On a Scale of One to ‘Roadhouse’: Zombie Movies Without the Zombies

Zombie movies.

They come in many different forms and looks, some with great ultra-realistic violence, and some with gore as bad as Sean Connery’s accent in every movie where he isn’t supposed to be Scottish.

Zombie movies are deeply satisfying in a way vampire and werewolf movies cannot be.

What zombies bring to the table that makes them better is the end-of-the-world scenario. Of all the ways to have the apocalypse in films, you’ve got to admit, zombie virus outbreaks are the most entertaining.

Also, zombies are the purest form of monster around today because they (mostly) don’t allow for any romance. I, for one, like my monsters to be monsters, not b*tches (cough- “Twilight series” – cough). But that’s what they call an argument for another time.

In honor of another Romero remake in theaters (“The Crazies”), notable because it isn’t a straightforward zombie film, I give you what would happen in five zombie movies sans zombies.

The “Evil Dead” Trilogy

Ash (Bruce Campbell, for the uneducated) goes for a relaxing weekend at a cabin in the woods with some friends and his girlfriend.

Since they never find the Necronomicon or the translated tape, Ash doesn’t have to watch his friends die and he gets to make sweet love to his girlfriend by the fireplace all weekend.

Also, he doesn’t later get sucked into 1,300 A.D. He does lose out on building a lot of character and having a cool chainsaw hand.

“Fido”

A zombie comedy about a boy and his best friend/pet/domesticated zombie servant, Fido, and the shenanigans they get into. Since we’re taking zombies out of this equation, it would essentially have to be a movie about a boy and his big, dumb best friend. I do not have the time or amount of words left to properly explore those joke opportunities.

“Versus”

A Japanese film that is part zombie film, part martial arts film, and part mobster comedy, this is a unique must-see for the zombie/martial arts/mobster comedy enthusiast.

Without everyone rising from the dead, the forest would be a perfectly safe place for the mob to dump their bodies, and Bob’s your uncle, everyone lives happily ever after. Except the people who get killed and dumped in the forest.

“28 Days Later”

A bike messenger is put in a coma through a car accident. While he’s sleeping, an idiot tries to free a monkey that beats his ass and infects him and everyone around him with a terrible virus.

Messenger wakes up and realizes he wish he hadn’t.

Without that virus, the idiot activist would still probably have gotten some other bad disease. He dies cursing that monkey and renouncing his activism in a hospital a few rooms over from the messenger who wakes up to everything being fine.

The messenger will never get to run around without a shirt in the rain and gouge someone’s eyes out, probably.

“Dawn of the Dead” (new or old version)

People just go shopping.

This concludes five zombie movies minus the zombies. As you may plainly see, I get paid the big bucks for more than just my formidable upper body strength and Native American cheekbones ... it’s because Bradley Turner thinks I have a nice butt.