A Chicken Is Not Pillage

Short Treats

What a word.  I have short time anymore, and that means a lot at this time of year.  For many years in a row, I have done very few of the Halloween traditions.   I have watched the "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown", and that's about it.  All of the horror movies I have wanted to watch?  Hocus Pocus?  Fright Night?  Silver Bullet?  Halloween?  Sleepy Hollow?  Nope.  Not a one.

For several years now, since a post I put up in 2010, I have been getting my horror fix through short films and videos.  I would love to have thrown up a huge listicle with many things but time is ... short.  So here's what I have.

1)  The best horror music video I have encountered in the last 3 years:

 

That is awesome stuff.

The best horror music video I have encountered ever:

 

Okay, that's a lie.  The best of the horror music videos ever I've seen is this:

 

Notice I never said these things were the *BEST*.  They are just the best as I see it.

One of the best horror shorts I've ever seen sadly I can't show you in it's entirety.  It was purchased as a feature film, but the short is so much better.  It's called "Mama"

 

One of the best horror shorts ever, my opinion, is this from FEWDIO:

 

But the best, the absolute best, is this.  Bedfellows:

 

Happy Halloween, folks.  I'm so sorry I couldn't bring you more.

Scots Smile On All Hallows Eve!

And for Dog's sake check out the cello player.

 

October Things

Mark, don't comment here.  I've no interest in what you have to say.  Stick to your own smug-ass site-o'-bullshit and leave my space alone, troll.  You don't know much of anything, so shut up.  Mark Tokarski:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was going to wait until closer to Halloween, but I just had to see it again.  So, once agin, let's get down with Naked Ape:

 

 

Ignorance and Prejudice and Fear Walk Hand In Hand

Not that it much matters at this point, but my personal webspace turned 9 years old last month.

As I spent time this afternoon attempting to put together a new Halloween playlist, I kept gravitating towards one particular song.  It's dark, and angry and I love it for its honesty.  Way on back in the early 1980s, Rush recorded the album Moving Pictures.  I've purchased it on vinyl, which I still have, and purchased it on CD.   Terrific as it is for it's better known songs, it is my favorite for the song Witch Hunt.

 

 

This year, more than 28 some years ago, the message of that song rings true. 

The righteous rise, with burning eyes of hatred and ill will.

I have been lead to believe that many of the intelligentsia don't like the band Rush all that much.   Too bad.  This song is terrific Halloween music, and it makes a point that should sink home to any who will blindly excuse the religiously gullible.  Evil doesn't control us, manipulate us or create us.  It comes from us, is suckled and is fostered by us.  Often it is supported by those who willfully ignore one thing in favor of others. 

On this Columbus day, there are many who would hold that one man was a genocidal maniac when actually all he did was change the make up of how humans would create their future.  It shouldn't really be celebrated but doesn't need to be denigrated either.  I know many folk who believe in Pagan magic, but seem oblivious to the idea that if their idea of magic worked, hundreds of millions of Christians would already have brought the rapture.   Well over a billion Muslims would have seen infidels destroyed.  At least dozens hope that what they hold as a Kumbaya will defeat candidate X, Y or Z.  OR ... it could simply be that we are humans who overlay what has been with what we would want, a very thin veneer of righteousness, and gosh aren't we individually cool?

Rush will likely be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame this year.  Yes, I am one of the assholes who's lobbied for this honor, because they truly deserve it.

6 Trends In Horror That Really Annoy Me

Happy Halloween, folks.  Time is still limited so I probably won't flesh this out as much as I should.

6)  CGI and bad costuming.  Just because you can show something in supposedly alarming detail doesn't mean you should.  Think back to everything (horror wise) that's visually frightened you in your life.  I'll bet any amount of money it's been based on glimpse and half seen peripheral vision.  Someone walks into a room when you're not expecting it.  Cat's jumping out of unseen hiding.  The half seen figure in the background.  Those are frightening.  Mansquito?  Really?  Alien was probably one of the most terrifying movies I've ever seen.  Ditto with The Exorcist.  SyFy movies, just not so much.

5)  Monster Hunting Super Heroes.   I think that Buffy the Vampire Slayer was one of the best TV shows ever.  It remains that because Buffy was so thoroughly humanized through the whole series.  Joss Whedon understands that Super Hero Monster hunters are a matter of fantasy, not of horror.  What scares us real folk are being put in the situation of facing horror on our own, as humans.  It can be a nice idea that we be gifted by God with super monster fighting powers, but how scared can you be if the monsters stand no chance?  Too many books, too many movies, are giving the normal folk Green Beret training and angelic super humanness.   That's nice for them.  But the rest of us still deal with horror knowing we have bad joints and a limited ability to escape or fight.  Things I adore that do not violate my sensibilities, Cujo, Dracula, actually this list runs pretty long.  But the recent trend (Priest and many others) is to the super power monster killer. I like that in terms of fantasy, but not so much horror.

4)  Remakes.  I almost wrote that as $) Remakes.  Give me a fricking break.  Most of them suck; they suck rocks.  Halloween is possibly one of the greatest horror movies of all time.  Rob Zombie thought he could do it, and do it better.  Does anybody really think he did?   John Carpenter did The Fog.  It was atmospheric, slow building and really kind of frightening.  The remake was lame ass movie BS.  The Texas Chainsaw Massacres, a great horror movie.  The remake?  Are you joking?  It sucked.  Now there are rumors that Alfred Hitchcock movies will be remade.  ~facepalm~  The beloved and I just watched a movie which was a total remake/ripoff of Fright Night, except the neighbor was a Werewolf instead of a Vampire.  Good Holy God, that movie sucked so hard.  Seriously, writers and producers, find something original ... please.

3)  Vampires v. Werewolves.  The only tale ever where that actually made sense was Underworld.  Yet everybody seems to want to do it now.  Why?  It is not a new thing, but it is trending upwards.  I really don't like this at all.

2)  Romanticizing of monsters.  Do not get me wrong.  I know that many monsters lend themselves to sexuality and sexualization.    It's part of the genre.  Vampires have long been in the same unholy grouping with Succubi and Inccubi.  That isn't what I'm writing about.  In the mid-70s (1976?) there was a version of Dracula played by Frank Langella.  This vampire would walk on the beach with you, read you sweet poetry, play you a love song and then drain your blood.  What BS.  I hate that movie.  Now, we have vampires that sparkle in the sunlight, play baseball and run to defend their virginal love interest.  Give.Me.A.Goddamned.Break!   Vampires are monsters.  Werewolves, though cursed, are monsters.   These things are not Fabio.  They are destroyers of life and hope.  This trend I hate most of all, save ...

1)  Torture porn.  Don't get me wrong, again.  The Saw movies actually involve a huge creative element.  Saw one and two are actually good movies.  That's not really what I'm talking about. Wes Craven gained stature from his movie Last House on The Left.  I was disgusted by that movie, and even more by the remake.  This is not horror;  it's gratuitous violence.  Horrific?  Absolutely.  But it has spawned an entire genre of weak titillation and masturbatory fear.  If you don't what I'm talking about, watch the movie Wolf Creek.   It's not that this stuff isn't frightening.  It is and it should be.  But what exactly does that say about us as a culture that we would actually watch this stuff?  I hate this crap, really.  I haven't been able to make it through any of it.  If this is your thing, and I pity you, then there is The Hills Have Eyes 2, Wolf Creek, Hostel and it's endless sequels.  I haven't been able to make it through any of them.  Deliverance was probably enough for me.

 

Anyway, I hope that I haven't upset anyone.  And I wish you all a great All Hallows Eve.

RocketLauncher

In honor of the impending Halloween, in my very limited spare time I am playing my biannual game of Doom3.   So ...

 

In truth, this song is irony perfected written by a true genius.  But still, there are Mancubus ahead and I need the damned rocket launcher!

Congratulations!

In true Halloween spirit, my heartfelt congratulations go out to SIR Christopher Lee.

A Trio Of Treats

I'm posting this up a day early for Halloween, because I generally don't have the time to post *ON* Halloween.  Besides, who wants to spend Halloween skulking on the Intertubes.  I wanted to do a link post, but feel shamed by the epic past endeavors of certain Batgrl.  She would flood the 'tubes with more Halloween goodness in one place than any human could stand.  Perhaps that was her plan, to drive us mad with All-Hallows Eve joy.  Regardless, I am not her, and can only make a shallow attempt at doing justice to this holiday.

In my neighborhood, there are usually no trick-or-treaters at all.  So, when one does show up at the door, my beloved (and most everyone else in the hood) over indulges them with more candy than is sensible.  So here is my indulgence; the title says 3; expect more.

First, I don't comment at Metafilter anymore, but I still read it.  From there, I encountered one of the best analysis of monster might anywhere.  From Threat Quality Press, A Hierarchy of Monsters.  Please, do not stop there.  The comments to the Metafilter thread are priceless, especially those from  robocop is bleeding.

To really look at a hierarchy of threat, we need to start from the perspective of a potential victim and work our way up from there. As I can tell you from personal experience, there is little practical difference in being locked in a closet while the corpse of your dead wife, animated through dread magics, pounds on the door with cold, unyielding fists and being lost in a Bavarian forest, running from a chorus of howls and snarling, fanged mouths.

In the end, the victim's life will end. Whether it ends at the claws of a werewolf, fangs of a vampire, axe of a drowned kid, or nightmare of a dreamstalker doesn't matter.

This is quality stuff.

Second, the always clever Dave Merriman sends a link to the must-have insurance of the current century.  The other poseurs can move aside.  My Zombie Insurance is the product needed for the Zombpocalypse.

Third, enough with the imprecise verbiage!  WonderMark gives us the terms we need.  Presenting the Stoakes-Wibley Natural Index of Supernatural Collective Nouns.  It should be no surprise that my favorite is 'a vexation of zombies'.

Finally, I am not a video gamer.  I like games, and have played many.  However, a game must have a certain something to appeal to me.  Creepiness is high on my list of gaming joys.  Doom 3 had it's moments; F.E.A.R. was just shock value lame.  Undying remains one of my favorite games of all time.  But back in the old dark days of DOS, Phantasmagoria was all that and then some.  The video, filmed with live actors, was simply gravy to the creepy music and actual game exploration.  It is the videos that brought out the creepy flavor of all the weird stuff you had to do to prepare *not* to get killed in a horrific manner.  I know I'm probably johnny-come-lately to this, but the murderous cut-scenes have been posted online, and I-Mockery has compiled them in one handy spot for your horror viewing pleasure.  Yes, I know the demon looks stupid in the extreme, but this was revolutionary stuff as regards gaming.  And more to point, it was horrific.

Well, that's all I got.  Except this:

Fashion Freak
Uploaded by ptitepapaye. - Watch more music videos, in HD

Yes I know I've posted that before.  But that video is becoming something of holiday tradition with me ...

Happy Halloween, folks.

Conservative Horror Films?

Sadly No! is like the good friend who makes you laugh, but when you help them move, they leave the heavy lifting to you.  So it is here.  They present the visage of John Hawkins, hawking movies for Halloween that are, in his opinion, conservative approved!  Unfortunately, Tintin gets distracted by pizza, and really, don't we all?  In his haste to describe conservative pie, Tintin neglects the challenge presented.  I can do no such thing.

There isn't a person who knows me, or has read this website for long many years, who doesn't know that I love horror movies.  I can appreciate the nuance and accept the gore.  These film extravaganzas are not terribly deep, never have been.  It is easy to see social or political relevance in some them, but that's nothing more than a gaming overlay, amusement for discussion and contemplation.  The search for social relevance in the genre is a personal quest to understand the director or the story teller in terms of one's own mythology, and has fuck-all to do with what the horror movie is all about.  Horror movies are about chilling you, the viewer, getting your adrenaline up.  In the best case, social conflict enhances that; in the worst it assumes that social conflict as scary and exploits it  for no thrills whatsoever.  Angst is personal, and varies subject to subject.  Good horror film makers understand that.  Bad ones, and John Hawkins, do not.

With that in mind, I offer my critiques of Hawkins Top Ten Conservative horror movies, and elucidate the shallow alternative descriptions he meant to write.

Cloverfield:

It is one of the good 'Giant Monster' movies, but face it, it doesn't hold a candle to the original Godzilla.  Hawkins gives credit to the creepiness of the filming, stolen directly from the Blair Witch Project.  The characters are fundamentally decent, if you ignore the backstabbing love liaisons.  Hawkins relies on the common trope of "ordinary people" to project a glimmer of conservatism.  How ordinary is a person going to be if a giant monster attacks their town?  Just because conservatives think it would be so, therefore it is, in the mind of Hawkins.  Being ordinary does not make one conservative, and acting a the viewer expects most often gets you killed in horror movies.  Oh, wait, it does here too.  The conservative trope that really gives Hawkins a stiffy is the brave military response, futile as it is.  Every giant monster movie ever made has the same thing, and in most, the military is victorious.  Think Them or Tarantula.  

Realistic Hawkins review:  Oh shit, that lib haven New York sure got it's ass kicked, hehe hehe.

The Dead Zone

Seriously?  How is this conservative?  Christopher Walkin plays a deranged mentalist, gifted with a power he didn't want, and slowly slipping into madness due to his visions that a President would cause Armageddon.  He commits suicide by cop trying to stop the holocaust, and exposes the 'bad guy' for a coward.  Hawkins' view of this movie is of a patriot, a movie filmed when Ronald Reagan was joking about nuking Russia, written by a man who thought Reagan was a monster.  Do I really need to clarify more how screwed up Hawkins' evaluation is here?  Well sure I do.

The Dead Zone is not a horror movie.  It's a thriller, like a spy movie, with a supernatural element.

The only real reason that anyone would or could concede that this movie is a 'patriotic' celebration of conservatism is that we have a Darkie in the White House that conservatives don't like, and someone, anyone, must stop him at all cost.  Glenn Beck probably thinks of this movie as porn, because he doesn't understand it.

Realistic Hawkins review:  Would somebody please try and kill that Kenyon?

The Exorcism of Emily Rose.

I can't even treat this film seriously.  It was God awful.  It was boring.  It was derivative of another film on this list, and it just sucked like a Hoover plugged to a 220 outlet.

Realistic Hawkins review:  They didn't declare war on Christmas so that's a plus ...

The Exorcist

I still find this to be one of the scariest movies I've ever seen.  It also has the best soundtrack of any horror film ever.  That's saying something coming from a huge fan of John Carpenter.  But let's be real.  This movie holds terror only for those steeped in Christian dogma, and nominally aware of Catholic faith.  I do find it contradictory that Hawkins celebrates this film as 'conservative' when it stands as an affront to evangelicals.  Also, self sacrifice is not a hallmark of conservatism, unless it's a priest, apparently.  Here's the dealio.  In this movie, the power of Jesus couldn't control the demonic entity.  Only human sacrifice could.  What would that message be, again?  And of course, Hollywood never treats the members of the clergy with respect, unless they do.  (Hawkins is amazing in that he contradicts himself in the same review.)

Realistic Hawkins review:  Dude, the underage chick does that thing with the cross.  Crap, where's my lotion?

The Fog

Don't get me wrong, I love this film.  But it is not 'conservative'.  The pirates kill anyone who gets in their way, regardless of party affiliation.  It doesn't matter if the town gets its comeuppance; they screwed with pirates, for Christ's sake.  In Hawkins' world, Pirates=Good, Descendants of Townfolk=Bad.  We all like Pirates, of course, but come the fuck right on.  Aren't conservatives the same bunch of assholes screaming, 'well I didn't kill Injuns or enslave people, so I'm not to blame'.  The point of the movie is:  YES, you really are.

Realistic Hawkins review:  Oh shit, that lib haven in California sure got it's ass kicked, hehe hehe

The Mist

Seriously, this is my favorite horror film of the last ten years.  Now, Hawkins describes it thusly:

A sinister story about a deadly government experiment and how quickly human beings can become primitive again when they're isolated, alone, and in danger.

Did he even watch the damned movie?  The primitive he's describing is Christian fundamentalism.  Anyone who's ever read a Chick Tract knows the danger of Christian Talibangelicals under stress.  The antagonist of the film is a female James Dobson on crack.  How is this even remotely conservative?  This movie is anti-out-of-control military, pro-humanist and extremely anti-fundamental religion.

Realistic Hawkins review:  They'd have been safe if they'd given up to God.  And Gubmint sucks; lack of Gubmint will turn you into a killer, so the Gubmint sucks.

Quarantine

I admit, I like this film.  The same film techniques as Blair Witch and Cloverfield were used here, to great effect.  Hawkins reads this as some kind of anti-Gubmint screed, and suggests that you don't get trapped in a building with the Gubmint outside and zombies you didn't even know about inside.  Socialist cops and firefighters try to do their jobs and the Gubmint betrays them.  They should have done their own conservative thing ... BY NOT RESPONDING TO THE CALL?  This review, more than any other, convinces me that Hawkins is a fucking moron.

Realistic Hawkins review:  At least the hot MSM journalist gets munched ... And the gubmint wants to protect you from rabies.  They should have just wizarded up a cure out of their socialist asses.  HOW DARE THEY PROTECT THE PUBLIC! (Quarantines are fascist, man.)

The Reanimator

This movie is conservative ... to the psychotic.  Yes, there is a message about playing God, and it's not a nice one.  That was Lovecraft's intent when he wrote the damned thing.  The message?  Don't experiment to save lives because it might save Grandma.  Let her die.

Realistic Hawkins review:  Dude, chick gets tongue raped by a corpse.  Where's my lotion ...

The Silence Of The Lambs

NOT A HORROR MOVIE!  It's a thriller, and a very good one.  But, contrary to Hawkins' earlier points, it shows quite clearly that the Gubmint is looking out for you and hiring the best and the brightest.  Notice, Hawkins doesn't say how this movie was 'conservative'.  He was just trying to fill his list, and ran home to momma as it were.  Ohhh, let's feed 'em a cop movie; they'll like that.   I call total bullshit on this.  What this movie really says is that horror is out there.  Sometimes Gubmint can helps, sometimes it can't.

Realistic Hawkins review:  That scene where the dude who plays Captain Stotlemayer puts his dick tween his legs?  Yeah, I've done that.

And,  The Tripper

I couldn't even make it half way through this suckfest.  Even by slasher movie standards, this is not a good film.  But I do notice that it's the only film that Hawkins even weakly linked to.  Perhaps he's terrified of IMDB.  Hawkins' review is remarkably telling, however:

In a couple of spots near the end of the movie, it does manage to grate conservative sensibilities. However, that mild annoyance does not to detract from the sweet, sweet joy of watching a guy in a Ronald Reagan mask taking an ax to dirty, drug addled hippies throughout the movie.

Hawkins only wants to see his Straw Man of liberals die horribly.  There's really nothing else to qualify this as a "conservative film".

Realistic Hawkins review:  Libruls DIE DIE DIE!  Someone else please, because I'm too chickenshit ... and I still can't find my lotion.  MOM....

Perhaps I will post the best liberal horror movies for Halloween.  I doubt it, though.  The spirit of the holiday is fear, and that knows no ideology.

When Hell Is Full, The Dead Shall Walk The Earth

Good Evening, and welcome to Fright Night.

Okay, that's just not right.  Here we find ourselves on another Halloween, only this year, it isn't about the Vampires.  It's about something more ... grody.

I'm really getting to the point where I don't like October much.  That's hard for me to write, because October, for so very long, was my very favorite month.  But that feeling has died, and what's risen in it's place seeks to chew my brains live from my blood-spurting skull.  October is the month of too-much-to-do, racing against deadlines, and the expectations of others to see it done.  Perhaps you find that an allegory for life as I strangely seem to.  I do so with good reason, however.  We all have a birthright, all that live.  Our birthright is death, and that is final. 

Yet, as we've approached this Halloween, I've been strangely focused on the beyond-death.  No, not heaven or any afterlife, but rather on undeath.  This year, it's all been about the zombies.  I blame that, in part, on the election year.  The undead, who feed on the living year in and year out seek our approval and attempt to act human, just so that they can remain fat and feasting on the flesh of the living.  They stink; there's no doubt about that.  But you and I are asked to hold our noses and vote them into our shelter of governance, such that they can feed some more.  How insane do we have to be to feel sympathy for these monsters?  We'll find out in a week.

Of course, as I've tried to struggle against these slavering ghouls, I've been forced to educate myself about them.  So, I've been reading World War Z.  I'm about 3/4 of the way through it, and I can't call it a bad book ... but it is slightly disappointing.  When Kit reported that her beloved John was reading the book, she wrote that he was also somewhat disappointed with it, and I think I know why.  The people of the mountains are not given nearly the credit we deserve.

Face it, we're heavily armed and somewhat isolated by shear geography.  If you were the military, following a plan of isolate-regroup-resupply-exterminate, don't you think you'd have picked the one spot in the country where isolation is a given and extermination was already well underway?  Of course you would.  That would be the mountain west.  I think we'd be right proper good at dealing with the zombies here.  We've got less population to be turned, more guns per capita then the rest of the nation at large,  and we're a whole lot better at making head shots when we have to. (Note to self, buy a Mossberg with a  pistol grip next Buy-A-Gun day.)  And I agree with John:  the book would have made a much better movie.  Hopefully for next Halloween, pretty please?

Really, it's not a bad book at all, but I want visuals.  So, as this day of horror approached, I began the yearly ritual of watching horror flicks.  I found myself gravitating towards the gory gooey zombie films for my viewing pleasure.  RetroCrush has already posted their list of the best zombie movies of all time, but bad taste is as subjective as any other kind, and I don't tend to agree with their picks or placement.  So kindly allow me to present my 13 fave zombie movies of all time.

13)  The Dead Hate The Living.  This is total low-budget cheese-ball schlock.  But it is atmospheric and creepy.  And they did the zombies very well.

12)  Dawn of the Dead.  The original bored me.  This one, on the other hand, had zombies as fast moving ravening horrors.  It was a desperate movie, and had one of the best soundtracks ever in a zombie film.

11)  Evil Dead II.  Very fun.  The fight with one's own hand?  The dancing headless corpse?  It was cute.  Not so horrific, but grossly cute.

10)  Frankenstein, The True Story.  What?  You don't think Frankenstein flicks are really zombie movies?  Think again.  Besides, James Mason gets hung and Jane Seymour gets her head ripped off.  What more do you want?

9)  Frankenstein.  One of the best horror movies ever done.  Period.  Kindly refer to what I wrote about it last year:

There have been a great number of really terrific Frankenstein movies made, but this is the benchmark.  Boris Karloff, a sweet and gentle man, playing a horrific thing to the horror of audiences everywhere. No other Frank-monster movie made carries the sympathy for the creature that this one does.  And the black-and-white is just perfect for the story told. Of the great horror stories made to film in the early 30's, this is the timeless wonder.

Not so necessarily a zombie movie, but rather good, nonetheless.

8)  Dead Alive.  This movie is almost too gross for me to make it through.  It's a gore fest, and clever in it's execution.  Face it, Peter Jackson is just brilliant.

7)  Beyond the Re-animator.  I just watched this last night, and found it to be exactly what the reaniumator series was all about.  It was gory and horrible, and all things Dr. West.  Loved that movie.

6)  Re-animator.  My wife will never get why I adore this movie.  It really has nothing to do with the necrophiliac cunnilingus and everything to do with the horror of zombies gone wild.  Its a terrific film, if you've got the zombie heeby-jeebies, that is.

5)  The Fog.  Yes, the original, you dolt.  The remake was well beyond pathetic.  Now, you can say that this was a ghost story, and not a zombie film, but watch it again.  Those pirates were very corporeal.  They had the urge ... so to speak.  Again, I remind you what I wrote last year:

I'm likely to laugh when I finally see the 2005 remake, because almost no one can emulate the brilliance of early John Carpenter.  He ties his stories into ever tighter knots, until all that is left is the atmosphere of eerie.  You'll notice soon that this is not the only film of his on this list.  Carpenter pulls his theme together without relying on expansive plot explanations or creepy monster effects.  He toys with surroundings, and creeps you out with the inevitability of the ending.

I did laugh.  The original was a worthy movie, and did credit to the undead.  The Fog is among Carpenter's best.

4)  Return of the Living Dead.  Do the dead ... the surfin dead!  This is a hip and gross movie, with niked zombie hot chicks and the whole ball of wax.  Its cynical and horrific, as well as being humorous.  One of the movies on this list I can quote the most:  "You'd best shut your mouth if you like this job!".

3)  The Evil Dead.  Again, I refer you to what I wrote last year:

Okay, fine, the sequels were more fun.  So what?  This movie, made on no budget, is a just a creep fest.  Few movies can actually make you feel isolated, alone, while watching them.  This one pulls that task off well.  Sam Raimi doesn't need a budget to scare people, or even creep them out.  He just needs the right camera angles, cuts ... and Bruce Campbell.  I may be getting way too pompous, here, but it can be well argued that this is the best directed film on this list.

A truly terrific film.

2)  Shaun of the Dead.  Show another zombie film that is more charming and human.  Come on, I dare you!  I double dare you!  This is a great movie, and still manages to creep you out.  Love the film.

1)  A Tie!!!  But I think you knew that, didn't you?  Of course, it's Night of the Living Dead, the zombie movies by which all others will be judged.  Again, I quote myself from last year:

Night Of The Living Dead.  Before you get ahead of yourself, and think that I'm talking about the 1968 classic, it's possible that I'm not.  I actually disagree with many of the horror critics out there; I think the remake is better.  The characters behave somewhat more cruel, and to that degree, sensible.  The special effects aren't as much better as they are creepier.  The pacing is better in the remake.  Either one is a terrific and outstanding horror movie, but the remake is simply a better Halloween movie.

So, there you have it.  My education is complete, having watched all of the best zombie movies.  I will know my defense and my strengths against the walking dead.  Of course, with such knowledge, I could go mercenary, a zombie hunting gun for hire.  Which leads me to my honorable mention for the best of zombie films.  Cash Only.  Its a short, but you gotta love it.
Happy Halloween, everybody.  And don't forget ... shoot for the head.

However, if you prefer your zombies a little more ... gyrated ... then check this out.  (I love the zombie doglette).