Invasion of the Body Snatchers: Zombie Movie or Not?
Where do we draw the line on what is and what is not a zombie movie? We just can’t decide on our own, so every Monday we’ll post a new movie to be debated by, you, our readers and ask the question: Zombie Movie Or Not? Every Sunday we’ll post our findings and possibly strike that movie off our Zombie Movie List. The week should give you enough time to rent the movie if need be or you desire.
What every reader must keep in mind is that there are two basic types of zombie that every zombie movie based off of – the Voodoo Zombie and the Romero Zombie. The Voodoo Zombie, while not always raised by Voodoo necessarily, is basically a person, either undead or entranced, that is controlled by a person or entity for the purpose of completing tasks, often killing. Romero Zombies are basically mindless, flesh-eating undead whose bite will turn victims into zombies. Now, not all movies adhere to all of these rules, but if the basics are there, you got a zombie movie.
This weeks debate is over Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) Starring Donald Sutherland.
IS: The alien pod kill the victim, and make a duplicate zombie-like body that goes out and tries to kill other humans. Not your undead zombie, more like a voodoo zombie.
IS NOT: There’s no undead, there’s no voodoo, there’s no mind control, there’s no zombies!
Now it’s up to you, reader. What do you think? Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978): Zombie Movie Or Not?
Comments(6)
Nyet comrad
no. period.
Nope. Not a Zombie movie.
Using your definition, no.
However, one might suggest that there should be a third kind of zombie movie other than Voodoo zombies and Romero zombies: philosophical zombies. Philosophical zombies are “hypothetical being that is indistinguishable from a normal human being except that it lacks conscious experience, qualia, sentience, or sapience. When a zombie is poked with a sharp object, for example, it does not feel any pain. However, it behaves exactly as if it does feel pain (it may say “ouch” and recoil from the stimulus), but it does not actually have the experience of pain as a putative ‘normal’ person does.”
Under this definition, I’d say yes — IotBS is a zombie movie. The advantage to including the p-zed in discussions of more conventional zombie movies is that it helps us think about the terror in our fear of “being” a Romero zombie. That’s why Roger asks Peter to shoot him rather than let him become a zombie in “Dawn.” Other zombie movies that allow zombies to retain some semblance of their former selves enter this territory as well.
Sorry to cheat the question, but it’s worth thinking about.
No! If this were to be a zombie movie, I’d have to say every alien invasion movie was a zombie movie. And, no Venus radiation does not qualify as an alien invasion, so no one argue with me that NOTLD was an alien invasion, and that zombies were alien provoked because I’m not buying it. I say no, no, no!
Nope.