I'm a long time fan of horror movies of a special type that is, the zombie flicks. Those shambling, moaning masses of ex-humanity doing their unspeakable thing.

I can pinpoint exactly where my enjoyment in the antics of the undead came from. I was a teenager a year or two into high school and working at a store that sold tapes, records (yes, records), these new fangled CDs and movies. I got a decent discount and used this to bolster my music collection. Behind the sales counter there were lots and lots of movies. One in particular caught my attention repeatedly. The zombie on the spine of the box would stare out at me as I made change or chatted about new releases.

Finally, after several weeks of being stared at by a card-board imprint zombie, I broke down and bought the flick. I took Dawn of the Dead back home and over the weekend set aside time to watch it. I expected to be frightened and grossed out by the various underpinnings of an undead society and it's effects on the living. To my surprise, I enjoyed the experience thoroughly.

Sure the movie is gross, in a Hollywood, Karo Syrup kind of way. Sure there were some frightening scenes. But the protagonists in the movie got to take over a mall! They spent time there living their lives while the dead thronged just beyond the tractor trailer reinforced plate glass doors. They fought, learned, argued strategy and tactics, and wondered at the world around them and why it had gone to hell.

It didn't take me long, even at that age to realize that there was something of a commentary on our current daily lives going on here. Thousands of greenish, glassy eyed ex-shoppers still congregating at the mall even after a grisly death and reanimation. Inside the newly fortified shrine to consumerism, those few surviving members of humanity who had fought so hard just to live, found themselves enjoying everything they perhaps couldn't have during life. Guns, music, consumables, jewelry. At first it was a respite from fighting for their lives but it soon became clear that they were desperately trying to recreate their past lives simply by wallowing in good old mass produced wealth.

Other zombie movies have come and gone and I've enjoyed my share of them. The Return of the Living Dead series was fun. Day of the Dead, Romero's follow up to Dawn of the Dead was interesting but didn't capture that feeling of desperation and survival that Dawn of the Dead held. Of course there is Night of the Living Dead as well,

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