“For me it’s always been the strangeness of zombies, in that they are very slow and almost inept and shambolic – without motive, without moral rage or agenda. They’re just us: motorised instinct,” he says. “There’s something really eerie about that. They don’t mean any harm; they’re just doing their thing.”
– Shaun of the Dead’s co-creator Simon Pegg

OMG Horror has posted their list of the Top 26 Best Zombies of All Time. We added synopsises (from IMDb) and a few we felt were overlooked.

  1. Bub, Day of the Dead (1985): Zombies rule the USA, except for a small group of scientists and military personnel who reside in an underground bunker in Florida. The scientists are using the undead in gruesome experiments; much to the chagrin of the military. Finally the military finds that their men have been used in the scientists’ experiments, and banish the scientists to the caves that house the Living Dead. Unfortunately, the zombies from above ground have made their way into the bunker.
  2. Tarman, Return of the Living Dead (1985): When a bumbling pair of employees at a medical supply warehouse accidentally release a deadly gas into the air, the vapors cause the dead to re-animate as they go on a rampage through Louisville, Kentucky seeking their favorite food, brains.
  3. Conquistador Zombie, Zombie/Zombi 2 (1979): A young woman wants to search for her father who is missing since he made an expidition to the antilles. She starts the search together with her friends and a reporter. They arrive at an island where they get confronted with zombies. The zombies long eagerly for human flesh. In spite of desperate defence the situation becomes hopeless. More and more undead corpses crawl up and walk arround looking for flesh.
  4. Baby Selwyn, Braindead/Dead Alive (1992): A poisonous Sumatran rat-monkey is taken from a desert island to a zoo in New Zealand. Lionel takes his new girlfriend Paquita there. His pain-in-the-ass mother follows him, probably suffering from some kind of reverse Oedipus complex. She is bitten by the monkey and gradually dies and turns into a zombie. Then she goes around hunting people, and everybody she bites also turn into zombies. Lionel has bigger and bigger problems fighting the zombies and hiding them from Paquita and the rest of the world. Finally, Lionel and Paquita get into a fight with hundreds of zombies during a party of unwanted guests at Lionel’s home.
  5. Shark Fighting Zombie, Zombie/Zombi 2 (1979): see description above, #3
  6. Zombie Michael Jackson, Thriller (Music Video): Michael Jackson and his date are watching a movie. They leave, and take a shortcut through the graveyard on the way home. Michael turns into a werepanther-type creature, and then later a zombie, as he gets down and funky in a tremendous dance scene to the tune of his song “Thriller.”
  7. Undead Ed, Shaun of the Dead (2004): Shaun doesn’t have a very good day, so he decides to turn his life around by getting his ex to take him back, but he times it for right in the middle of what may be a zombie apocalypse… But for him, it’s an opportunity to show everyone he knows how useful he is by saving them all. All he has to do is survive… And get his ex back.
  8. Zombie Jay Leno, Dawn of the Dead (2004): A young female nurse, named Anna, is caught in the middle of a world-wide chaos as flesh-eating zombies begin rising up and taking over the world and attacking the living. She escapes into the streets and is rescued by a black police officer, named Kenneth. Together they find shelter in a mall along with a group of other survivors. For a while everything is ok, but pretty soon, they start running out of food, the power goes out, and the dead keep finding ways to break through their defenses. Realizing they’re sitting ducks, they make a plan to head for an island by using two armored mall shuttle busses to get across the sea of zombies.
  9. Zombie Elephant, Resident Evil Outbreak File #2 (Video Game): Following the success of the first title in Japan, Capcom quickly announced the release of Resident Evil: Outbreak: File #2 in fall of 2004. File #2 is more of an extension of the first game than a whole new game itself. The same eight characters from the first title return with similar abilities, and the game takes place once again in a zombie-packed Raccoon City. Five new scenarios are available, and the first four are available from the beginning. One scenario takes place in a zoo, another in a subway, and one in a forest-like setting. The fourth scenario is a modified version of the Raccoon Police Department, which first appeared in Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3: Nemesis. The fifth is an Umbrella laboratory.
  10. Dr. Tongue, Day of the Dead (1985): see description above, # 1
  11. Nazi Zombie, Shock Waves (1977): Rose (Brooke Adams) and her fellow yacht-mates, including the captain (John Carradine) run aground on an island when they hit an odd-looking freighter. Once beached, they meet up with an aging SS Commander (Peter Cushing) who had been in charge of a crew of zombies.
  12. Fly Boy, Dawn of the Dead (1978): This sequel to “Night of the Living Dead” is filled with splattered blood and brains in living color. The dead have come back to life to eat the living. This is the story of the escape of four people from an urban nightmare to a suburban nightmare. They barricade themselves in a shopping mall and try to start new lives.
  13. Morbidly Obese Zombie, Dawn of the Dead (2004): see description above, # 12
  14. Nathan Grandham, Creepshow (1982): Five tales of terror are presented in the gothic style of the old EC comics such as Tales From The Crypt and The Haunt of Fear. The first deals with a demented old man returning from the grave to get the Father’s Day cake his murdering daughter never gave him. The second is about a not-too-bright farmer discovering a meteor that turns everything into plant-life. The third is about a vengeful husband burying his wife and her lover up to their necks on the beach. The fourth is about a creature that resides in a crate under the steps of a college. The final story is about an ultra-rich businessman who gets his comeuppance from cockroaches.
  15. Resident Evil Zombie, Resident Evil (Video Game): The original game opens on the evening of July 24, 1998 in the fictional Raccoon City a midwestern town, where a number of grisly murders have taken place on the outskirts of town. Victims were attacked in their homes by a group of assailants, who left evidence of cannibalism. Local law enforcement sends in the S.T.A.R.S. Bravo Team. After contact is lost, Alpha Team is sent to find Bravo Team and continue the investigation. Alpha Team locates the downed Bravo Team helicopter, but there is no sign of survivors; only a severed hand is found. While searching the area for further clues, Alpha Team is attacked by ferocious dogs, one of which kills one of the team’s members, Joseph Frost. Alpha’s helicopter pilot, Brad Vickers, takes off and abandons the team. Pursued by the dogs who killed their colleague, Alpha Team is forced to seek refuge within a nearby mansion, believed to be abandoned.
  16. Cemetery Zombie, Night of the Living Dead (1968): The radiation from a fallen satellite might have caused the recently deceased to rise from the grave and seek the living to use as food. This is the situation that a group of people penned up in an old farmhouse must deal with.
  17. Trash, Return of the Living Dead (1985): see description above, #2
  18. Half-Zombie Half-Motorcycle Freak, Dellamorte Dellamore/Cemetery Man (1994): Rupert Everett stars in this Italian horror film as Francesco Dellamorte, a watchman at a cemetery. Being a watchman means being ready with a hatchet as the undead emerge from their graves each night. Funny, smart, and scary all at the same time, Cemetary Man explores Francesco’s quest for love, life’s meaning, and ultimately, enlightenment.
  19. Big Daddy, Land of the Dead (2005): Now that zombies have taken over the world, the living have built a walled-in city to keep the dead out. But all’s not well where it’s most safe, as a revolution plans to overthrow the city leadership, and the zombies are turning into more advanced creatures.
  20. Stubbs, Stubbs the Zombie in “Rebel Without a Pulse” (Video Game): In 1933, Stubbs is a travelling salesman during the Great Depression trying to eke out a living. However, according to the game manual, Stubbs has had a string of bad luck since he was born, and was thereby unable to get people to buy what he was trying to sell them, life insurance. After making love to Maggie Monday, she became impregnated. Stubbs was then murdered by Maggie’s father, Otis Monday, and was then buried in a remote Pennsylvania field. Maggie Monday later gave birth to Stubbs’ son, naming him Andrew Monday. He would later become a playboy industrialist responsible for the creation of the city of Punchbowl.
  21. Clairvius Narcisse, (real life): According to reports, Clairvius was poisoned with a mixture of various natural poisons to simulate death. The instigator of the poisoning was alleged to be his brother, with whom he had quarreled over land.[1] After his “death” and subsequent burial on May 2, 1962, his body was recovered and he was given a paste made from datura which at certain doses has a hallucinogenic effect and can cause memory loss. His new ‘master’, a bokor (sorcerer), then forced him, alongside many other zombie slaves, to work on a sugar plantation until the master’s death in 1964. When the bokor died, and regular doses of the hallucinogen ceased, he eventually regained sanity (unlike many others who had suffered brain damage from being buried alive) and returned to his family after some time, though only after finding his brother had died.
  22. Biker Zombie, Dead Heat (1988): Roger Mortis and Doug Bigelow are cops that are chasing crooks that are dead serious about crime. Or should I say they are chasing dead crooks perpetrating serious crimes? Seems some nutcase has learned how to bring back the dead and is sending them on crime sprees. Now these indestructable goons are in the way of officers Mortis and Bigelow. To even things up, when Mortis is killed (in the line of duty, of course) he gets a jump start from the Resurrection machine and takes the fight to the zombie bad guys.
  23. Hare Krishna Zombie, Dawn of the Dead (1978): see description above, # 12
  24. Zombie Liu Kang, Mortal Kombat Armageddon (Video Game): Throughout the Mortal Kombat universe, the warriors were growing too strong and numerous for the realms to handle. The warriors’ powers threaten to utterly destroy the fabric of the MK universe. These warriors clashed in a single battle royale that would threaten to rip apart reality and bring about the apocalypse. Without warning, a pyramid rises from the ground, and the tip bursts into flames, attracting the warriors’ curiosity to see what it was. The kombatants fought one another to get to the top, while Blaze revealed himself to them. The firespawn was created by the Elder Gods to destroy as many fighters as possible in order to save the realms from Armageddon. This would be the warriors’ last battle, their last chance to prove that they are worthy of surviving, while many others will perish. This will be the final battle for Mortal Kombat, the battle that will determine the fate of the realms…
  25. Julie Walker, Return of the Living Dead III (1993): Colonel Reynolds and his group of government scientists continue their work on re-animating the dead for military use. His son Curt and his girlfriend Julie use Dad’s security pass to sneak in and watch the proceedings. Later when father and son have a disagreement, Curt and Julie take off on a motorcycle and Julie is killed in an accident. Grief-stricken, Curt takes her body to the lab and brings her back to life. Curt must help Julie deal with her new existence as military agents and local gang members try to find them.
  26. The Resurrected Dr. Carl Hill, Re-Animator (1985): A medical student and his girlfriend become involved in a bizarre experiment into reanimating the dead conducted by the student’s incorrigible housemate in this campy sendup of an H.P. Lovecraft story. The emphasis is on humour but once the dead walk, there is gore aplenty

And to round off the list, here are our additions:

  • Henrietta/ Evil Dead 2 (1987): Sequel to The Evil Dead where Ash does not manage to escape the evil from the first movie. Retelling the story only leaves Ash and his girlfriend in the beginning for whatever reason. Ash must now survive another night in the cabin accompanied now by the Professor’s daughter, a mechanic, an associate of the Professor, and the mechanic’s girlfriend. But the thing in the darkness vows that they will be — Dead By Dawn.
  • Edward the Head, Iron Maiden (Band): The character Eddie was created by Derek Riggs. In the artwork to the single “Running Free”, a silhouette of a large, skinny zombie-like creature can be seen. When the band was looking through potential artwork for their first album, they came across the artwork by Derek Riggs that would eventually become the artwork for the self-titled album.

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