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eating raw flesh causes horripilation on new levels. Watching zombie hunters whack away at a zombie with everything from pipes and cricket bats to tetherballs and machetes is funny. There's lots of blood, usually corn syrup, and guts, usually latex, but there is very little real emotional connection. Everyone feels a little dirty after watching a film like Silence of the Lambs, Hostel or any of the other psycho-slasher films. That's because those films thrive on a reality in both plotting and visual effects that is designed to make you squirm. The director of films like Texas Chainsaw Massacre or The Devil's Rejects creates real monsters, people who make themselves into monsters. We know there are Timothy McVays, jefferey Dahmers, Jack the Rippers and Charley Mansons. The slasher movies are all too real, and they delight in making us, the viewers, complicit in these crimes. Zombie flicks are fun because they cannot ever be real. Hannibal Lecter isn't real, but he is based on all too real sickos.

The zombie genre of horror films is tasty and tasteless at the same time. It has the fun and terror we hope for in a film. It works hard at showing us enough of ourselves to be humorous, but not enough for us to feel self-conscious. They possess just the right mix of laughing and screaming.

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