Opinion: This is where the dead get down
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Chow down on my swan-song article for Reason magazine: ‘We the Living Dead: The convoluted politics of zombie cinema,’ an intestine-devouring demonstration that undead movies are the great political genre of our time, and a general review of both the genre and the various book-length studies it has inspired. If you’re not already persuaded that Zombi 2 deserves a higher ranking than whatever won the Oscar for 1979, that there’s more spiritual examination going on in a Resident Evil game than there is at a megachurch, and that the real reason Universal deserves to go out of business is that it didn’t know how to market Land of the Dead, well, I’ll uncloud your mind. Sample:
Russell’s Book of the Dead is the kind of horror movie book you don’t see much anymore, in which high-minded text fleshes out a gallery of incredibly gory color stills from ghastly films. With dripping viscera and mutilated sex kittens on virtually every page, it’s something I hadn’t thought possible in this post-shame age—a book I was actually embarrassed to read in public. In other words, it’s an apt, brilliant look at a medium whose saving grace is that it can never become respectable.
Whole article here.
Title explanation: Life In A Blender‘s wonderful song ‘This is where the dead get down’ can be found on the album Tell Me I’m Pretty. Well worth picking up.