The Dead Walk (Paperback)

~ (Author), Andy Black (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

The Dead Walk provides a fascinating insight into films from countries as distant as Britain and China, as well as paying proper attention to individual filmmakers such as George A Romero and Lucio Fulci who have made the zombie genre their own. As well as covering the historical origins of voodoo in comprehensive detail, films as diverse as Sam Raimi`s the Evil Dead to Stanley Kubrick`s A clockwork Orange are featured, together with a special chapter on Mummy films including Universal`s smash hit remake.

About the Author

Editor of the Necronomicon book series and the Necronomicon presents book series, author of The Dead Walk (Noir Publishing), Ten Top Films of Leonardo DiCaprio and Ten Top Films of Oliver Reed (Glitter Books). Freelance contributor to Terrorizer, Shivers, Marquis, Men Only & Club International --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 164 pages
• Publisher: Last Gasp (October 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 095365642X
• ISBN-13: 978-0953656424
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.7 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,999,751 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not quite a zombie book, January 14, 2002

By	Nicholas Ehst "nehst" (Phoenix, Arizona) - See all my reviews

Overall I would have to rate this book as an OK look at horror films through the years. But several things stop this volume from being a good look at Zombie films.

1st of all, the book is riddled with mistakes, nothing major but enough to make the average horror fanboy (like myself) cringe while reading it. At one point while referring to the career of the late Lucio Fulci, the author mentions the thrillers of his seventies career, siting "Don't Torture a Duckling", "A Lizard in a Woman's Skin", and "Schizoid" as examples. Lizard and Schizoid are the same movie, Schizoid being the American title and Lizard being the European one.

At another point he mentions that Dawn of the Dead was called Zombie in its American release, and because of this Fulci's Zombie was released in the US as Zombie 2. This again is incorrect, as Dario Argento made his own edit of Dawn of the Dead for the European market, that Romero thought he would have a better grasp of. It was in this foreign market that the film was known as Zombie, and this same market that Fulci's film was called Zombie 2.

Those are just a couple of examples of this. My other major beef with the book is it strays pretty far from its intended subject matter. Now the while the ideas of society turning us into zombies in a figurative sense may be an interesting one for discussion, and definitely one that is often touched upon in film, I don't think that it falls into the parameters of this book. Movies like "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" and "A Clockwork Orange" are discussed at great length, while great Zombie films such as "Dead Alive" "Afterdeath" and "Burial Ground" are hardly, if at all even mentioned.

I believe that the cause for this is in the book (or author's, I'm not sure) country of origin. This appears to be a British novel, and while the UK is known for many great and dazzling horror films (hammer, amicus), they are not known for their horror films. But the author keeps stretching the definition of zombie films to come back to British works again and again, spending no more than a few pages on the Italian film industry which created more great Zombie material in the late 70's and early to mid 80's than any other country out there. An entire chapter is dedicated to Britain's one great true Zombie film, hammer's "The Plague of the Zombie's", and discussion of other hammer non-zombie films abound, particularly the Quartermass series.

The result is an interesting read, but one that leaves the viewer wondering where all the zombies in this book about zombie's are.