Definitely a very important point in zombieology. Made explicit in one of the many great bits in Romero’s Dawn of the Dead:
Roger: You’ll take care of me when I go, won’t you, Peter?
Peter: Just rest, man. Save your strength.
Roger: I don’t want to be walkin’ around… like THAT!.. Peter… PETER?
Peter: I’m here, man!
Roger: Don’t do it until you are sure I am coming back! I’m gonna try… not to… I’m gonna try… not to… come back. I’m gonna try… not to…
No, it’s Channel 4 and it’s available online.
http://www.channel4.com/video/brandless-catchup.jsp?vodBrand=dead-set
You need to be within the UK or the Republic of Ireland to watch Channel 4 programmes.
Region-locking is really dumb, and needs to be shot in the head.
Hah! It’s great to see one of you guys fucked by that for a change!
It’s all the more galling in this case because when the zombie apocalypse comes, it will not be region-locked. The zombie apocalypse, like information, wants to be free!
Well, damn. I assume a dvd release is in the future, but that’ll probably take forever to get to region 1 too. I waited years for Spaced.
edit: wait, Tom, how did you see it?
A cricket bat is all it takes.
Of course I’m not English and don’t even have one of those…
And no, I won’t think about it.
I take back, what you quoted. Zombism as a disease isn’t part of the original lore and Pogue Mahone is right. It’s scarier that you’ll become one of them if you die. No matter how you die.
Where did they come from?
Graveyards, where else?
Dude, Brooker just made my point! :)
But good post. I’m really keen to see other stuff by Brooker now. The more I think about Dead Set, the more convinced I am that he really nailed the connection between the zombie myth and television – specifically reality television – in the same way that Romero’s mall setting was such an important part of Dawn of the Dead. Dead Set is full of zombies and people on the outside, looking in, wanting to get in, looking through glass or windows or cameras or TV screens. It’s brilliant, really. And I absolutely adore the main character’s arc from point A to point B. It’s not about her learning to kill zombies. It’s about her going from ridiculing “the business” to her being on television, confessing, and then being watched. Brilliant stuff.
Pogue, I saw it at a screening in Los Angeles.
-Tom
Pegg makes some interesting, if absurdly precious, arguments, but I wholly disagree that zombies are scary because they are a metaphor for death or frailty - although un-life is obviously a creepy distortion of normality.
Zombies scare the shit out of me because of the feeling of total isolation they induce: all the world has turned against you, transforming normal society into something instantly hostile, wholly unreasonable. It takes something mundane - people, places - and turns them into nightmares of the most profound persecution. Fast zombies fit into that just fine. Unlike that square Pegg, ho ho!
Also, being dead might be a disability, but coming back from the dead is something of a super power, or at least supernatural power. So there.
Tom - check out Brooker’s Screenwipe stuff; it’s nearly all on Youtube.
This programming is not available in Madagascar.
Oh, absolutely. I also loved how it came down to the residents of the Big Brother house voting on whether or not to kill one of their members. It’s a brilliant use of zombies in the perfect setting. Frankly, there’s so damn much going on in terms of metaphors and parallels it would take a long time to identify them all.
SPOILERS
I personally liked the Patrick the producer. His ambition and contempt for the masses is pretty incredible even at the end. I was surprised Gollum was so easily taken in by the producer. It is pretty obvious from Patrick’s behavior around the group (not even counting what came before) that’d he’d abandon Gollum as soon as it was convenient. There’s just something about Patrick that struck a chord with me, maybe it’s because I’m the exact opposite.
His favourite TV show is also The Wire, so the man clearly has taste:
The beauty of how they used Patrick in the story is that he knew the group dynamics so well, because he was the producer (or maybe he was the producer because he knew the group dynamics so well). He knew exactly how to appeal to them, and he would have probably been able to play them like a fiddle just as he did with Gollum. He failed because of Kelly, who wasn’t one of the contestants.
BTW, did you know that the actress who plays Kelly is Ray Winstone’s daughter? Also, the guy playing Patrick is named Andy Nyman, and it’s to his credit that I didn’t recognize him from Severance and Death at a Funeral, both movies I loathed, but distinctly remembered liking Nyman in. His characters in those movies were nothing like the loutish Patrick. Nyman is now on my “cool British actors to watch for” list.
-Tom
Holy cats, yeah! Great catch, Brad!
-Tom
I haven’t seen Dead Set yet, but this is such a fun topic that I just have to jump in.
One thing I really liked here was the notion of zeroing in on the particular type of horror that fast-moving (the ghouls) vicious undead versus slow (uh, zombies) mournful zombies evoked.
The slow zombies are the building dread. The initial feeling that you might outrun or outmaneuver it, followed by the slow realisation that no, you probably won’t. And when that one zombie you didn’t see gets you, you’ll see the sad, not-quite-dead eyes and hear the mournful moan as it goes for your brainpan, sounding almost sorry for you.
The ghouls (I’m digging that term and the D&D reference) are different. They are the mob, the fast-moving and completely out-of-control force of violence coming your way. They are fast and lethal, but still not terribly smart. Getting away from them might be more a matter of luck than skill, generally. Since they are fast they are harder to buy time against. Since they are actively predatory they seem a bit smarter (not bumping up against things so much or getting stuck at doors all the time) so the easy escapes don’t always work (don’t recall seeing many tree-climbing zombies, for instance). If zombies are the dread of slow death then the ghouls are the fear of being torn apart by the mob.
What surprises me is that we’ve never really seen the threats layered, or the two types of undead separated. I realize this could cause a bit of a storytelling problem. What sort of horror are you trying to build, after all. But a few ghouls mixed in with a mass of zombies could be a real killer kick in the complacency of a band of survivors, for instance.
It doesn’t strike me as odd that they would look the same. They are all dead things, after all. They mostly died violently, or of an awful, painful sickness brought on by infection. Even if there was some form of smarter undead type mixed in there I could see where vanity might not really matter to them any more, since their bodies wouldn’t be sending any sorts of signals that live people would recognize. Sort of the notion of getting up when you are dead is warped. I imagine it could do negative things to your philosophical outlook. That’s more a plot point than an overall atmosphere thing, though.
One of the reasons that I’ve gotten to like zombie movies more in recent years is that other monster horror really seems to be on the wane. Most vampire movies these days seem more like 90210 with extra orthodontry. The last werewolf movie I remember liking was Ginger Snaps. Those genres seem to have lost their way, plot-wise. I remember vampires as mostly tragic figures, cursed to undeath due to the horrors of their lives or the foul deeds of others. Werewolves too, cursed by infection, doomed to bring death and destruction wherever they go, torn between suicide and wanton destruction.
Sorry, Friday and I’m a bit bored.
I talked about this in another thread (sorry, forgotten which one or I’d point to it rather than repeat myself if you may have seen this before) but it seems to me that there is room for both the slow zombie and the faster zombie. Granted, this violates Romero canon, but hey, why not carve your own path?
But what I was thinking is that someone recently dead, and possibly suffering less trauma (all limbs intact, brain more or less intact) could possibly reanimate as a ‘fast’ zombie. It doesn’t seem necessarily illogical, I mean musculature could still be functional, rigor mortis and decomposition hasn’t set in. What about balance, it’s more or less reflexive, right? Sure, you have to learn it but it isn’t as if you’re constantly thinking about it – a zombie might still be able to move about at a fair pace.
But give the zombie a few days and it will wear down. It’s got no cognition or sense of self-preservation so it probably will be damaging itself constantly in ways we don’t think about. Plus they’re decomposing, so over time they’re going to be slowing down – plus the brain is rotting so even the old ‘automatic’ functions would be running down. They’d probably start shambling and moving aimlessly, motivated only by their constant hunger.
Doesn’t seem any less unlikely at face value than the dead rising right?
I mean, no one’s gonna eat your eyes.
Charlie Brooker responded to Pegg. Among other bits, apparently the original plan for the Dead Set zombies would be that the final scenes would be set months afterward, with zombies more shambling due to rot–so zombie minds are already on top of the idea that fresh zombies may be better sprinters than older ones.
I was robbed!!