Wonkette Movie Night: Zombie Double Feature, Day Of The Dead (1985) - Train To Busan (2016)

"The Dead have waited. The day has come."

Oct 29, 2023

Hi Movie Night fans!

Tonight we celebrate Halloween with an undead double feature.

We start with Day Of The Dead (1985). It's one hour and forty two minutes long so we will have a fifteen minute break between movies.

The second movie is Train To Busan (2016) and will start at 8pm PT/11pm ET.

I love zombie movies and have watched a lot of them. But not everyone has so how about some basics? There's plenty of in depth writing and some take this genre very seriously but I'm not doing that, IANAZE(I am not a zombie expert.) I'm a zombie movie fan and I have seen every movie that I have recommended here.

With that disclaimer out of the way, here's some living dead info. With some dad jokes about zombies tossed in(from *Bored Panda's 157 Zombie Jokes That Are As Spooky As They Are Hilarious) because I know how much you love that!

*What do you call a zombie at a Trump rally?
Hungry.

What you need to know about these ghouls:

Best way to kill(yes they are dead already but you still need to kill them, stop trying to make sense of this) is to DESTROY THE BRAIN.
They want to eat brains and human flesh. They also all seem to have amazingly strong chewing abilities. You'd think you could defeat them by dressing entirely in leather, although they would hear you coming from a mile away.
If you get bitten by a zombie, you become a zombie. (Unless you chop off the infected area immediately, there are some places on your body that are really bad places to get bitten, probably different for men.)
The real monsters in zombie movies are usually the non infected humans. Assholes tend to get their comeuppance and the survivors tend to be the wisest not necessarily the strongest.

Night Of The Living Dead

They're coming to get you Barbara.

Raise a severed hand if this movie scared the shit out of you when you were younger(or older, no age limits on this kind of fear.)

Night Of The Living Dead (1968) was not the first movie in this genre, White Zombie, (1932) with Bela Lugosi has that honor, but it's what gave us what we all recognize as a zombie. NOTLD also approached racism in a bold way for the time and the movie's ending was a punch to the gut. No spoilers but if you only see one zombie movie make it this one.

It became a whole series of movies and pretty much birthed everything else that gave us zombie mythology.

The dead rising, slowly shuffling along in search of brains!

They are slow zombies, and even though they are slow they always seem to overwhelm, just driven by the desire to feed. Talk about feeling hangry. Of course if you have 'slow' ones you also have a fast version. Sometimes dismissed as not very undead if they're as quick as Usain Bolt and as nimble as Simone Biles. But they have found their place, providing an extra boost of terror in knowing you can't outrun these fiends.

In the fast zombie category there's the thrill ride that is 28 Days Later (2002) with Cillian Murphy (followed by the equally good 28 Weeks Later (2007).) Those creatures are infected with the "Rage virus" so of course there's debate on whether that makes them real zombies(I will cover those guys later.)

Those zombies were more believable as they ran at a normal human speed. Then came World War Z (2013) and Train To Busan (2016) giving us supernatural demons that ran blindingly fast and became moving masses of monsters that flowed like blood.

*So I watched a zombie movie recently. The survivors boarded themselves in an old furniture store. They had a nice setup with beds, lounges, workbenches, and thrived until the virus mutated and jumped to inanimate objects. Then the tables turned...

Funny zombie movies, Shaun Of The Dead (2004) and Zombieland (2009.)

They both manage to be humorous and good, scary, zombie flicks.

Zombieland had Woody Harrelson's character just on a search for a Twinkie, and almost enjoying the apocalypse by smoking weed with Bill fuckin’ Murray. Compared to his traveling companion, who has rules for survival and doesn't take risks. They are better together than apart of course.

Zombies with heart, Warm Bodies (2013) and Fido (2006.) Warm Bodies is a surprising love story that tries to give zombies their humanity back. Fido is very original and well done, offering an interesting take on a society using zombies as slaves.

Fido stars Billy Connolly as a zombie who basically becomes a pet for a young boy. It's a good one and very clever.

*I bashed a zombie's head, staked a vampire in the heart and killed the devil itself... my wife rushes through the room and shouts,
'You're supposed to give them candies, Frank!'

Then there's the zombies who we are not really sure are technically zombies, but they’re close enough. The Crazies, Pontypool, The Bay, Rec and Splinter are good examples and they are all really scary. They are about humans that have had something affect them in a way that makes them want to attack other humans in order to force them into becoming part of whatever is infecting them. It may or may not involve red baseball caps.

There's zombies for kids(Last Kids on Earth), anime zombies(Seoul Station) and cheesy B-movie zombies that are on a list that is a mile long. But a couple I liked were Juan Of The Dead and Anna Vs The Apocalypse(also a holiday movie!)

*Who do zombies avoid eating, and why?
Clowns, because they taste funny!

The Day Of The Dead (1985) stars Lori Cardille, Tom Savini and Sherman Howard as Bub(shout out to our own Bub!) Directed and written by George A. Romero. It's available for free with ads in most all the usual places.

Train To Busan (2016) stars Gong Yoo, Ma Dong-seok, Jung Yu-mi and Kim Su-an. Directed by Yeon Sang-ho. Available for free with ads in most all the usual places.

Our pre-movie cartoon is Mickey Mouse saving Pluto in The Mad Doctor (1933).