For anyone interested in the contemporary iteration of the zombie apocalypse, The Walking Dead is – hands down – the model interpretation of the genre. Similarly, for anyone intrigued by zombies, it’s hard to find a more trustworthy source than the creator of The Walking Dead – Rob Kirkman. Recently, Kirkman provided his recommendation for three movies any true zombie fan must see. Surprisingly, they are not the titles normally associated with the genre.
The recommendation came in response to a fan letter posted in The Walking Dead Deluxe #79. Debuting in 2020, The Walking Dead Deluxe is a republication of the original series with updated covers and color interiors. In addition, the series includes a ton of “back page” content that allows Kirkman and the other members of The Walking Dead creative team to connect with the fans directly. This particular letter writer was once petrified of zombies as a child, but now, as a young adult, they have developed a newfound appreciation for them after reading The Walking Dead. Still a relative “newbie” to the genre, the fan asks Kirkman which zombie movies he’d mark as required viewing for fans new and old.
The three movies Kirkman recommends seeing are Lucio Fulci’s 1979 film Zombie, Naoyuki Tomomatsu’s 2001 film Stacy: Attack of the Schoolgirl Zombies, and Michael and Peter Spierig’s 2003 film Undead.
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On the surface, each of the three films satisfies the standard tropes of a classic zombie apocalypse narrative like The Walking Dead. There are the mysterious origins of the zombie outbreak, the survival groups, and the competition among them for scarce resources. They all contain sanctuaries, searches for a cure, and the headshot method of killing a zombie instantaneously. However, outside these necessary zombie elements, each film diverges quite significantly from traditional zombie mythology. It’s most likely these elements that stood out to Kirkman and the reason why he picks them as “must see” movies.
For instance, Fulci’s Zombie, which Kirkman identified in his response as “tonally similar to The Walking Dead,” two elements stand out as being exceptional. First, there’s the outbreak’s connection with voodoo. Indeed, its voodoo-zombie link is both revolutionary and classic. On the one hand, it harkens back to the earliest iterations of zombies in movies. On the other hand, it presents a fresh perspective on zombies, considering it hadn’t been used in a film in a while. Second, there is the gratuitous gore. Indeed, at that time, no other zombie movie had done gore quite as gut-wrenching as Zombie.
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Regarding Stacy, its unique viewpoint completely shatters the traditional idea of a zombie apocalypse. Its zombie plague only affects teenage girls. Moreover, despite being a menace to society, zombies are only allowed to be killed by the government-sanctioned Repeat Kill Corps (RKC) or their relatives. Interestingly, the members of RKC in the movie are zombies themselves, who agree to kill other zombies in return for them getting killed by their favorite musical idol. Similarly, Undead flips the zombie script with a story where humanity receives assistance in its war against zombies from benevolent aliens from outer space.
While Kirkman’s zombie movie recommendations might seem off-the-wall, on deeper reflection, it’s clear that while obscure, the movies certainly seem to have made an impact on his zombie storytelling in The Walking Dead. To be sure, Fulci’s goriness and alternate zombie origin theory can be found throughout the comic. Similarly, there’s a lot of Stacy and Undead’s alternative zombie mythology in The Walking Dead, such as the zombie variants of the later chapters. Accordingly, not only are Kirkman’s recommendations helpful for zombie fans, but also for fans of The Walking Dead.
