LET'S TALK ABOUT ZOMBIE ANIMALS IN MOVIES AND MEDIA!
According to Google, While the term "zombie animal" can be applied broadly, one of the earliest cinematic appearances of a reanimated animal is in Victor Halperin's White Zombie (1932), though these were not exactly traditional zombies but rather mind-controlled beings in a Haitian voodoo context. A more recognizable example of a zombie dog in a horror context appears in The Last Man on Earth (1964), which featured an infected dog that was a source of the viral outbreak.
This dog right here, Jack, from The Last Man On Earth 1964.
Later, movies like Night Of The Creeps (1986) and Pet Sematary (1989), based on Stephen King's best-selling novel, would come along, featuring a zombie dog spreading an alien parasite and an undead cat, Church, come back after being hit by a truck and subsequently buried in cursed ground, respectively.
Pet Sematary 1989 zombie Church.
Other zombie/undead/infected animals have popped up from time to time since the 80's, but in the last couple decades, there had been an influx of zombie/infection/parasite/alien carrying animals in movies and other media. The movies whose covers are heading this post are just the tip of the iceberg, really.
SPOILERS AHEAD:
Personally, I love the Zombie Animal subgenre and find it enormously entertaining, probably because the animal kingdom is so vast and leaves room for so many different variations on the theme. One of my personal favorites is the zombie bear from the TV Show Z Nation--
--simply because of the humorous way it was handled (the same way most things were handled in that show):
Unnamed, anonymous Z Nation Zombie Bear of Female Justice.
That aside, let's talk about some of the movies/media that are heading this post (and some that aren't!) I'm going to go timeline-wise starting with what came out first (the original Resident Evil movie, 2002) going down the line to the newest one heading this post (Army Of The Dead, 2021.) Please keep in mind that these are not NEARLY all the movies/games/other media containing zombie animals, they're just some of my favorites. :P
So, first, Resident Evil (2002): The entire Resident Evil movie (and game, book and comic) franchise is CHOCK FULL of zombie animals, but the most iconic of them all are of course the zombie doberman dogs that pop up throughout the RE-verse. They usually show up in packs:
But in the most recent movie, the remake (which I am on the fence about), Resident Evil: Welcome To Raccoon City, there was only one mutated, infected doberman to worry about, though that doesn't make it any less formidable.
Also in the RE Movie Verse are the Zombie Crows, which play a large role in Resident Evil: Extinction. These are crows that have been feasting on undead/infected flesh and therefore become heavily infected themselves. You can tell by their infected-looking eyes. They travel in HUGE flocks and are generally unpleasant to be around:
In relation to the RE movies, we also have games like Resident Evil Outbreak File #2 from 2004...
...which I will admit I've never played (I'm not much for games, really) but looks really interesting simply due to the zoo module where you have to fight off any number of zombie animals, including zombie lions:
AND A FREAKING ZOMBIE ELEPHANT:
But moving on from Resident Evil, our next stop is Black Sheep (2006), which is one of my favorite movies of all time. How could it NOT be? It has zombie sheep AND weresheep in it! (Also, I have no taste! Hence this blog! :D)
Black Sheep is about genetic experimentation gone awry on a New Zealand sheep farm, the result of which is that all the sheep turn into man-eating zombies. BUT. If you just get BITTEN by one of these zombie sheep, you slowly turn into a man-eating WERESHEEP instead, which is a fun twist to the story. (Later on down this list Zombeavers stole the idea but whatever, I guess.)
And the zombie sheep in this movie often look like they're high on meth which is always freaking hilarious:
Which brings is to Kaw (2006):
A movie about a flock of rabies-infected ravens laying siege to a small town. I actually haven't watched Kaw in a while, but from what I can remember, the birds are attacking vehicles (including a school bus) and buildings before the explosive final act, after which they all die of the disease. I guess technically they aren't ZOMBIE ravens, in the same way that the animals in Resident Evil are just infected with the T-Virus, but it's the same basic outcome so I'm counting it. The general idea of Super Rabies as a cause for a "zombie" outbreak is a common one, anyway.
Finding screencaps for Kaw is a NIGHTMARE, btw. :|
Anyway, back to one of our header images, Slither (2006)! Slither is another one of those movies that I will love for all time, it has Nathan Fillion, Michael Rooker, aliens, infections, alien zombies, a zombie DEER, and as a side-note, apparently when they were filming the movie they single handedly depleted the country's supply of silicone, which. There must have been a lot of angry ladies awaiting boob jobs out there at the time. XD
The zombie deer, mauling a hapless victim. In Slither, the zombies are controlled via alien worms in their brains, and while most of them go after humans, this one ended up in a deer. It is implied that the goal of the master alien is to take over all life on earth, though, so more zombie animals would surely come along if he wasn't defeated in the end!
Another one that wasn't in my header images, Quarantine (2008):
Quarantine (2008) is a North American remake of the Spanish film [REC], which is in general a much better movie franchise, but we'll talk about that later. Quarantine follows a news crew that is shadowing the fire department one night and gets sucked into a ROYAL mess in an isolated apartment building that is CHOCK FULL of the Super Rabies I mentioned above, though there are also symptoms that in no way have anything to do with rabies, so go figure on that part.
The best screecap I could snap of an infected dog attacking a man in an elevator. This whole scene moved too quickly to take good screenshots, I swear to God I tried though. :D;;
Then of course there's the sequel to Quarantine, Quarantine 2: Terminal (2011), which, rather than follow in Quarantine's footsteps and ripoff [REC]2, actually went in an entirely different direction with the Super Rabies idea and became it's own thing, which was SUPER nice to see:
So, Quarantine 2: Terminal starts off with an infection on an airplane and swiftly transitions to the passengers/crew of that plane being quarantined in a terminal at at airport (hence the title.) In Q2, the Super Rabies infection is being spread by infected rats that are brought on the plane by a man who is a scientist working for a doomsday cult:
Again, attacks move fast in this movie so this was the best screenshot I could get of an infected rat dropping down from above and biting a man in the head. The same as in the original Quarantine, some of the Super Rabies symptoms don't carry from regular rabies, but I guess that can be attributed to it being a genetically engineered strain.
And now on to 2012 Zombie Apocalypse (2011), another of my header images. This one doesn't really stand out TOO much, with the exception of starring Ving Rhames (he's in a lot of b-movies and I love him) and the end sequence featuring TWO zombie tigers, the first time zombie tigers were used in a movie to my knowledge (I could be wrong.)
In 12ZA, it's just your classic Zombie Apocalypse, though if I recall correctly there was a bomb of some kind dropped that started it off. It's been a while since I've watched it, though, it's kind of hard to find, so I could be wrong on that front, too. =/
And now? Ah yes, the [REC] movies, one of my header images is from [REC] 4! Though really only the last one featured any zombie animals, from start [REC] to finish [REC] 4 Apocalypse, they were fantastically and uniquely done, particularly with the cause of the outbreak, which in the end turned out to be a demonic/satanic, worm-like parasite that spread in the same way a traditional zombie plague would-- though there was only ever the one actual parasite. The biblical twist was new and unexpected when they introduced it in [REC] 2 and I was pleasantly surprised by the ultimate results. (Much better than the Super Rabies route Quarantine took.)
Anyway! In the fourth and final instalment, [REC] 4 Apocalypse, they introduced infected monkeys, which the scientists were using as test subjects and which, naturally, escaped to infest and infect the ship they were on:
Not 100% sure what kind of monkey this is supposed to be, and they never say in the movie, but I'm PRETTY SURE it's a Capuchin. Just. You know. Infected all to shit. :|
Zombeavers (2014), one of my header images! Ahh, yes, Zombeavers, the movie where someone got really high and wrote the whole thing in a day and somehow it still got made. WHICH IS NOT ME COMPLAINING. I LOVE THIS MOVIE. JUST. IT'S SO BAD YOU GUYS, SO HILARIOUSLY BAD.
So, basically, a drum of toxic waste of indeterminate origin falls off a truck and ends up in a beaver dam, just green glowing slime all over the place. And rather than turn the beavers in MUTANTS, which most movies featuring toxic waste would, it turns them into ZOMBIES. BUT, a la Black Sheep, if they just bite you and you SURVIVE, you eventually turn into a WEREBEAVER. Including the BEAR. There is a BEAR WEREBEAVER.
But yes, zombie beaver madness:
This one is literally cut in half and pinned to the butcher block with knives and still coming for them!
As for movies that are LITERALLY ALL ABOUT ZOMBIE ANIMALS, Zoombies (2016) takes place in a (very nice, at first) zoo where an infection breaks out and spreads amongst the animals. We're talking everything from zombie gorillas to zombie giraffes and zombie lions. There's one unforgettable scene of a zombie eagle nesting in a woman's ripped-out intestines and I couldn't find a screenshot of it or I would have included it here. Instead, have a very small pic of Mr. Koala:
Not so cute and cuddly anymore!
There is also a sequel to Zoombies, titled creatively enough, Zoombies II, which introduces things like zombie porcupines, zombie rhinos, zombie hippos and zombie alligators, just to name a few.
Now, I talked (very briefly) about Pet Sematary (1989) at the beginning of this post, but now I want to talk about another of my header images, Pet Sematary (2019.) This is one instance in which I actually liked the remake better (I know, BOO HISS) for various reasons that we really don't have to discuss right now (maybe in another post some other time), but mostly because I liked the CAT better in the remake, and Church is a make-or-break for me.
In Pet Sematary, Church the cat is run over by a truck and then buried in cursed ground, so he comes back to "life" and returns home to haunt his family, but not as the sweet, loving animal he was before, instead as a horrible malevolent presence in their lives. The bringing things back from the dead via cursed burials and then regretting your life choices is a theme in this movie.
Lookin' a little scruffy there, Church. Not your best hair day.
My next header image movie is Aquarium Of The Dead (2021), which is, perhaps unsurprisingly, part of the Zoombies franchise. It just takes place in an aquarium rather than a zoo, as the title would suggest. Notable zombies in Aquarium OTD include a zombie octopus (where she infection starts), zombie starfish, zombie sharks, zombie crocodiles, zombie walrus and of course my personal favorite:
All of these animals attack people out of the water, which makes absolutely no sense (except for the zombie walrus and the zombie crocodiles) but the movie would have been pretty boring with the zombie fish just staring from inside their tanks, so I see what they did there. XD
And finally we have the last of my header images (and my personal favorite), Army Of The Dead (2021)! I love this movie for so many reasons (I know; we can talk about my taste in movies later) but MOSTLY for VALENTINE. This zombie tiger came a full TEN YEARS after the ones in 2012 Zombie Apocalypse, and the special effects for her were PHENOMENAL, not to mention that the scene where she mauls Martin the death was SO realistic to a tiger attack and just. GUH. The best scene ever.
There IS another, less talked about zombie animal in Army OTD; the zombie HORSE that the King Zombie rides around on. Where did he get this horse? Are there horses in Las Vegas? I have questions. But mostly how does it make all the fleshy horse sounds where it's head is literally just a skull?
A zombie horse being ridden by a zombie wearing a Goddamn cape.
And as much as I know I just barely grazed the tip of the iceberg with this post, I'm done. I got to talk about some of my favorite movies and undead animals, and Tumblr is telling me that I can't post any more images anyway. Hopefully this was okay for my first REAL post for NEB. The next one will be an actual movie review so keep an eye out for that in the (near-ish) future!
Sena ;)
