The Modern Zombie

by Matt Mogk

After a typically harsh Chicago winter, the city by the lake was sunny and bright in the early summer months of 1969. Escaping the rising afternoon heat, a young film critic named Roger Ebert ducked into a local neighborhood theater to catch the matinee. He found an empty seat among the packed audience of mostly children and families and settled in for what he expected to be just another low-budget monster movie called Night of the Living Dead.

Though the film had already generated some negative buzz, with Variety going so far as to call it an orgy of violence, Ebert was consciously withholding judgment until he watched it for himself. He took his new job seriously, and having grown up a huge science fiction and horror fan, he was sure to be more open to the charms of this black-and-white screamer than some stuffy reviewer from the East Coast. After all, how different could it be from the hundreds of other formulaic B-movies he’d seen in the last decade?

The room went dark, the movie projector sputtered to life, and Ebert’s question was answered in the first few minutes of grainy footage that splashed across the screen. This film was not only different; it was unlike anything he’d ever seen before:

There was almost complete silence. The movie had long ago stopped being delightfully scary, and had become unexpectedly terrifying. A little girl across the aisle from me, maybe nine years old, was sitting very still in her seat and crying.

I don’t think the younger kids really knew what hit them. They’d seen horror movies before, but this was something else. This was ghouls eating people—you could actually see what they were eating. This was little girls killing their mothers. This was being set on fire. Worst of all, nobody got out alive—even the hero got killed.

The gruesome new monsters in writer/director George A. Romero’s terrifying vision gave audiences such a shock that many were literally afraid to leave their seats after the closing credits ran and the lights went up. People freaked out. They covered their eyes, clung to the arms of complete strangers, and screamed at the top of their lungs for the nightmare to end. Then when it finally did, they turned around, bought another ticket, and went back in for more.

The modern zombie was born.

Excerpted from Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Zombies

TODAY’S GIVEAWAY:

Matt Mogk is giving away one copy of Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Zombies. To enter post a message in the comments section below or e-mail memoutreach@horror.org. Winners will be chosen at random. Contestants may enter once to be considered for all giveaways, but multiple entries are permitted.

Matt Mogkis the Founder and Head of the Zombie Research Society (ZRS), the premiere organization for the advancement of zombie scholarship in the Arts and Sciences. He earned a Masters degree from New York University Film School where he specialized in horror in cinema, before receiving advanced combat and survival training in the French Foreign Legion, the mercenary wing of the French Military. Matt lives in Los Angeles, California with his wife and three mutt dogs that he’s certain are trying to kill him.