Are they Zombies or Infected? The great zombie debate begins!

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Paw Paw Romero has admitted that originally Night of the Living Dead was heavily inspired by Richard Matheson’s haunting book, I Am Legend — a story about a man left alone to face a world crawling with vampires who infest the streets once the sun sets.

Matheson took ancient, gothic horror and dropped it right in the middle of modern day life. Much like Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot, a story that answers the question, “What would happen if Dracula moved into town tomorrow?”

Romero was fascinated by Matheson’s concept but was more interested in telling a story about the first night, the prelude to the end of everything. Before Gabriel’s trumpet sound, before the seven vials of wrath are poured out against humanity, what would it be like in the pale twilight before the day ends upon the world?

Brilliant! Pure and absolute brilliance! Everyday horror is the kind that affects us far more than anything else. When we see our world go to hell, that’s when hell becomes real to us. Just yesterday I was walking the beach when I saw a dead seal washed up on the shore. I took pictures, and the photos really bother people. They don’t want to see a seal like that. They want to imagine a barking, water-dog out there dancing in the waves. But there the carcass was for everyone to see. Families with their little kids, couples out for a romantic stroll, a young person who is walking their dog and needing to relax: life says, screw you! On the spectrum of birth, there is death. It’s coming for us all. It turns beautiful things into rotting putrescence.

That’s going to happen to us.

Then a true psycho says, ‘Well that’s not enough.’ Then, before we know it, the rotting dead get up and begin attacking us. And we are helpless really. Our parents, our children, our dearest friends and loved ones, no one is safe anymore in the sanctity of burial. Romero takes that sanctuary away and opens the mausoleums to let loose a plague of living death.

— Courtesy of Image Ten

But this is the great controversy: Romero did not make a movie about zombies!

More from George Romero

That may shock many readers, but NOTLD was not intended to be a zombie movie. Paw Paw Romero called them ghouls! That or the “Living Dead.” It wasn’t until people later wrote about the movie and referred to the monsters as zombies. Well oops! That didn’t really bother George Romero though.

However, to this day, there are fans who will argue that Night of the Living Dead is not a zombie movie, but a movie about ghouls. It’s the heated topic of nerdy debates around the globe.

Now to really blow the mind away faster than double barrel shot gun can take down a zombie, you may never guess what the original title for this nightmare classic was. Originally, the godfather of all living dead films was titled Night of the Flesh Eaters! They had nothing to do with the living dead at first. This was a ghoul film, ghouls who eat flesh and crawl along tombs. It wasn’t until they sought a distributor that the title was changed to Night of the Living Dead. Then BOOM! Horror history was made and accidentally the zombie craze was born.

So here we are, my little ghastlies. To answer our original question, are they zombies or the infected? Well, in this case, they are neither. If we are going to be super nerdy, this is a movie about ghouls. Fittingly, the zombie genre just happened, and isn’t that how every zombie movie opens? It just happens by accident (usually).

This has been Manic Exorcism, fueling your minds with all kinds of horror madness as well as arming you with fun things to argue about with your friends. If you haven’t been eaten by zombies by the next time we meet, I’ll be seeing you again real soon with even more ghastly trivialities. And if you do get eaten, hope they at least leave enough of you around to still get up and log in and keep connected with all the horror goodness you can stand in this life or the next.

Next. 25 best Stephen King movies of all time. dark

Love the zombie genre? Think Night of the Living Dead isn’t a zombie flick? Let the other ghouls know what you think in the comment section below.

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