Zombies! An Illustrated History of the Undead (2011)

Author: Jovanka Vuckovic
St. Martin’s Press

And by “illustrated” they mean, “Lots of film stills and posters!”

Jovanka Vuckovic’s first book-length filmic writing has taken the form of a thoughtful exercise on the zombie phenomenon in modern film and literary culture. While she delves into the history of the American zombie experience and Poe’s romantic playfulness with the creatures in some of his stories and poems, An Illustrated History is really about twentieth century zombie film phenomenon and how it has influenced these early years of the twenty-first.

Opening with a light history of the Haitian zombie mythos in American folklore and its African origins, the book quickly moves on to literary appearances of the creatures prior to film technology. These two historical influences on the modern zombie movie become apparent in discussions of White Zombie, which Vuckovic cites as the first real zombie film, and other silent and talking horror movies of the 1920s and 1930s that explore the racially-infused mythos. The book traverses the sensationalized zombie movies of the 1940s and 1950s, stopping at the 60s to devote an entire chapter to what is described as the seminal modern horror movie of all time in Western film history: Romero’s 1968 Night of the Living Dead.

Due to her close friendship with Romero (he even writes the forward to the book), Vuckovic has insights into the filming of Night of the Living Dead that other authors don’t necessarily; for instance, the fact that the deep political subtext is merely “serendipity,” as she calls it, rather than Romero’s calculated purpose, and that the choice of a black lead actor (at a time when that was a controversial choice) was a result of his great acting ability, not the color of his skin. Night of the Living Dead marks the midpoint of Vuckovic’s account of zombies. The rest of the chapter is about the 1970s and Romero’s sequel, Dawn of the Dead. Pages are devoted to the Euro zombie movies of the 1980s as well as American classics like Return of the Living Dead. The detail regarding Italian films is impressive, spanning names I can’t pronounce and awesome stills from gory, low-budget movies. A list of zombie movies from the 1980s, along with discussions of The Evil Dead, Day of the Dead, and Reanimator marks these sections real sources of horror lore and fact for film and horror movie crack-heads.

It’s the discussion of the 1990s and the years beyond that Vuckovic injects with opinion, winding down from the excitement of the previous chapters. Vuckovic does not like Resident Evil, the 2002 big-budget horror zombie film directed by Paul W.S. Anderson, citing that his reasons for making the film were “financial” rather than artistic (p. 114), and expressing a personal opinion that the film, well, stank a bit. Vuckovic’s close relationship to Romero, however, gives her an interesting outlook on (and perhaps a prejudice against?) the film, seeing as Romero was kicked off of the movie as director in the early days of its pre-production. She expresses that horror fans across the Internet agreed: Resident Evil was already a failure before it have even been made (p. 112). Vuckovic also articulates dislike of the Dawn of the Dead remake from 2004 written by James Gunn. Mostly, she objects to the idea of a remake of one of Romero’s good zombie film. She calls all of the horror film remakes of the 2000s a “trend of the uninspired” (p. 122), but she pats Gunn on the back by praising his original and (and I agree) awesome creepy/zombie flick Slither from 2006.

I don’t want to make it sound like the author is totally up Romero’s ass because he wrote the introduction to the book; sorry to be crass, but I want to make sure it’s clear that while she clearly adores his early movies, she doesn’t have positive things to say about Diary of the Dead (2007) or Survival of the Dead (2010). That’s one thing that’s striking about this particular section of the book: Vuckovic knows, and has written about, a lot of the filmmakers she discusses through her time as editor of Canadian horror magazine Rue Morgue. She’s not afraid to say what she really thinks of their movies, not even Romero’s, in order to give a realistic version of how zombie films evolved. That’s important in a book like this one; if her legitimacy was compromised by her professional relationships, none of the opinions in the book would be worth taking into consideration when planning your next Romero-thon. Fortunately, integrity wins out and Romero ended up writing the introduction despite her lack of love for his last two films (presumably out of respect and friendship).

I wish the book had stopped there. Vuckovic is an encyclopedia of movie plots, titles, and trivia and it’s intriguing to see how her deeply personal experiences with some of the films have framed her perception of zombie cinema as a whole. However, the last chapter deals with comic books and video games and feels rushed and less impressive than the film analysis. The list of literature titles is exciting, but the inclusion of comics and video games takes away from the non-fiction film discussion and pushes it towards a shallow overview of zombies as pop culture. That isn’t how I felt about the previous sections of the book at all, so it’s a conflict I wish had been resolved.

With a little co-writing from filmmaker and literary editor Jennifer Eiss, the book’s latter chapters express far more opinion than the earlier chapters. Likely because Vuckovic has opinions about the things she knows more about: movies that were made in the 80s, 90s, and now – her own lifetime. I enjoy the frank assessments of those decades and the almost academic insight into Night of the Living Dead and the zombie films of the 1970s and 80s (though I would have loved a bibliography for some of the facts from the initial historical chapters) and I can also get on board with her statement that House of the Dead 2: Dead Aim, as a film, was “unforgiveable” (p. 122). I think that’s actually a fact and not an opinion, in this case.

Rating: (4 out of 5):