Wednesday, March 4, 2009

What is a zombie

I pose this question just because it's off the top of my head. Which is what is or makes a zombie to you? How much flesh has to be on the person for it to be a zombie? Zombie animals? Zombie fruit? zombie cars? Just thought i'd pose the question and see... maybe it will further our study of zombies.


  1. Anything and everything that causes a sentient creature to become a mindless drone.
    I am constantly thinking of Wal-mart cashiers.

  2. Yeah, that can be a bit hazy can't it. Like I was figuring that a mummy is actually a zombie, but I would think that once the flesh rots off, that's all she wrote, in as such that a 'skeleton' is more of a magic construct, unless some bindings of muscle are connecting the bones.
    Zombie plants... I don't know what that would even entail... like they don't photosynthesize anymore and need to be potted in brain? or root into other plants turning them into a homogeneous mass of undead tissue?
    Animals I could totally see, and has been done as in Pet Cemetery etc.

  3. The cat in Pet Cemetery, the one with the green bits of garbage bag stuck in its whiskers totally haunts me from when I read that as a kid.

    For me there are a myriad of types that I tend to lump under an often technically incorrect "Zombie" heading.

    I mean, flesh eaters are wraiths, not automaton field laborer zombies of the Haitian sense.

    Ghosts that act like zombies bent on vengeance like the ones in House, or Dead & Breakfast, or Undead & Alive aren't really zombies, are they? Or are those possessed people? And do possessed people acting like zombies count as actual zombies.

    Would the guy with the case of the "dropsies" int the John Landis / Eddy Murphy vampire film count as a real zombie?

    And do 28 Days Later infected types count as actual raised from the dead zombies? They seemed awfully susceptible to chest wounds for zombies, if you ask me.

    Shoot the brain zombies are different from hack them to bits Return of the Living Dead zombies. And ROTLD zombies could talk, thus introducing the craving for brains to the genre. Night of the Living Dead zombies didn't care about brains particularly. Is one type the true zombie?

  4. These are great responses and I think all valid.