This past week’s Zombiology 101
article on mortuary bodies got me thinking and I need to be crystal clear on
this point. It is easy to look back now and see the obvious thing that we are
supposed to do to survive the zombie apocalypse. I saw a posting one time with
the cast of the television show The Walking Dead with text over it saying, “Why
don’t people in a zombie movie act like they are in a zombie movie?”
I thought it was one of the dumbest
statements ever.
Okay, first of all, I have rarely gone
and seen a movie knowing absolutely nothing about it or not having seen at
least a commercial for it. Hell, I watched the trailer for Iron Man 3 so many times on YouTube, I lost count. If you are going
in to watch a movie with “zombie” or “dead” in the title and you see zombies in
the previews, you pretty much know what you are getting into.
But from a realistic point of view,
all zombie movies have to have those moments of disbelief from the characters
before they come to grips with what they are dealing with. Now, as an audience
member, you know they are dealing with zombies and so of course, you are
saying, “Just shoot them in the head!” You have knowledge that they don’t so it
seems all too obvious to you.
But it is a Monday morning. You’ve
only had one cup of coffee, you stayed up to late watching all the scouting
reports for the Oklahoma Sooners, and then you get a call that a crazy,
homeless person has bitten a customer out in the parking lot. Naturally, you go
to investigate. This is exactly what happened with our Store Director Charley
Montgomery.
So Charley walks outside and sees
crazy homeless person. And what is the first thought that came to mind? “I must
destroy this person’s brain!” You wouldn’t think that in a million years.
Imagine a movie that stars Julia
Roberts, Helen Mirren, and Reese Witherspoon and in the trailer, all you see is
them going on a road trip and getting in crazy, wacky situations where they
learn to love one another and themselves. And it has some sort of dainty title
like “Rose Petal Magic” or “My Sister June.” And for three quarters of the
movie, it is all rom-com hijinks and long talks while sitting on the hood of a
vintage Cadillac talking about how they learned to get over their abusive
boyfriends.
And, in the last fifteen minutes, they
pull into a parking lot of a local mall. Reese pops the trunk, pulls out all
sorts of medieval-style weapons that clearly resemble large sculpted phalluses,
looks in the camera and says, “It’s clobberin’ time.” And then these three ladies
proceed to bash and maim the entire staff and shoppers within the local Hot
Topic with their penis-looking weapons. And just as Helen Mirren strips all her
clothes and slathers herself in gore, blood, and viscous ichor, the scene fades
to black. No one would move in the theater for two minutes while the credits
rolled. I guarantee it.
You would sit there, mortified,
whispering, “What the f**k?” Yeah, well, that is how we felt when this whole
thing hit.
In retrospect, we did have zombie
movies to fall back on. We knew pretty quick was going on. We got tossed in the
middle of it and had to learn how to adapt quickly. But for all those people
that got caught in that initial opening salvo? Hey, they got got.
If only we knew then what we know now…
