Rick doing what he does best: Killin' Zombies
I’ve been eagerly anticipating the forthcoming tv adaptation of one of my favourite graphic novels, the zombie apocalypse serial The Walking Dead, ever since I heard in August last year that AMC were going to produce a tv series based on the comics and Frank Darabont (The Mist and Shawshank Redemption) would direct.
The past couple of weeks have seen a flurry of encouraging announcements, with AMC confirming that at least six episodes will be made. Shooting begins in June and will be broadcast from October this year. In addition, Robert Kirkman, the creator and writer of the comic books, will be one of the executive producers, which should in theory ensure that the adaptation should be faithful to the original text.
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The Postman
Why don’t people realise that the sky is evil? The Day of the Triffids has a meteor shower that blinds anyone who sees it, thereby allowing man-eating plants to herald in the end of civilisation; Where have all the people gone? has solar flares that reduces nearly all humanity to white powder, while The Night of the Comet similarly has the world wiped out by a passing comet (only this time the dust is red not white).
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The Postman
Smoke 'em if you've got 'em
The 80s obsession with World War III produced a number of excellent movies that illustrated the horrors of living in a post-nuclear world. From the UK came When the Wind Blows (1986) and the BBC’s Threads (1985), while two US television stations (PBS and ABC) respectively produced Testament (1983) and The Day After (1983). Common to all four of these productions was the grim telling of how ordinary people would fare after a nuclear attack. All are dominated by dark skies, scarcity and radioactive fallout.
Smoke ‘Em if You’ve Got ‘Em is Australia’s take on the post-apocalypse and aptly turns the aforementioned films upside down. Instead of survivors clinging desperately to life in squalid conditions and radiation sickness, it is a black comedy that offers an alternative way of dealing with nuclear holocaust.
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The Postman
Lazy Zombie will eat your brains
Yet another article has been published about the prominance of zombies in popular culture: ‘Zombies emerge when the economy ebbs‘. I was pretty excited when I saw this as I thought it would have something new to say about zombies and linking the undead to the economy.
It refers to a so-called ‘Zombie Index’, stating “when the going gets tough, analysts say, the tough turn to entertainment in which reanimated corpses embody our collective anxiety.” It backs this up with a reference to White Zombie’s release in 1932 during the Great Depression and 1968 (when Night of the Living Dead was released) as an year of economic downturn. Sounds impressive. Unfortunately, this argument is rubbish.
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The Postman
