Halloween Top Ten: I ♥ Zombies; or, Up with Dead People

Craig here. It's Halloween and the new horror tv series The Walking Dead is nearly upon us. This is what I've been thinking about day-to-day for the last few weeks. So here's a Tuesday Top Ten Special (i.e. it's on the weekend instead... and it's Halloween themed) to get you thinking about all things zombified. Perfect for a day made for the dead. Alive or recently embalmed, all enter here. But shuffle in s-l-o-w-l-y now...

A Top Ten Undernourished and Underloved Zombie Characters (in no order) are all getting some love this Halloween. Who's first out of the grave...?

1. Colin in Colin (2008)

Colin: the most exotically-named zombie character ever

Poor old Colin. He should rank alongside Day of the Dead’s Bub as one of the most sympathetic cinematic zombies ever. Apparently it only cost director Marc Price £45 to bring Colin to the screen; not a penny was wasted on achieving pleasingly affecting acting from the man himself, Alastair Kirton. If, like me, you wonder just what went on in the pre-zombified lives of the unnamed undead – folk like, say, Second Zombie on the Left or Gunshot-Wound to the Head Zombie or Uncle Zombie Who Can Recall His Past Lives, those who dwell at the foot of the end credits – then watching Colin may come as a refreshing treat. It's about one of those very bit players. And very bit he was. The film takes a superfluous character and gives him a movie of his own to walk amok. Although Colin's the shy and retiring type, just looking to escape mad, apocalyptic London and reconnect with his girlfriend. He's a zombie with heart. The heart may have been in his hands, but he had love to give all the same. The guy deserved a break: even he ran from the undead hordes. So, Colin, mate, here’s to you: First Zombie on This List.

2. Dr Freudstein in The House by the Cemetery (1981)

Dr Freudstein waving for the camera. Bless him.

With a name like that I'll bet you had an insurmountable array of problems in your life as you did in your afterlife, eh, Dr. Freudstein (Giovanni De Nava)? Kept in the basement by the cemetery by director by the cemetery Lucio Fulci for the entirety of The House by the Cemetery, you didn't half moan about your lot. But then, you did look like a brown paper bag glued to an over-sized peanut. But piss and moan you did. Not before getting your hand lopped off and being outfoxed on a ladder by a girlish-sounding 10-year-old misery moppet by the name of... Bob. Still, you had Mrs. Freudstein to keep you company all those decades spent beyond one of Fulci's Seven Gates of Hell. (Why not click here for more Fulci-on-Zombie action.)

3. Tarman in The Return of the Living Dead (1985)

What is it with directors keeping their zombie charges trapped in basements. Subterranean dude Tarman (Allan Trautman), birthed from, yup, some kind of dubiously nuclear tar-like goo, dwells "below" just like Dr. Freudstein. Well, at least it's below a medical supply warehouse right next to a handy morgue-slash-cemetery. This brain botherer spends the film awaiting the split skulls of a band of '80s hooligan punks to sink his rotten teeth into. Looking more like some kind of lavatory skeleton, Tarman's a bona fide zombie in name, rank and number – all of which were printed on the septic tank he arrived in. Lovely.

Gay zombies, musical zombies, and celebrity zombies after the jump...

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Links: Social Networks, Hulk Bulges and Zombie Pornos

Just Jared more pics from the set of Captain America. Chris Evans with prosthetic feet. I always did wonder how they filmed barefoot chase scenes.
The Evening Class a defense of Bruce LaBruce's porno/horror hybrid LA Zombie.
Freaking Awesome ...speaking of zombies, this poster is created from zombie movie titles. Sick.
The Playlist Stanley Tucci shopping a sports biopic to direct and star in? At least it's not a traditional sports star biopic.
Vulture Mark Ruffalo will actually be playing the Hulk in his monster 3D form (i.e. motion capture) "I hope I don't bulge in anyone's face."

In Contention "I'm just here for the movies" I'm glad I have Guy Lodge with me on this. While it's true that some Oscar pundits care about the race first, with the cinema being but a happy-accident side dish, that's not true of all of us.
Boy Culture Remember when I got to meet Michelle Pfeiffer and Julianne Moore? Good times. Matthew Rettemund, who wrote my favorite book on the icon (Encyclopedia Madonna), finally got to meet her. Here's his story - with video!
LA Times Lindsay Lohan wins more jail drama. I am going to valiantly try to never mention her again on the blog. I'm not sure why I'm doing so now. It'll be hard for me but I feel embarrassed, actually, that I've been rooting for her and intermittently defending her talent for 12 years. What so many millions of people would do with the breaks, beauty and talent she was gifted.
LA Rag Mag Adam Levine wants you to know that Jake Gyllenhaal is not gay.
Noh Way in the wake of the release of Easy A, looks at Hester Prynne throughout movie history

Finally, here's the first bit of the NYFF press conference after our screening of The Social Network yesterday.



I love this bit from Aarron Sorkin...

I didn't think it was a movie about Facebook. I thought it was a movie that had themes as old as storytelling itself: friendship and loyalty, class, jealousy, power -- these things that Aeschylus would write about or Shakespeare would write about or Paddy Chayefsky would write about. Luckily none of those people were available so I got to write about it.

I don't know if I quite buy into the "it'll win Best Picture!" mania that's spreading (it's only September 25th, after all. We don't even know how it will fare with the public) but I 100% believe that Sorkin has a very strong shot at taking home whichever Screenplay category he ends up in.