Customer Reviews

Book of the Dead: The Complete History of Zombie Cinema

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This book is 100% PERFECT.
Mummies aren't zombies, if you're a mummy you're not a zombie, sorry.

Now, some info about this book you might find interesting:

Contents:

Introduction. Dead Men Walking

Chapter One. Caribbean Terrors

Tracking the Walking Dead
The Origins of the Zombie
The Zombie in the West

Chapter Two. The Zombie Goes to Hollywood

Horror Hits the Stage
Cultural Anxieties: Haiti, the Depression and Race
The Zombies Are Revolting

Chapter Three. Down and Out on Poverty Row

Horror Comedy on Black Island
The Poverty Row Years
Val Lewton: A Touch of Class

Chapter Four. Atomic Interlude

Sci-Fi Horrors
Voodoo's Last Gasps
The Mass Destruction of Men's Minds

Chapter Five. Bringing It All Back Home

Keeping It in the Family
Stiff Upper Lips and the Walking Dead
South of the Border
Back on American Soil: Night of the Living Dead

Chapter Six. Dawn of the Dead

Romero's Children
The Ghouls Can't Help It
Destructive Tendencies
Sex, Death and Amando de Ossorio's Templars
By the Dawn's Early Light

Chapter Seven. Splatter Horror

The Italians Are Coming!
The Apocalypse of Narrative: Fulci's Zombie Trilogy
The Return to the Caribbean
Splatter House of Horrors

Chapter Eight. Twilight of the Dead

Night of the Living Dead Redux
Poverty Row for the MTV Generation (Or, Children Shouldn't Play with Camcorders)
Of Death, Of Love: An Interlude
The Resident Evil Effect
Big-Budget Ghouls
Rebirth of the Dead

7 decades of horror movie history with hundreds of stills - including an incredible 64 pages of blood-drenched full colour photos and rare international poster art.

Jamie Russell has done a remarkable job with his "Book of the Dead", a thoroughly engrossing history and critical overview of zombie cinema. His writing is sharp and his observations astute. It's as up-to-date as books on an ongoing subject can be (I would relish updated supplements, as needed), including recent zombie fare and even some titles that have yet to be released. In addition to the excellent text are many color and B&W photos and posters from all over the world. It's the best book of its type I've ever encountered. Buy it.

Other reviewers have pointed out how detailed this work is. I can only really say that I concur-this book has a fantastic level of detail for anyone who would like to explore all things zombie.

The book is a chronology of zombie events. It serves as a history guide to undead cinema but goes even further back to the origins of voodoo, discussing the written works of Lafcadio Hearn and William Seabrook. We are treated to a comprehensive review of what I would have to guess is every movie ever done all the way up to the latest installment from Romero and every other movie that has come up in the past few years.

An exhaustive filmography is another treat at the end of the book with a brief synopsis of each film. Excellent pictures and detailed analysis of every significant movie and pretty solid details on lesser movies make this tome absolutely essential for any fan.

Jamie Russell has made a reference work that for me will give me a chance to look at some lesser known but high quality films such as 'The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue' and 'Shockwaves' which I was unfortunately unaware of and also serves as a reminder of how incredible the works of Fulci were. I think any fan will find something new and intriguing to pour over in this fantastic book.

Great book, especially for the color plates and foreign posters. Now, all sorts of hardcore fans, obsessed geeks and nitpicky nerds can attack a book that boasts being "The Complete History of Zombie Cinema" and I'm not really one of those people.

However, there is such a glaring flaw in the book, I have to make note. Russell completely omits the significant Mexican "momias" genre. Misses it entirely.

For the unfamiliar, the "momias" movies are based on the creepy-as-hell city of Guanajuato, where extreme levels of alkali in the soil have the effect of dead and burried bodies NOT decaying. Corpses interred in Guanajuato cemetaries are naturally mumified. When the graveyards hit capacity, the grotesquely preserved dead are actually removed from their graves and put on display in the catacombs beneath the city. It's a huge tourist attraction - halls lined with un-rotting natural "mummies."

Several films have depected "Las Momias de Guanajuato" as becoming animate again, leaving their tombs, graves and/or the museum galleries, and attacking people. Don't let the word "momia" or mumification throw you here, this is not your bandaged Egyptian king on the vengeance trail, but rather they are legions of corpses staggering around trying to kill the living. Zombies in EVERY sense of the word.

In some of the films, the momias obey the commands of an arch evil-doer, in others they just swarm innocent Mexicans Romero-style. Some guard castles and punish trespassers, other seek out ancient relics.

ALL of them have the classic zombie look - tattered funeral suit, straggely hair, empty skull-like eyesockets and exaggerated head deformities. Classic zombies all the way.

So WHY does Russel ignore this sub-genre, despite the fact that there are more "momia" films than there "Blind Dead" flicks? Baffling. Did he mis-interpret the word "momia", assume it meant "mummy" in the bandaged sense, or confuse the zombie-momias with the more Egyptian-like "momia Azteca" (Aztec Mummy) films? He does acknowledge some Mexican films, so he had to at least be aware of the prolific body of work that thrived south-of-the-border.

I can see not coveing traditional Universal-modelled "Mummy" movies in this book, but damn Jaime, in Mexico, "Momia" = "Zombie"!

Incredible research went into creating this book. It is filled with photos, articles, paintings, dates of releases, directors and more. It is current all the way till the last film listed "Land Of The Dead" (2005). If you are into zombies you MUST get this book.

This book was loaned to me by an fellow zombie afficionado. Within half-an-hour I had ordered my own copy. I have never read such an original and insightful analysis of the cinematic zombie as social litmus. It covers the origins, the impact and the implications of what has too long been the [...] redheaded stepchild of horror cinema. If you are serious about zombies, this is a must-have item.

In the world of horror, vampires and serial killers may reign supreme, but zombies are right up there too. In fact, from a cinematic (as opposed to literary) standpoint, the zombie has occasionally even been the dominant monster, perfectly fitted to the lowest budgets and popular enough to be profitable. As shown in Jamie Russell's Book of the Dead, the zombie movie has a long and erratic history.

Book of the Dead is not merely a zombie fan's ode to these films, filled with uncritical praise. Instead, Russell provides a history of the zombie movie that is both informative and entertaining. He starts with the Caribbean origins of the zombie and its relation to voodoo and the early, often sporadically factual accounts of these creatures. The first zombie movie would also be a horror classic: White Zombie with Bela Lugosi. Like many early films in this genre, the zombies were little more than automatons.

Unfortunately, after White Zombie, the zombie movies would be pretty weak for a while, and often limited to Poverty Row studios. The one exception was I Walked with a Zombie, one of Val Lewton's classic horror films for RKO in the 1940s. Overall, there would be little to celebrate until 1968 when Night of the Living Dead resurrected (pun intended) the zombie. While there would be plenty of awful zombie movies in the next four decades, there would also be some really good ones, such as Dawn of the Dead, 28 Days Later and Shaun of the Dead.

Russell provides a pretty comprehensive list of zombie movies, though it is cuts off at 2005, so it omits movies like 28 Weeks Later, Fido, American Zombie, Diary of the Dead, Planet Terror and Black Sheep. Prior to that date, you'd be hard pressed to find a zombie film Russell has missed, and certainly those few would be very obscure. If there is a flaw in his book, it's his loose and rather flexible definition of a zombie movie. While it makes sense to include 28 Days Later even if the monsters aren't true zombies, why include movies like Invasion of the Body Snatchers (which may have influence on the genre but is also clearly not a zombie flick) while not including mummy movies (after all, aren't mummies little more than zombies in bandages?). Regardless of these quibbles, Russell's book is a real treat for zombie film fans, chock full of facts and (often gory) photos and artwork.

An excellent overview of zombie movies, from start to finish. A lot of time is spent on what the author views as "seminal" zombie movies, with a nice inclusion of pre-1950 works examined.Much time is spent on Romero's works in the genre(as should be), and a lot is offered on Fulci, Grau, et al in the chapters on European zombie offerings. The author glosses over cheapjack American zom-coms, which is deserving. Altogether, a very good essay on zombie cinema, and should be in the library of any serious film student of the zombie genre!

If you're a fan of zombie movies (or just horror movies in general), you must get this book. Author Jamie Russell has written an entertaining and insightful history of the zombie film. Beginning with the old classics like White Zombie and I Walked With A Zombie, Russell provides perhaps the most comprehensive overview that we will ever get. It's all here -- from George Romero's famed Dead films to the Italian gore cycle to the various straight-to-video zombie flicks of the late '80s and early '90s to the genre's resurgence with Resident Evil and Romero's Land of the Dead. Along with providing a wealth of information about the men who made these films, Russell also analyzes the various themes running through the key films of the zombie genre. Russell's comments about Romero's Living Dead films, Lucio Fulci's Beyond Trilogy, and Jean Rollin's The Grapes of Death are especially insightful. Best of all, the book ends with 76-page "Zombie Filmography" in which Russell provides a capsule description and review of seemingly every zombie film (regardless of how obscure or celebrated) ever made. For the serious zombie movie fan, this filmography alone makes the book worth the cost of purchase.

Book of the Dead is the perfect combination of encyclopedic information about zombie cinema and insightful criticism. Russell does not paint with a broad stroke. Rather, he details the nuances, revolutions, and failures of the genre - from the origins in the US occupation of Haiti to Spanish anxiety over the Franco regime to present day versions of the zombie story. Even aficionados have something to learn from this book.