zombiefreak.com

This humourless magician, seems to have an overly serious take on zombies. In the video he talks down to all of us voicing his disdain for the zombie horror genre calling them ‘pretty bad’. He claims films like “White Zombie“, “I Walked With a Zombie” and 1974’s blaxploitation horror film “Sugar Hill” are generally considered to be the ‘best of the lot’ of Hollywood horror films about zombies. Generally? By whom? Voodoo practitioners who have no sense of humour or folks who lack the ability to suspend disbelief and enjoy something creative? I suspect the Rev Don Lewis, a practitioner of wicca, is the latter.

He’s definitely a purist when it comes to voodoo and sites that as the reason behind these ‘bad’ films calling some of them racist. No kidding. Perhaps Rev. Lewis should read the Reason magazine article from the post below to help him understand the zombie genre. Or perhaps Rev. Lewis is a zombie himself trying to mislead us so they can overtake us when we’re looking in another direction.

He also states that zombies are NOT a staple of other monsters have been. He says, “there have been few films about zombie and even fewer good ones.” Few? Here’s a sizeable list of the few on Wikipedia. There are 125 in this very incomplete list. Many of the independents and up and coming films are missing.

Personally I see some great films there:

• Night of the Living Dead (1968)
• Shaun of the Dead (2004)
• Braindead (1992)
• Zombi II (1979)
• 28 Days Later (2002)
• Re-Animator (1985)
• Cemetery Man (1994)

Those are just a few of my personal favourites.

Come now… Do your homework.

Seriously though Rev. Lewis, it is sad that you feel slighted by Hollywood’s take on zombies. However, I don’t believe that filmmakers (myself included) intend to disrespect anyone’s religious beliefs. Zombies are but another story device. A very effective one that plays to people’s deepest fears - the deepest of all being their own death and what happens afterward. Dealing with death, even through entertainment, is a spiritual experience for some people and to be told that it’s wrong to do so sounds like religious intolerance to me. Frankly, it smacks of the ideals behind the Spanish Inquisition. You’re entitled to your opinion, just don’t bash me for mine. I enjoyed the information I just didn’t appreciate the judgement.

You can learn more about Rev Lewis at the MagickTV web site.

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