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One of the best-looking zombie movie reference books ever published, Dark Side magazine editor Allan Bryce has assembled a lavish, glossy, extensive and entertaining collection of essays pertaining to the living dead film phenomenon. Featuring articles on the real-life origins of the zombie myth, the early black-and-white zombies, George Romero's zombie trilogy, the Return of the Living Dead trilogy, the Re-Animator and Evil Dead films, interviews with Tom Savini and Lucio Fulci, an examination of Spanish zombie films, a whole chapter on Jorge Grau's Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue and not one but two chapters on Italian zombie movies, this is practically everything a zombie lover could ask for in a single volume.

Bryce himself penned "The Dead That Walk", a brief but informative overview of the origins of zombies as the product of the Voodoo religion of Haiti. Citing The Magic Island, William Seabrook's pioneering 1929 study that first introduced the word zombie to the English language, Bryce examines films that brought zombies back to their mystical origins, paying particular attention to Wes Craven's The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988). Compulsively readable for sure, but this chapter is a bit too brief at ony two pages; it's too bad Bryce didn't go into a bit more detail.

However, Chapter 2, "Morti Viventi", goes into a great deal of detail on the phenomenon of Italian zombie movies. My favourite chapter in the book (it was written by Alan Jones, and no study of Italian horror films is complete without his contributions, right?), this segment covers every Big Boot living dead epic, from Giuseppe Vari's War of the Zombies in 1963--the first European zombie film--to Michele Soavi's Dellamorte Dellamore in 1994. We get lovingly-written reviews of the classic Fulci films and Dawn of the Dead rip-offs, as well as some of the more obscure ones like Armando Crispino's The Dead are Alive, Giorgio Ferroni's Night of the Devils and Osvaldo Civirani's The Black Peacock (all 1972). Never saying anything about the production of the films or their subsequent reception by fans, critics or censors, Jones is content just to summarize each film's plot and give his honest opinion, which is good enough for me, since the sheer breadth of his study makes this chapter indispensable.

3 and 4 were both written by Allan Bryce, which makes sense, since both go very much hand-in-hand: Chapter 3 ("'Shoot 'em in the Head!'") covers--you guessed it--the career of George Romero, while 4 focuses on "Tom Savini--Sultan of Splatter". Where would one man be without the other? Chapter 3 is basically an eight-page mini-rewrite of The Zombies that Ate Pittsburgh, Paul Gagne's 1987 study of Romero's life and films, while adding on insights into the frustrating slump that Romero's career has been in since the 1990s: the failure of The Dark Half in 1993, his inability to direct Resident Evil or the remake of The Mummy, and his continuing efforts to get a fourth zombie film off the ground. (Romero's latest feature, Bruiser, was too recently-released to be included in this book.) There's nothing here that we haven't heard in previous publications and magazine articles, but this is still worthwhile reading for Romero fans (like myself).

"My philosophy is: the messier, the better!" This is how we begin "Tom Savini--Sultan of Splatter", one of the best, most concise and interesting studies of this premier makeup artist's life and career. Bryce begins with Savini's humble origins in Pittsburgh, describes how his service as a combat photographer in Vietnam prevented him from working on Romero's Night of the Living Dead in 1968, his reunion with Romero on the 1976 modern vampire film Martin and what he's accomplished since. Unfortunately, it doesn't go any further than Savini's 1990 remake of Night of the Living Dead--and Savini's done quite a bit since then. The artist expresses particular fondness for Dawn of the Dead, the first Friday the 13th, Creepshow, and Day of the Dead, and regrets his involvement with Maniac, The Ripper, Creepshow 2 and Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. Though his contributions to Romero's zombie films are quintessential, Savini's makeup work has only been applied to a handful of zombie films--this chapter would be more appropriate in a study of gore/splatter cinema, not living dead movies. I would have rather seen a whole chapter devoted to the appraisal of all the makeup artistis who designed zombies in European and American cinema, but that would be enough for a book of its own.

Maitland McDonagh contributes two chapters on two series of North American zombie movies: Re-Animator and its sequel in "The Living Dead at the Miskatonic Morgue", and Return of the Living Dead and its sequels in "Sometimes They Come Back ... Again!". I've never been particularly enamoured of either Re-Animator film, and my limited enthusiasm for this chapter is increased by the fact that McDonagh seems to have lifted most of it from her article on Stuart Gordon which appeared in Filmmaking on the Fringe.

Far more satisfying is McDonagh's study of the Return of the Living Dead movies. Beginning with a personal introduction in which she blames Romero's Night of the Living Dead for her recurring zombie nightmares, McDonagh goes into the tangled, complicated history of Return of the Living Dead's rough road to the screen: how the script was drifting around for more than ten years before Dan O'Bannon extensively rewrote it, how many false starts the projet suffered, its rushed, underfunded production and how the film was heavily re-edited afterwards. The chapter is equally interesting and informative, and it clears up a lot of the rumours about the film's production. (I've read so many conflicting stories on what happened with Return of the Living Dead--whether it was meant to be a horror/comedy, or was supposed to be a straight horror film that got its humourous elements added when the shoot wasn't working out, etc. etc. etc.--that I don't know who to believe anymore.) As for the sequels, McDonagh thankfully doesn't go into the lamentable first one very much, but provides enough insights and comments on the excellent, serious Return of the Living Dead 3 to make this chapter a winner.

Following a glossy, lavish, full-colour zombie movie poster gallery--featuring English, French, German, and Spanish posters--we get Allan Bryce's study of Sam Raimi's "Evil Dead Trilogy". Since Bryce's first-ever interview was with Raimi and producer Robert Tapert on the eve of The Evil Dead's British video release, Bryce simply resurrects his article for the first section of the chapter--Within the Woods. However, Slay it Again, Sam, which covers the making of Evil Dead 2 (1987) and Medieval Dead, which studies Army of Darkness (1993) are original pieces, and both are equally readable, providing particularly detailed insights into the production of Evil Dead 2, though throughout the segment we get unnecessary repeats of many pieces of information we already learned in Within the Woods, giving the reader a feeling of bizarre deja-vu.

Absolutely invaluable is Adrian Luther-Smith's "The Gross-Out Factor". In this second chapter on Italian zombie films, we get lovingly-detailed descriptions of all the memorably disgusting scenes we all know and love in all the Italian living dead films, written with lots of deranged relish: "The scene Nights of Terror is undoubtedly remembered for occurs when a zombified Michael suddenly bites a chunk out of his mother's tit. That'll teach her to go soft and breast-feed an immature teenager!" (pg. 100). Fresh and funny, with insights into the ways certain films were censored--or, rather, butchered--in the U.K., "The Gross-Out Factor" is second only to "Morti Viventi" as this book's essential highlight.

Chapter 10, "Beyond the Blind Dead", certainly lives up to its title, as Nigel J. Burrell chronicles the Spanish zombie movie sub-genre. The quintessential Blind Dead quartet from Amando de Ossorio is highlighted, but Burrell also mentions a whole slew of zombie films that I never knew about, like Manuel Cana's The Swamp of the Ravens (1973) and Voodoo Black Exorcist (1974), and Jordi Gigo's The Wicked Caress of Satan (1974). Burrell writes that Spanish zombie movies started to die out in the early 1980s with films like Jess Franco's Virgin Among the Living Dead, Oasis of the Zombies and House of the Living Dead, and only Jose Larraz's Rest in Pieces is any good at all. Readers are advised to go back to the classic de Ossorio films to get the best that Spain's zombie horror films have to offer, but Burrell has shed so much light on so many largely ignored Spanish living dead films that I want to go and search them out.

Beyond all doubt, the most disappointing chapter is "Hippies Shouldn't Play With Dead Things", Burrell's six-page study of Jorge Grau's 1974 zombie film The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue. Never one of my personal favourite zombie films (its scattered, uninvolving narrative diminishes the impact of the creepy atmosphere, while the gore strikes me as sub-par), Burrell describes the story, performances, music, photography and ecological/sociological subtexts. It all might seem interesting and original were it not for the fact that it's all copied--almost word-for-word--from Burrell's booklet "The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue--A Critical Dissection", published by Midnight Media in 1996. Bryce should have told Burrell to significantly rewrite his views for this book, or either hired someone else to write about this film. In any sense, Burrell ought to sue himself for plagiarism.

"The Maestro of Maggot Mayhem" is John Martin's interview with Lucio Fulci, conducted at Eurofest II in December, 1994. Fulci reveals himself to be courteous, engaging and sometimes quite funny (when discussing the end of Cat in the Brain, Martin says, "You sail off into the sunset with a buxom, bikini-clad girl..." to which Fulci replies, "Only in the film, unfortunately!"). The most interesting revelation comes when Martin asks about the anti-fascist theme that pops up in some of Fulci's films (in City of the Living Dead, Fulci describes the murder of Bob as a cry against fascism). To this inquiry, Fulci replies: "My family has always been against fascism, which is why my grandfather's tomb was desecrated by fascists. I made sure my children were educated against fascism. My film The Ghosts of Sodom turned out to be rather phophetic, because now the ghosts of fascism really are back--there are fascists in the government!" (pg. 131.) Other interesting tidbits about Fulci's films are revealed: he doesn't really consider H.P. Lovecraft to be an influence, the character of Dr. Freudstein in House by the Cemetery was inspired "by Serrador's La Residencia, the story of a kid who kills women to build his ideal girl from dismembered body pieces." (pg. 133) and that the plot for Door to Silence was not, as one critic wrongly suggested, inspired by Ambrose Bierce's An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. One of John Martin's many interviews with Fulci, this is a great final chapter to a study of zombie movies.

Zombie ends with "The Zombie Movie Guide", a collection of brief reviews of many living dead films. Like Chas. Balun's Gore Score, Bryce provides two types of ratings: one for the film quality, the other for the gore quotient (The Beyond gets five for both; Zombie Lake gets one for both). Bryce doesn't review every zombie film in existence (like the no-budget, videographed gore epics of Todd Sheets); The Dead Next Door is probably the most obscure film he covers. Again, a sense of deja-vu ran through my mind as I read these critiques, because each and every one is lifted from the "Horror Guide" that Bryce publishes in The Dark Side.

What this book occasionally lacks in originality, it certainly makes up for in design, style and appearance; every page of Zombie is lavishly illustrated with a mint-condition, full-colour still or poster from some zombie film. This quality alone makes Zombie an essential addition to every horror movie fan's reference book collection. A few repetitive elements won't cloud my enthusiasm; Zombie is the living dead movie book of a lifetime--and beyond!