Fido [Our Review] is an under-appreciated classic. Not only was it excellently realized satire but it also gave us a ring of moppets signing, “In the brain and not the chest. Head shots are the very best!” in the school yard. In the film, mega-conglomerate ZomCon has tamed zombies for use as household servants via special (and very expensive) collars.

(The collars are, or course, foolproof… except when they’re not.  In those situations please refer to the moppets.)

Anyway, there’s Tammy!  Tammy (Sonja Bennett) is the, um… “servant” zombie of neighborhood oddball Mr. Theopolis (Tim Blake Nelson).  Oh Tammy! Your cloudy eyes, your bloodless lips, your rotten teeth and sloughing skin.  You’re the kind of former girl that makes death worth… not living for!

Zombies are terrifying because they represent our fears of losing our humanity.  This fear is intensified by the circumstances by which it comes to pass: the smallest scratch or bite can literally rip us away from ourselves forever.

Horrifying zombies like Gary Busey serve to remind us that even the small things in life can change us in profound ways, that we must hold ourselves and our relationships close and —

Wait, what?  What do you mean, “He’s not a zombie”?  Of course he is!  Look at him for Christ sake!  How could something like that be alive?  Didn’t he once say that five parts of his brain contain alien power?  I admit that’s pretty eloquent for a zombie, but that’s definitely not human either.

Are you sure?  Seriously?

Well, then… never mind, I guess.

During the height of the British invasion The Zombies made a minor, but memorable impact both the U.K. and the U.S.  Led by Rod Argent and Colin Blunstone the group formed in 1962 and disbanded only five years in 1967.

• Their biggest hit, “She’s Not There“, was released in 1964 and launched their U.S. tour.  The haunting, minor-key, genre-bending piece reached number two on the Billboard Top 100 and number 12 on the U.K. charts.  It was named 297 on Rolling Stone Magazines list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
• They had a second U.S. hit with “Tell her No“.  This was derided by some as being to similar to the Beatles but most critics agreed that it was thematically more complex than most bubblegum tracks.
• They’re final hit, 1968’s “Time of the Season“, wasn’t their biggest hit but has come to define their legacy.  The song has come to represent the late 1960’s counter-culture and has been used in dozens of related media.

According to band members the name “The Zombies” was begrudging accepted by  the group after rejecting second choice “Chatterley and the Gamekeepers”.  We applaud their decision!

The 1968 classic ”Night of the Living Dead“ has a lot of zombies (although, fun fact!, the word “zombie” was never used in the film). We spend most of the movie stuck in the farmhouse surrounded by a throng of milling zombies of all sorts. There are fat zombies and old zombies and businessman zombies and even a little girl zombie.

Then there’s inexplicably-naked zombie.

There the audience is sitting, all scared and tense, and then, for no reason, we just see a hot, naked zombie butt float slowly across the screen. The optimists may assume that this was an intentional commentary on the state of American society at the time. At the continuing transition from sexual repression to sexual acceptance presented in a metaphor for life, death and undeath. The pessimists may assume that the guys making the movie really wanted to have a naked woman walking around.

Whichever the case – and with apologies since I couldn’t discover the identity of the actress – we celebrate inexplicably naked (but still, we must remember: deceased) zombie!