The first zombie movie is considered to be 1932’s White Zombie, starring Béla Lugosi as a voodoo master named Murder. It’s occasionally eerie, and more movies should be about people named Murder (it works for boys and girls!), but probably not worth seeing unless you’re an undead completist. There were plenty of other zombie films released throughout the 1940s and 1950s (I Walked with a Zombie deserves a watch), but none are as culturally influential as 1968’s Night of the Living Dead, which revolutionized horror movies.
Without George A. Romero’s shuffling vision, there might not be a Zombie Holocaust. Or stone-cold classic Nudist Colony of the Dead, or Shaun of the Dead, or The Walking Dead, all of which work off Romero’s template. They also appear in Digg’s new “History of Zombies In Movies and TV” supercut.
The music is annoying, and the Deadites in The Evil Dead aren’t zombies, but the video’s a fairly complete look at what White Zombie and Night of the Living Dead have wrought. Some of it’s good (Zombieland), some of it’s bad (the cheeky, but boring The Astro-Zombies), some of it’s Zombie Strippers (Zombie Strippers), but it all led us to Sam and Ron. Now I hate George A. Romero?
