Zombies

Perhaps Bob Hope's insight explains why there is such a rich cinematic tradition of tales of the undead -- those movies provide dramatic cultural metaphors that help us make sense of our own society. Who among us hasn't seen repulsive examples of mindless motion from insensate beings driven by remorseless appetites -- often within our very own office buildings? (Or at least at the Post Office?)

I bring this up because I saw an interesting movie over the weekend. It was called "Aaah! Zombies!!", and it presented a typical "government experiment gone wrong" story...but told it from the perspective of the zombies themselves. After being infected by the toxic goo, the kids felt completely normal -- except that they no longer experienced pain, and were somewhat nonplussed when various body parts fell off. From their perspective, the rest of the world had sped up (Star Trek fans may think of it as a mild form of Scalosianism) and everyone else had become extremely violent and confused; anyone they encountered either ran away in horror or immediately tried to kill them.

It's all a matter of viewpoint, you see. The kids were just trying to figure out what to do next, and were puzzled by the fact that exposed human brains suddenly seemed to be an appetizing snack. But to the uninfected, these characters appeared to be horrid, inarticulate abominations...and inevitable conflicts arose between the two groups.

It was a mildly entertaining movie. I really appreciated the new take on traditional zombie lore. There were a few plot problems -- such as how they managed to get the dead bowlers to eat the toxic ice cream that converted them, and why the fat Colonel was casually dining at a Mexican restaurant if he was supposed to be on zombie patrol, or why the cute girl's parents thought that zombies could read the warning signs they posted on their door -- but let's face it...when you're talking about brain-eating reanimated corpses, logical consistency is not necessarily one of your major scripting paradigms.

Anyway, it made me think that there are probably some other perspectives on the zombie genre that haven't yet been brought to the screen. If you have a fresh idea on the topic (and investors willing to back it), let's talk. I'd love to direct it!

And if you've been following this column for a while, you already know that weird cosmic connections seem to fall into place with regularity. The zombie topic is no exception. When I posted our latest graphical "connections quiz", I had no thought at all about zombification -- and the movie I saw was just a random Netflix selection. But are they connected? Oh yeah. You betcha!

I'll get to that in a moment. First, let's reveal the answer to the questions posed by this set of pictures. What's the theme?



It's "Snake". The first fellow is Kurt Russell in his role of Snake Plissken in "Escape from New York". The second is Snake Jailbird, a recurring criminal character on "The Simpsons". The third one is Don "the Snake" Prudhomme, one of the most successful funny car drivers in the sport of drag racing, and the last is Kenny "the Snake" Stabler, former quarterback for the Oakland Raiders.

Zombie connection? Well, in the Simpsons episode entitled "Hell Toupee", Snake Jailbird is executed, but comes back to life in the form of a zombie hairpiece that goes on a killing rampage. And Kenny Stabler happens to have the same first name as the kid on South Park who is constantly being killed, only to live again. Spooky, isn't it?

So what about these?



The solution to this puzzle is that the name for each panel starts with the letter "P", and they all rhyme. Pleasence, Presents, Peasants, Pheasants.

Yeah, I know...sometimes, they're just too easy.

The first frame is actor Donald Pleasence, shown here in the role of bad guy Ernst Stavro Blofeld in the James Bond Movie "You Only Live Twice". We have two zombie connections here: one is that the role of Blofeld was later played by Charles Gray, who is most famous for being the narrator in "The Rocky Horror Picture Show", which happens to be about...you guessed it -- animating lifeless flesh. The other is that Pleasence also starred in "Halloween", in which the bad guy is consistently killed, but keeps showing up again.

I supposed you could make the case that King Arthur, who is talking to the peasants in frame 3, was also peripherally involved in reanimation by walking past the "I'm not dead" guy in the corpse cart scene...but that's a bit of a stretch for me.

A couple of people guessed that the connection between the two sets of pictures was that Blofeld was part of SPECTRE, an incredibly evil organization bent on the destruction of civilization. And Stabler was part of the Oakland Raiders, for which the same can be said. OK...it's not what I had in mind, but I'll give you full credit if that was your answer.

However, the connection I was going for was the more obvious one: Donald Pleasence played the President of the United States in "Escape from New York", and was, in fact, the guy that Snake Plissken was sent in to rescue. Pretty straighforward. But of course, our cosmic connections don't end there -- it turns out that in "Escape...", Pleasence was kidnapped by none other than Mr. Isaac Hayes, who also played a role on South Park and was eventually killed...just like Kenny! And speaking of Presidents, well, our current Commander in Chief just happens to be a Democrat, which is what Bob Hope was talking about to start this entire discussion.

Wow. Really makes you think, doesn't it?

Anyway, the point is that you probably shouldn't eat any food that was prepared near leaky drums of luminescent green fluid disposed of by secret government labs—That's all I'm saying. So stay healthy, my friends, and have a great day!