Zombies.

Zombies. The 'It' Scourge.

Zombies, keeping it PG-friendly since 2015!

Love'm or hate'm, and let's be honest here, zombies are here to stay. For every one zombie movie/video game concept shot down, 3 more rise to take its place.  From Walking Dead to Plants Vs. Zombies to Black Ops, zombies continue to be the Beatles of the Undead.

Seriously, Google Search is amazing...

Hollywood has tried rebooting vampires, werewolves and mummys. Even Godzilla makes a resurgence every few years in an effort to try to brand itself on popular culture the way a Good Zombie plague has done. Yet nothing has been able to take the crown of the Undead away from these mindless drones that symbolize humanity's need to conform to just about anything put in front of them.

Star Wars fans are closest, IMO.

The box office agrees. And while technically destroying the brain stem from the spinal cord is the only manly way to kill a zombie, that's not as much fun as doing it as creatively as possible. All it takes is a little imagination and to be a co-star in any movie that predominantly has 'Blank Of The
Dead' in the title. Spoiler Alert; there has been a LOT of movies showing creative ways to kill a zombie. Yet for all those creative decapitations, zombies usually have a pretty good killing percentage relying solely on their one method; vicious biting and occasional limb-tearing. While they have gotten quicker, more numerous and definitely scarier in recent years they still have yet to master firearms so until then, we all still have a fighting chance.

First, a brief and plagiarized history of the modern zombie from Wikipedia:

The English word "zombie" is first recorded in 1819, in a history of Brazil by the poet Robert Southey, in the form of "zombi".

One of the first books to expose Western culture to the concept of the Vodou zombie was The Magic Island by W.B. Seabrook in 1929. This is the sensationalized account of a narrator who encounters voodoo cults in Haiti and their resurrected thralls.

In 1932, Victor Halperin directed White Zombie, a horror film starring Bela Lugosi. Here zombies are depicted as mindless, unthinking henchmen under the spell of an evil magician (so...like facebook users-ed). Zombies, often still using this voodoo-inspired rationale, were initially uncommon in cinema, but their appearances continued sporadically through the 1930s to the 1960s, with notable films including I Walked with a Zombie (1943) and Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959).

How these creatures came to be called "zombies" is not fully clear. The film Night of the Living Dead made no spoken reference to its undead antagonists as "zombies", describing them instead as "ghouls". Although George Romero used the term "ghoul" in his original scripts, in later interviews he used the term "zombie". The word "zombie" is used exclusively by Romero in his 1978 script for his sequelDawn of the Dead, including once in dialog. According to George Romero, film critics were influential in associating the term "zombie" to his creatures, and especially the French magazine "Les Cahiers du Cinéma". 

So there you go - even the godfather of modern zombies, George Romero didn't refer to them as zombies as the widely considered true zombie film Night of the Living Dead.

We instead owe that great honour to the French. So next time you watch a zombie cross your screen, this is who you should thank;

If you want a large list of zombie movies that will never be complete, click here. 

Which is so amazingly long, I've decided to pick out some of my favourites and present them in Zombie-Oscar Like Fashion or another plagiarized idea picked from an image Google search; 

Most Specifically Descriptive title Award The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies.

Award for Title that Tries Too Hard; Night of the Day of the Dawn of the Son of the Bride of the Return of the Revenge of the Terror of the Attack of the Evil, Mutant, Alien, Flesh Eating, Hellbound, Zombified Living Dead Part 2: In Shocking 2-D

What were You Expecting Award; Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead

Zombie Love Story Award Graveyard Alive: A Zombie Nurse in Love

You're Not Even Trying Anymore Award; Zombiegeddon

The I'm Horny for Zombies Award; Zombie Strippers

The Very Specific Zombie Award; Big Tits Zombie

The Animals as Zombies Award; Zombeavers

The I Think You Are Stretching the Definition Award; Weekend at Bernie's II

The 'Thank God that Title Isn't Literal' Award; Violent Shit III: Infantry of Doom 

Best Zombie Movie to Trick A Date Into Watching; Sugar Hill

Worst Name for A Zombie Movie; Surf II

The Easiest Challenge Award; Ninjas vs. Zombies

Hardest Zombie Opponent Award; Kung Fu Zombie

Easiest Zombies To Hide From Award; Return of the Blind Dead

Best Wordplay/Religious Theme Award; Gory Gory Hallelujah

Best Wordplay/Romance Theme Award; Boy Eats Girl

Best Ignored Advice Award; Don't Go in the House

Not the Chris Farley Movie Award; Black Sheep

The Best Zombie Movie Made by A LOTR Director Award; Braindead

That Doesn't Sound Very Scary Award; Night of the Seagulls

Talk to Your Travel Agent Zombie Award; Nudist Colony of the Dead

So many titles to youtube...