Feast Upon These 10 Classic Zombie Movies

There has been no shortage of zombie films in recent years, partly resulting in (and from) the success of AMC’s The Walking Dead TV series. Although a handful of zombie movies were produced prior to the original Night of the Living Dead, it was undoubtedly George A. Romero’s 1968 classic which kicked the door open for a whole new genre of horror films. In this article, however, we will steer clear of Romero’s Dead films and the (sort of) spinoff Return of the Living Dead series in favor of some slightly less conventional efforts in the zombie cycle.

Before the deluge of CGI-ridden zombie flicks which followed in the wake of 2004’s Dawn of the Dead remake, a good living dead movie – or at least an entertaining one – could be a somewhat rare find.  The films listed here are certainly worth checking out for zombie fans who may be unfamiliar with some of the movies made in the days before the sub-genre hit the mainstream.

1. The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue (1974)

Spanish director Jorge Grau’s The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue (also known as Let Sleeping Corpses Lie) is very highly regarded among zombie fans. The Italian-Spanish co-production stars Ray Lovelock, Arthur Kennedy, and Cristina Galbo and features special makeup effects by Gianetto De Rossi. Released four years before Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue similarly sports a bounty of flesh-ripping, gut-munching, and social commentary, albeit with a very different style of filmmaking. When a young man from London named George (Lovelock) travels across the English countryside, he stumbles across a machine designed to destroy insects by attacking their nervous systems with radiation. The idea is to preserve crops and the radiation is assumed to have no effect on human beings. George has his doubts about the device being harmless as he accompanies his new friend Edna (Galbo) to check on her drug-addicted sister. Bodies begin to pile up as George and Edna are pursued by a hard-nosed cop (Kennedy), who is convinced that George is responsible for the killings. George soon discovers that the agricultural machinery, which is only supposed to affect creatures with simple nervous systems, is actually causing the dead to return to life. Unfortunately, he is unable to convince anyone and is forced to contend both with the police and a horde of the walking dead. There is an obvious underlying theme here which deals with the issue of pollution and is also very critical of authority. The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue has a clever story, plenty of atmosphere, and some cool zombie attacks and for those reasons has grown to become a classic in its own right.

2. Burial Ground (1981)

Andrea Bianchi’s Burial Ground is one of the oddest zombie movies to come out of Italy in the wake of George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead. When a big-bearded professor inadvertently awakens the dead at an old Etruscan burial site, he is ceremoniously eaten by the creatures while proclaiming “I’m your friend!”.  Afterwards, a group of three married couples, one of whom has a “young” son named Michael, arrives at an old mansion expecting to meet with the professor. It’s not long before the group is confronted with mobile rotting corpses while belting out some of the most ridiculous dialogue you’ve ever heard. There is also a weird relationship between Michael and his mother which culminates in one of the film’s gore highlights. Burial Ground clearly draws on elements from Lucio Fulci’s Zombie, not the least of which is the look of the zombies themselves. The ghouls in this film are complete with decayed, maggot-covered faces, skeletal hands, and wormy eye sockets. There’s also plenty of flesh ripping and gut munching featured here, with special effects provided by Gino De Rossi. If you’re in the mood for some sleezy, gory zombie mayhem then you can’t go wrong with Burial Ground.

3. Flesh Eater (1988)

Directed by Bill Hinzman (Night of the Living Dead’s “cemetery zombie”), the 1988 zombie film Flesh Eater doesn’t have much of a plot, but hell if it isn’t one of the most entertaining low budget zombie romps of the 80s. Director Hinzman also returns as the now-iconic zombie from George Romero’s 1968 shocker. Storywise, we basically have a bunch of dumb college kids who take a hayride in the woods, drink beer, screw, and then get picked off by the living dead. One by one the hayriders are transformed into zombies until only two remain, leading up to a conclusion that doesn’t make any bones about ripping off Night of the Living Dead‘s ending. There is plenty of gore on display here, and the special effects aren’t too bad considering the film’s modest budget of roughly $60,000. Some of the highlights include axes to the head, pitchfork impalements, gunshot wounds to the face, heart removal, a bitten off nose, and various scenes of neck ripping, biting, etc. The acting is amateurish but that lends to the charm of the film. Hinzman even hired family members to fill some minor roles. 

4. Zombie aka Zombi 2 (1979)

Lucio Fulci’s classic zombie film began in Italy as a sequel to George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead. Really, it does not have much in common with Romero’s film and was admittedly produced to cash in on Dawn‘s success. However, Zombie definitely stands on its own as a staple of the sub-genre thanks to Fulci’s unique style, some gruesome effects by Gianetto De Rossi, and a cast which includes Richard Johnson, Ian McCulloch, Tisa Farrow, Olga Karlatos, and Al Cliver. Fulci’s film is also highlighted by some great underwater photography and a cool score by Fabio Frizzi.

Tisa Farrow is Anne Bowles, a young woman who reluctantly teams up with reporter Peter West (Ian McCulloch) to locate her father who has recently gone missing. After discovering a letter from her father which might indicate his whereabouts, Anne travels with Peter to a Caribbean island called Matul which the natives believe is cursed. There they meet Dr. Menard (Richard Johnson) who is conducting experiments to find the cause of a disease which has sickened the island’s residents. It is not long before the island is overrun by the living dead who feed on the flesh of the living. The doctor’s wife is not convinced that her husband is strictly there to practice medicine. She seems to suspect that his experiments may be the cause of the zombie outbreak, and that he is manipulating the locals’ belief in voodoo superstitions as a cover for the results of his actions. In the four decades since its inital release, Zombie has become a horror classic due to its graphic set pieces, exotic filming locations, and a sense of dread which permeates throughout the entire picture. It also features some of the best zombie makeup effects ever, ditching the grey facepaint for decayed skeletal faces with worm-filled eye sockets and rotten teeth.

5. Hell of the Living Dead aka Virus (1980)

Italian director Bruno Mattei made a career out of ripping off American movies and seemingly did so without much shame. This time it’s a knockoff of George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978). Hell of the Living Dead was originally released in 1980 and issued in the USA under the title Night of the Zombies in 1983. The film opens with an accident at a chemical plant which results in a series of attacks by powerful flesh eating zombies. After a SWAT team is called in to handle a terrorist threat, they accompany a TV news reporter and her cameraman through the jungles of New Guinea to find out what is behind “Operation Sweet Death”. The cover for this government program is that it was designed to solve the problem of starvation in poor parts of the world, but the team ultimately discovers its real purpose. “Sweet Death” was actually designed to eliminate the issue of overcrowding in the Third World by causing its population to eat each other. It was the program’s testing which caused the chemical leak in the opening moments of the film and naturally the zombie outbreak gets out of control in short order. What Hell of the Living Dead lacks in originality it more than makes up for in entertainment value. The movie lifts entire scenes from Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead and even uses the exact Goblin scores featured in other films such as Contamination, Dawn of the Dead, and Beyond the Darkness. However the movie is fast-paced, never gets boring, and delivers the gore you would expect from an early 80s Italian zombie film. The dialogue is also hilarious, as are some of the antics engaged in by the members of the SWAT team. It may be schlock, but it’s schlock at it’s finest. Overall a fun way to spend 99 minutes if you have nothing more important to do.

6. Braindead aka Dead Alive (1992)

When Peter Jackson’s classic splatterfest Braindead was released in the US (as Dead Alive), it was billed as “the goriest fright film of all time”. This is arguably a feat which remains unrivaled even after 27 years. There is hardly a moment in this film without some form of gore, blood, entrails, or assorted body parts flying across the screen. Lionel, a young man who lives at home with his overbearing mother, has a new girlfriend named Paquita. Together they decide to visit a local zoo which happens to be home to a “Sumatran rat-monkey”. Well Mum does not approve of Lionel’s new relationship and she decides to spy on the couple, only to obtain a nasty bite from the vicious hybrid creature. Lionel attempts to care for his mother at home as she falls ill, but her condition worsens rapidly and she begins to attack anyone who gets within biting distance. Before long, Lionel’s house is overrun by fast-moving zombies as he and Paquita try to keep things under control. Braindead packs the blood and gore and mixes it with the same insane sense of humor which was abundant in Peter Jackson’s other early works. All of the special effects are practical, which is impressive given the amount of effects in the movie. Any self-respecting zombie fan should definitely seek out the full 104-minute cut, as it contains FX shots missing from other versions.

7. Zombie Holocaust/Doctor Butcher, M.D. (1980)

Zombie Holocaust is nothing else if not a whole lot of good and gory fun that never fails to entertain. Marino Girolami’s film was of course an attempt to capitalize on the international success of both the Italian cannibal boom and the zombie craze that were popular at the time. The movie also throws in a “mad scientist” element for good measure. Zombie Holocaust plays mostly like a mixture of Sergio Martino’s Mountain of the Cannibal God and Lucio Fulci’s Zombie, even borrowing some footage from the latter. Furthermore, it stars the same male lead from the Fulci film, Ian McCulloch, and his character is once again named “Peter”. McCulloch even delivers one of his Zombie lines again here with almost the exact same cadence (“It’s gonna be dark soon…”). Regarding the plot, we have a some body parts stolen from a New York hospital which is the workplace of Dr. Lori Ridgeway (Alexandra Delli Colli). After the perpetrator is killed, a symbol is discovered tattooed on his chest which is linked to a remote island inhabited by cannibals. Joined by Dr. Peter Chandler (McCulloch), his research assistant George (Peter O’Neal), and George’s reporter girlfriend Susan (Sherry Buchanan), Lori reluctantly journeys to the island where the group must fend off cannibals, zombies, and a crazy doctor named Obrero (Donald O’Brien) who is conducting some unorthodox experiments in an attempt to bring the dead back to life.

Zombie Holocaust was re-edited and released in the US as Doctor Butcher, M.D. (Medical Deviate), incorporating footage from Roy Frumkes’ project Tales That Will Rip Your Heart Out. Either version is great fun and while much of the film may seem silly, some sequences can be a bit unsettling as Dr. Obrero performs anesthetic-free surgery on his unwilling patients.

8. The Video Dead (1987)

Director Robert Scott’s 1987 zombie flick The Video Dead plays out like an homage to many of the horror films that came before it. Clearly influenced by The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and George A. Romero’s Dead series, Scott’s film also appears to take its cues from Poltergeist and Videodrome. Similar to these, The Video Dead centers around evil forces which enter the realm of the living through a cursed television set.

When siblings Jeff and Zoe Blair move into a new house to clean it up ahead of their parents’ arrival, Jeff discovers a TV set in the basement which had been delivered to the home’s previous owner. The now-deceased former inhabitant was a writer named Henry Jordan. Henry was killed by some undead ghouls from a movie called Zombie Blood Nightmare who used the TV as a gateway into the real world. As the TV continues to transmit the signal, the zombies become more numerous and powerful. Aided by a stranger named Joshua Daniels, who seems to have had previous experience dealing with the situation, Jeff and Zoe must soon confront an increasing number of the unsightly monsters. Featuring a decent story and lots of cool special effects, The Video Dead is an entertaining zombie romp happily loaded with nods to many of the earlier films from which it has drawn its inspiration.

9. The Beyond (1981)

Considered by many to be Lucio Fulci’s masterpiece, The Beyond was originally written as a haunted house/ghost story. The zombies were added later in order to capitalize on George A. Romero’s Dead films, and also the cycle of European zombie films which they inspired. The result is a surreal gorefest which has grown to become a definite classic of the genre. Fulci’s film is clearly influenced byThe Shining, in that both stories center around a hotel in which supernatural horrors are unleashed as a result of horrific events that took place decades earlier. The Beyond‘s leading man, David Warbeck, has even confessed to channeling Jack Nicholson’s “Here’s Johnny” moment in a scene in which Warbeck forces a door open using a set of garden sheers.

The Beyond is loaded with atmosphere and some great splatter set pieces including some of that eyeball violence that Fulci is famous for. The film was cut down and released in the US as Seven Doors of Death back in the VHS days, but of course the preferrable uncut version has been made available on various DVD and Blu-ray editions in the years since.  

10.  Dellamorte Dellamore aka Cemetery Man (1994)

When he directed his surreal 1994 zombie flick, Dellamorte Dellamore, Michele Soavi already had several stylish and atmospheric horror films under his belt. Among them are his directorial debut Stagefright (1987), The Church (1989), and The Sect (1991). Having been a protege if Italian horror master Dario Argento, Soavi proved himself to be an extremely talented director in his own right. Dellamorte Dellamore showcased Soavi’s talent on a new level, infusing the nightmarish qualities and surrealism of his earlier films with a healthy dose of dark humor which was only hinted upon previously. Oh yeah, and zombies too… 

Rupert Everett stars as Francesco Dellamorte, a cemetery watchman who appears to be descending into madness. He is convinced that one of his duties is to dispose of certain individuals who return from the grave seven days after they die. There is sort of a buddy movie mixed in as well, as Dellamorte’s assistant Gnaghi accompanies him on his journey. Anna Falchi also stars as Dellamorte’s mysterious love interest, billed only as “She”.  The dream-like imagery, zombie action and gore, and black comedy all make for what may be the most entertaining film of Michele Soavi’s career.  Dellamorte Dellamore is arguably one of the best of the late-era Italian zombie films.

It should be mentioned that not long ago the above films could only be found in muddy VHS copies, if you could find them at all. Thanks to genre labels such as Blue Underground, Severin Films, Scream Factory, and Grindhouse Releasing, many of these undead classics have been granted new life in the digital era. Bon Appetit!