PETER DENDLE
The Zombie Movie Encyclopedia
2001
McFarland
Zombies are cautionary forms of humankind’s most universally cherished ideal—life after death. Ragged, ill-spoken, rotting zombies (or the post-dead) seem socially awkward beside the more popular and aristocratic undead, like Count Dracula. The humble zombie remains, for the most part, unappreciated and unacknowledged—until now.
The first exhaustive historical overview of zombie films, this book’s lengthy entries evaluate more than 200 movies from 16 countries over a 65-year period from the early 1930s to the late 1990s. It covers everything from large studio films to backyard videography, and touches on memorable television episodes and miscellaneous shorts. An introduction traces the evolution of the genre and interprets the broader significance of the zombie in contemporary Western mythology.
Rating: 8 / 10 Stars
REVIEW – Going into this book I was not overly familiar with Dendle or his works, or even had a clue at who he was. That being said, this book while it seems extremely dated at times, was quite a fun little read. A book like this while the price is steep for some at 35.00, I think if you are a die-hard fan of zombies, you may want to close your eyes and get the book, because once you have it in your hands, I think you will have quite the fun journey here. This book comes across as very thorough, very detailed and like a reference guide that you will always use it to refer to when thinking about watching a zombie film. Dendle and his writing style is basically someone who is diving into this head first and not even thinking about coming up for air. He provides a film-by-film analysis that covers a wide spectrum of zombie horror films, while it it’s not entirely complete, it is at least the best zombie referral book I have read. As all of us horror film fanatics know and most importantly in this case zombie film fans know we can sit thru hours upon hours of mindless garbage and try to find that one film that is good, well fear not my undead friends Dendle does that work for you. So now the only thing left is to find the films he is mentioning in this book. It felt odd to me that he included Weekend at Bernie’s as a zombie film, but missed Demons. I mean to be fair, no one can see every horror film ever created and review them all, that is just unreal to ask someone, but Dendle has seen more than most.
The cover art is horrid, and makes this book look like a joke, but trust me once you open it this book is anything but a joke. If I were to have some gripes I do not understand how some films get barely a mention, like a sentence or less and others just go on and on. Now keep in mind this book was released way before the zombie boom of 2004 with the remake of Dawn of the Dead, 28 Days Later that kept going till today. So maybe that opens up a sequel to this book with what has come out in the last 14 years. Trust me, there have been so many zombie films in that time he could fill two books. All in all, I am a zombie movie fan and I loved this book and feel that people who respect the genre would probably have a great time with this book as well.
