Ever wondered why zombies are the go to monster for so many of today’s makers? In Doc of the Dead Alexandre Phillipe attempts to find the answer to the walking dead’s lasting appeal. tracing the development of the zombie flick from Robert Weine’s Cabinet of Dr Caligari to World War Z and The Walking Dead.
Nods are given two Lugosi classic White Zombie, Jaques Tourneur’s I Walked with a Zombie and a couple of 50s mind controlling alien SciFi potboilers, but the doc gets to the real meat when it traces zombiedom from George A Romero’s Living Dead films. There are contributions from the man himself, Simon Pegg, Tom Savini, Robert Kirkman, Bruce Campbell and Alex Cox along with clips from Romero’s movies and other milestone films and TV shows like Return of the Living Dead and Shaun of the Dead.
The movie also takes a brief look at the African origins of the zombie curse and some of the modern spin offs in comics, zombie walks and interactive experiences. More disturbingly we also meet some of the people marketing zombie holocaust survival gear, who have either got a very good poker faces or serious problems distinguishing fantasy from the real world. There’s even a demonstration of your statistical chances of survival based upon population density and gun ownership in the USA.
Good to see Brits like Pegg and Danny Boyle get acknowledged for their contribution to the subgenre, but I was slightly disappointed not to see any reference to Euro horror classics such as Zombie Flesheaters, Dellamorte Dellamore or REC.
Despite that minor quibble Doc of the Dead is an entertaining 81 minutes of flesh-eating fun I give it a 555/666
Doc of the Dead is released on DVD and as a download 30 March price £15.99
The Horror Hothouse 
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