasts are putting together a zombie musical called Chomp. The puns in this article truly take a bite out of one's patience. Sorry, couldn't help that one. How interesting that this will be featured at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Based on the teaser below, I can't believe this play will amount to much. It seems more of the typical juvenile testosterone-driven drivel, but I admit that I might be surprised. After all, would the addition of music and, presumably, dance naturally incline the work towards something more mature?

New Musical Zombie Show

FOUR teenagers from North Lincolnshire are about to transform zombies into all-singing, all-dancing showbiz stars.

Aidan Savage, Harry Kelly and Tom Jackson, all 15, and Ciaran Savage, 18, all star in 'Chomp' which heads for the world-famous Edinburgh Festival next month.

'Chomp – A Zombie Musical' is the brain wave of Andy Evans, the staff development officer at Scunthorpe's John Leggott College.

Mr Evans, 42, who has also co-written all the songs along with his long-time friend Jack Pudsey, said: "Who doesn't love the idea of zombies doing a soft-shoe shuffle?"

He wrote the musical specifically last summer for the North Lincolnshire-based Fusion theatre company of which Tom, who plays the lead make role of 'Mac', and his three fellow Scunthorpe actors are all members.

Mr Evans, who has taught in Scunthorpe for 16 years, explained: "Mac is the leader of Surge, a group of resistance fighters, who fight back against the zombie mutants on behalf of humanity." The idea was to write a show that would guarantee an audience at one of the UK's largest theatre festivals."

"Our young cast inject an incredible energy," he added.

Tom, a student at the Vale of Ancholme School in Brigg, said of his lead role: "We're all really excited to be taking the production to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival as well."

Monday, July 20, 2009, 06:30

What Mother Never Told You

Here's a piece of indie short fiction, "What Mother Never Told You," courtesy of D. Lynn Frazier, who is proud of it being posted at an online-zine site. "What Mother Never Told You" is available at Electric Spec.

Low Budget "Colin" Gets Big Budget Attention

A Welsh filmmaker has produced a zombie film that sees the world from the viewpoint of the undead. His film,Colin, has caught the attention of critics at the Cannes film festival. (See article.) The film only cost about US$70 to produce. Worth a viewing?

The Scary Type of Hype

This book review/interview is available at the "Slice of SciFi" weblog, which had grabbed it from the "tor.com" weblog.

Author Sees "Patient Zero" as All Too Possible

June 23, 2009 by Michael Hickerson

While researching the non-fiction, zombie-myth debunking book, “Zombie CSU: The Forensics of the Living Dead” writer Jonathan Maberry says he discovered something interesting.

“My intention had been to use science to (gently) knock down the backstory to most zombie movies and books,” Maberry told Tor.com. “However during the research I discovered that there was a lot more scientific validity to those monsters. It creeped me out, and anytime something creeps me out that much I think: ‘Man, that would make a great story.’”

The inspiration led to Mayberry’s new novel, “Patient Zero.” The story explores a Baltimore cop who is recruited by a secret government organization to help stop a group of terrorists who have a weaponized pathogen that turns people into zombies.

“I was trying to build a case for how the real world would react, research and respond to a threat as described in the George A. Romero’s Living Dead films, and in some of the better zombies (or zombie-like) films that followed,” Maberry said. “I was surprised to learn that science could explain a lot of what we saw in zombie films. That’s both cool and creepy, depending on where you stand. I listed the ‘symptoms’ of a zombie—lack of cognition, ability to walk, ability to bite and chew, reduced or absent blood flow, and so on. Taken separately, science can provide answers. It’s only when you put them all together in one organism that we move from scientific possibility into practical improbability. But only just.”

“A pathogen always seemed more likely,” he said. “I posed this to a range of scientists and doctors. The radiation theory was shot down pretty quickly; but the docs who work with diseases said that if zombies were suddenly a real fact of life then one of the first places they’d look would be prions. Prions are misfolded proteins that act like viruses and/or genetic disorders, which is crazy since they have no DNA and technically cannot be passed down generationally. But that’s science for you. For every item you prove there are a few new mysteries popping up. The creepiest prion disease is fatal familial insomnia, in which the sufferers cannot fall asleep, even when medicated. They remain perpetually awake until they go crazy and their bodies break down. It’s a horrible disease…but a perfect core pathogen for a zombie tale. I went a few steps along that dark road to have my villains bond it with an aggressive parasite (also based on things found in nature).”

The novel, which has just hit bookstores, is the first in a proposed series. The second installment, “The Dragon Factory” will debut next year.

“I speculated about how scientists could use cutting edge genetics to restart the Nazi Eugenics program and pursue the program of ethnic genocide,” Maberry said. “It’s all too possible.”

Tokyo Zombie Takes Out the Trash

A couple of online (private blog) reviews of a Japanese Z-flick, "Tokyo Zombie," are offered below with links to the original blogs. This sounds like a typical Japanese romp-comedy. The idea of the zombies arising from the trash bin leaves the sound of the Python in my head: "Bring out your dead."

Monday, June 22, 2009

Review: Tokyo Zombie

Directed by Sakichi Sato.

Starring Tadanobu Asano, Sho Aikawa and Erika Okuda

Released by Madman Entertainment

Black Fuji is an impressive mound of rubbish in the middle of Tokyo where locals dump all kinds of unwanted material - anything from household waste to corpses (and in one memorable scene, an unwanted mother-in-law). So it's natural that when two blue collar workers accidentally bump off the boss, they would take him there to dispose of the evidence. What's not so natural is that their arrival coincides with a mysterious force which is reanimating the dead and producing a plague of zombies.

Fujio (Tadanobu Asano) and Mitsuo (Sho Aikawa) are an amiable pair who seem to be unfazed by the marauding herd of undead on their doorstep. The first half of the movie is a light-hearted romp as they stock up on supplies, talk about their lives and practise their beloved ju-jitsu. Oh, and fight off the zombies too.

However, after rescuing a surprisingly ungrateful woman, things go downhill for the pair. Because the plot contrives to separate the friends halfway through, the movie falls uncomfortably into two sections - the first is a light-hearted 'zom-com' and the second a dour, post-apocalyptic scenario. The 'love-interest' played by Erika Okuda only serves to irritate, though her daughter has one of the film's best lines. It's certainly directed with verve by Sakichi Sato but you get the feeling that some of the humor may have been lost in translation.

Stereotypes abound (the Japanese male as pervert looking up the skirt of young girls, housewives acting as screeching harridans), though it's hard to take offense as the whole film has such an oddball and strangely innocent feel to it. The special effects are cheap and cheerful - Industrial Light and Magic certainly have nothing to worry about. All in all, it's a pleasant way to spend a couple of hours. Just don't expect any of the gravitas of a Romero film. And don't expect to always understand exactly what is going on.

To read Mark Smith-Briggs erudite comments on the same film look below.

Monday, April 06, 2009

Review: Tokyo Zombie (Japan, 2005)

Writer/director Sakichi Sato brings the much-loved Laurel and Hardy style zombie invasion Manga of the same name to the big screen with mixed results. Marketed as a Japanese Shaun of the Dead, and released hot on the heals of the British hit, it’s a film that shows loads of promise early, but ends up biting its own foot with a frustrating tonal shift half way through that undoes all its hard work.

Tokyo Zombie is essentially two films in one – a witty, slapstick zombie invasion and an unsuccessful look at a post-zombie society. The first half – which deals with the impending invasion – is by far the best, introducing us to two bumbling fire extinguisher factory works with a love of jujitsu who must use their martial arts skills to escape a zombie hoard. Told with a wry wit and buckets of blood, the oddball buddy movie is fresh and funny and held together by a lovable pair of screwball lunatics.

But following the zombification of one of the main characters about 45 minutes in, the film then shifts nine years into a stark Mad Max: Thunderdome meets Land of the Dead style society where the rich have enslaved the surviving population – and zombies – and use them for a series of bloodthirsty fighting games for their entertainment. While potentially an interesting film in its own right, the futuristic vision lacks the biting humour of the previous act, missing the buddy act that made the story so engaging.

Tokyo Zombie is brimming with potential, but for all its efforts it never quite gets there. Still, with its trademark style, including an anime interlude, and mostly fun mix of screwball humour it’s sure to find a home on cult cinema shelves.

Tokyo Zombie is released on DVD through Madman Entertainment. Extras include a making of featurette, Q and A session and original trailers.