Flight Paths

Interesting. I’m definitely not a zombie fan - they have always been the weakest of undead villains for me. Too slow (as Shaun of the Dead pointed out) and too unintelligent. Their only motivation seems to be eat/kill, where as vampires and witches have many more complex and often conflicting motivations (and they can say more than grrrr…ugghhhh…!)

Are mummies a subgenre of zombies? I prefer them, just because of the Egyptian background.

Mummies must be an ethnic sub-group of Zombies; however, mummies do appear to be more intelligent than zombies.

I agree with you that, traditionally, zombies are less interesting - but the thing that interests me is, as I said, their ’soul-less’ state. But I’m also fond of the notion, well exploited by George Romero, of consumer-as-zombie.

Not quite sure where this will lead. But that’s what it’s all about, surely?

Very much so. Christopher Lloyd’s ‘Doc Brown’ character from Back to the Future was always a favourite of mine.

Zombies in Plain English - from http://www.commoncraft.com/zombies

I guess Frankenstein’s monster is one of the original zombies? And the novel is a kind of exploration of whether or not he has a soul?

I do find zombies far scarier than mummies (I’ve never thought of mummies as scary actually). The thought of zombies scare me so much that I’ve never actually been able to handle watching a film about them.

The living, walking dead in Sainsbury’s, and the living, flying (soon to be dead) above it. Chilling stuff Kate.

re. female mad scientists -

There is Dr. Jane Tiptree in Roger Corman’s ‘Carnosaur’, which came out around
the same time as ‘Jurassic Park’ (I saw it with my brother at the time. Gory, but not
too bad, as B-movies go…)

An internet search has turned up a 1950s movie called ‘Devil Girl from Mars’
featuring a mad Professor Hennessy.

There was also ‘Lady Frankenstein’, which was a bit like ‘Bride of Dracula’
or whatever the female vampire film was called. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Frankenstein (but I’m not sure that
counts).

I wonder whether the ‘mad scientist’ *must* have the stereotypical big
laboratory full of bizarre equipment? If not, then perhaps Servalan from
‘Blakes 7′ or the Great Tyrant from ‘Barbarella’, for example, would
qualify? They are scientists gone wrong, really…

zombies - are they about consciousness, or lack of it?…- In philosophy of mind/consciousness studies the notion of the ‘philosophical zombie’ is used in a specific way - not to refer to a blood and guts lurching chappy, but to the hypothetical notion of some kind of simulacrum of a human that is in every respect the same save having no conscious experience, or no ’soul’.

I recommend a book of interviews by Susan Blackmore, ‘Conversations about Consciousness’ - more approachable than most; a series of conversations with lots of different philosophers/scientists etc working in the area of ‘consciousness studies’ - she asks each in turn whether a zombie could ‘be conscious’ if in all other respects it was exactly the same as a human (the dilemma for the replicants in Bladerunner of course…). Some interesting views…(no blood and guts though, except in intellectual terms

Are Servalan and the Great Tyrant female?

Frankenstein’s monster is interesting in this regard - while he was constructed from the dead he doesn’t seem to count as one of the undead, and he definitely has a soul and a consciousness.

Any movies with sweet and kind zombies?

Servalan is female - she was played by the wonderful Jacqueline Pearce, http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/classic/blakes7/servalan/

Found this on youtube - How to be a Mad Scientist, by Dr Skull - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oa7PbTY7clw - it combines zombies and mad scientists!