Sunday, August 30, 2009

Zombies Make Anything Better

I don't know what it is about zombies, but they can turn anything into gold. Greatest music video of all time? Thriller...zombies. Most of the great horror movies?...involve zombies. Most enduring video game franchise ever, besides Mario Brothers? Resident Evil...all about zombies.

I assert that you can take anything, insert zombies, and make it better. Most of the classic novel forms can accept zombies. Zombies in space is sci-fi brilliance. Throw zombies into the old west and you've got the recipe for a mean western. Romance novels can be insipid. But throw in a few zombies and you've got a winner. In fact writer Seth Grahame-Smith just published Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, a zombie filled send up of Jane Austen's classic novel.

Movie's like Shaun of the Dead and Fido (where zombies are equipped with special control collars and kept as pets) show the versatility of the zombie genre. Zombies just evoke a reaction in us that almost no other character type does. They're us. But not us. Any of us could become one of them. The enemy then is potentially everyone.

I'm working on the zombification of a classic family card game. Early play testing shows it's got legs. Rotten maggot-filled legs, hefting a decrepifying, brain-hungry monster, but legs.

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