Blog of the Dead

I've been alerted by a Loyal Reader to a similar zombie-themed piece at overthinkingit.com that performs the standard task of contrasting and weighing the merits of zombies in the Romero and Russo traditions. Writer correctly emphasizes that while John Russo owns the rights to the Living Dead series and wrote the book upon which it is nominally based, it was Dan O'Bannon who wrote the screenplay for and directed the uproarious The Return of the Living Dead (1985) and who deserves primary credit for inventing the agile braineater that vies with Romero's shambling flesheater.

However, in the spirit of the writer's own exercise I need clarify that Russo/O'Bannon zombiism is the result not of a biological contagion but a chemical contaminant; of contact with 2-4-5 Trioxin gas, developed by military contract ostensibly for marijuana defoliation. The distinction implies that these zombies might not even constitute a true epidemic in that the dead only rise in regions exposed to Trioxin, geographically limiting the outbreak...nevertheless it could be that zombies leaving the contaminated region might still spread the condition by contact, a possibility the series does not explore. But such analysis is pointless because O'Bannon is a kimono-wearing froot loop who cares naught for the rules and his movie is mostly a spoof of itself.

The most valuable bit of insight put forth at Overthinking It is the theory that, because The Return of the Living Dead is a little-seen cult film and few popular films actually depict zombies calling for brains, the concept of zombies as vocal braineaters was in fact popularized by the "Dial Z for Zombie" segment of the third annual Treehouse of Horror episode in 1992. I am prepared to officially believe this.