They want to eat your brain: Zombie attack

If the terrorists forced me to choose between people in rubber monster suits stomping all over Tokyo and a good intestines-munching zombie — and, really, God bless the USA and all our precious freedoms that I don’t — I’d probably choose the rubber-suited guy. But because “28 Weeks Later” opens this week, I’m here to talk about my second favorite class of monster citizen. And really, it’s a very close second. I love zombies.

They have pretty much everything going for them, the zombies. If created with love and care then they’re usually disgusting to behold, and that’s always preferable. They don’t give long-winded speeches about their upcoming plans because everyone knows that all they really want to do is eat live human flesh.

And they ordinarily don’t have feel-sorry-for-me back-stories to try to help you understand their true feelings and motives as zombies. Their job is simply to destroy everything in their path. And just like the shark in “Jaws,” you’re happy no matter what the outcome to their story.

If they get killed in the end then it’s because someone had to blast their brains out or blow them up somehow. So, you know, that’s awesome. And if they don’t get killed in the end then you, the viewer, are free to enjoy their non-stop reign of terror and blood-feasting well into multiple sequels. It’s always win-win with zombies.

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For the purposes of the you-oughta-see-this list that follows, I’m going to assume that we all know about the George Romero movies. “Night of the Living Dead,” “Dawn of the Dead” and “Day of the Dead” are classics of the genre. I can’t tell you anything more about them that could add one more piece of vital information that someone hasn’t already written or said. They’re amazing. They’re vile. They’re perfect.

And “Land of the Dead,” which is kind of like “Dude, Where’s My Car?” but with zombies, is not so bad either. If you’re new to the world of the living dead then you need to start with them, definitely. Meanwhile, if you’re all caught up on the basics, check out some of these…

In no particular order, I would allow the following films to eat my brains for dessert:

1.  “Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things” (1972)
Some really aggressively annoying jerks decide that a mock-Satanic ritual in a cemetery is a fun night out. They raise the dead. The dead eat them. Then the dead steal the jerks’ boat. You’re on the side of the dead in this one.

See also: “The Blind Dead” (1971), where blind Spanish zombies steal horses for transportation to make up for the fact that they are blind and that the undead are notoriously slow.

2.  “Kung Fu Beyond the Grave” (1982)
A guy enlists the help of some hopping zombies in order to get revenge on the wizard who killed his father. (That’s how they move, by hopping. No, really, it’s a thing. There’s a whole subgenre of hopping vampire and related-ghoul kung fu movies out there.) Thing is, this wizard is so powerful he can summon the real Dracula out of thin air to help him battle the good guy’s army of the undead.

See also: “Kung Fu Zombie” (1982). It’s about a kung fu zombie. And there’s more hopping.

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