Time of the Zombie: Why the Living Dead Keep Returning in Movies

In recent years, zombies in popular culture have become an unstoppable (if sometimes slow-moving) force. This talk tracks the ways that zombie films have come in waves, from an early fascination with voodoo stories (I Walked with a Zombie, 1942) to George Romero's films with zombies as reflections of American society (Night of the Living Dead, 1968) to spoofs of the genre itself (Shaun of the Dead, 2004). Scarecrow Video's "Programmer-Historian in Residence" Robert Horton leads this conversation, illustrated with (not overly gross) film clips.

Robert Horton was the longtime film critic for the Everett Herald and Seattle Weekly, and the author of a book on the 1931 Frankenstein and co-author of the zombie graphic novel Rotten. He is a member of the National Society of Film Critics, the Humanities Washington Speakers Bureau, and has been a speaker with Smithsonian Journeys.