For better or worse, a big part of what makes many great horror movies work is the fear of death. Whether it's being stabbed, hacked, turned into a vampire, or eaten by a werewolf, putting sympathetic characters in danger of dying unpleasantly keeps audiences scared and coming back for more. And there's no other type of horror that features more spectacular death scenes that the zombie movie.
Ever since George Romero reinvented the zombie film with his 1968 classic Night of the Living Dead, we've been watching the undead kill and eat the living in increasing gruesome and inventive ways. Some zombie movie death scenes are horrifying, some are hilarious, and others just plain disgusting and weird. But few horror filmmakers working with zombies pass up the opportunity to dispatch the living in memorable ways. So here's 11 of the greatest deaths from the last 50 years of zombie cinema…
11. Dead Snow (2009)
While zombie films can feel extremely familiar, every now and then one appears that throws something new into the mix. The wildly entertaining Dead Snow did this by not only making its zombies reanimated Nazis, it's also set in the snow-covered mountains of Norway. There's a particularly disgusting death about halfway through, when movie nerd Erland is set upon by the undead. First they stick their thumbs in his eyes, before tearing his entire head apart. Director Tommy Wikola seals the deal by cutting to a close-up of poor Erland's brain plopping out onto the floor. Mmmm.
10. Burial Ground (1981)
The worldwide success of Romero's Dawn of the Dead in 1978 inspired dozens of rip-offs and cash-ins, many of which were made in Italy. Burial Ground is hardly remembered as one of the best--frankly, it's terrible--but it does feature what has to be the weirdest, most perverse zombie kill in film history. During the climax, in which the living dead besiege a countryside mansion, a woman is reunited with her son Bark. This "kid" is supposed to be 10, but due to Italian rules about child actors being involved with scenes involving sex and violence, he was actually played a diminutive 25-year-old man. And if that wasn't weird enough, Bark has had a disturbing fixation on his mom throughout the movie. Their happy reunion is cut short when mom decides to start, erm, breast-feeding her son, who we discover is now a zombie. You can probably imagine the rest, although it's honestly best not to.
9. Zombieland (2009)
This is the one death on our list that's actually a human killing another human, but it's so good we had to include it. In the hilarious zombie comedy Zombieland, our band of heroes end up sheltering in a mansion. It turns out the house belongs to none other than comedy legend Bill Murray, playing himself. Ever the joker, Bill decides to scare Jesse Eisenberg's character Columbus by pretending to be a zombie; unfortunately for Bill, Columbus reacts by shooting him through the chest. As he lies dying, Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson) asks him if he has any regrets. "Garfield, maybe" Murray deadpans, before expiring.
8. Dawn of the Dead (1978)
George Romero's classic Dawn of the Dead is so full of spectacular, inventive gore scenes it's hard to pick a favourite death. But there's one moment that typifies Romero's irreverent, witty approach to horror. At the end of the movie, a gang of marauding bikers loot the mall that our heroes have taken refuge in, letting hundreds of zombies in in the process. One of the bikers is so keen to use the blood pressure testing machine in the mall that he pops a quarter in, despite the fact that his colleagues are starting to be overwhelmed by the living dead. Of course, he doesn't last long either, and with his arm caught in the strap, is torn apart by zombies. Romero's brilliant punchline is to cut back to the severed arm, still in the machine. Blood pressure reading: zero.
7. Dead Alive (1992)
Long before he was bringing the works of JRR Tolkien to the screen with the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movies, Peter Jackson was known for his wild, inventive New Zealand horror comedies. 1992's Dead Alive (aka Braindead) is an outrageous zombie epic that features one of the most outrageously gory final sequences ever filmed. Earlier on there's the glorious scene in which Father McGruder--aka the kung fu priest--delivers the immortal line "I kick arse for the Lord!" and uses his martial arts skills on a couple of ravenous graveyard zombies. Sadly it doesn't end well. He takes a flying leap towards one creature, but misses and ends up impaling himself on the giant stone finger on a headstone, which is helpfully pointing to heaven.
6. Re-Animator (1985)
The 1980s was the decade of the horror comedy, and there are few better than Re-Animator. Stuart Gordon's brilliant adaptation of an HP Lovecraft short story features pitch-black laughs and gallons of gore, as mad doctor Herbert West attempts to bring the dead back to life with the help of his mysterious green fluid. West becomes a victim of his own success, when at the end of the movie, he is strangled by a set of reanimated intestines. OK, to be fair, the disappointing sequel Bride of Re-Animator, released 5 years later, reveals that West somehow survived. But we're counting this one because there's nothing in the original movie to suggest he gets out alive, and frankly, it's a spectacular way to go.
5. Shaun of the Dead (2005)
As the title of Edgar Wright's much-loved zom-rom-com suggests, Shaun of the Dead is a massive homage to the movies of George Romero. The film is packed with easter eggs and references to the great man's films, and the movie's most spectacular death scene is a clear tribute to the groundbreaking gore effects pioneered by Tom Savini in Romero's films. Comedian Dylan Moran plays the movie's "villain," a sneering, unlikable rival to Simon Pegg's hero Shaun, and his death is wonderfully satisfying moment. In true Romero style, he is pulled apart by zombies as he's dragged out of the window of the Winchester pub, his guts, limbs, and head getting passed around by the hungry dead.
4. Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Romero's groundbreaking masterpiece set the template for the modern zombie movie, and invented many of the "rules" that still govern the genre to this day. While much of its violence seems tame by modern standards, it's still a damn scary film, with one particularly shocking moment. Helen Cooper, one of the main characters hiding out in a farmhouse, descends into the basement to discover her eight-year-old daughter Karen eating her husband Harry. As Helen falls to the floor in shock, zombie Karen stops munching on dad, picks up a trowel, and brutally hacks her mom to death.
3. Zombie (1979)
Also known as Zombi 2, Lucio Fulci's Italian shocker was the first of many Italian zombie rip-offs that followed the success of Dawn of the Dead. Fulci's horror movies were renowned for their spectacular gore (as well as their frequently nonsensical plots), and Zombie features one of his most notorious scenes. The movie set on a cursed Caribbean island where the dead are rising from their graves, and includes the moment when a woman is grabbed from the other side of a door by a zombie. In excruciatingly drawn-out style, she is pulled closer and closer to a large wooden splinter sticking out from the broken door, until it eventually enters her eye and impales her brain. Owwwww!
2. Dawn of the Dead (2004)
Zack Snyder's 2004 reworking of the Romero classic is one of the best horror remakes to appear over the last couple of decades. It starts with a stunning sequence in which a normal suburban couple are woken one morning by their neighbor's young daughter, who is standing in the doorway of their bedroom. The man gets out of bed and is set upon by the girl, who has become a slavering zombie. His throat is torn out within seconds, and his wife barely makes it out of the house alive. It's one of the best, scariest openings in horror history.
1. Day of the Dead (1985)
Few zombie movies have ever matched the claustrophobic intensity of Romero's Day of the Dead. The movie focuses on a group of scientists who are living in a military bunker with a squad of soldiers, and the slow build-up of simmering tensions finally explodes in the last 30 minutes, as the dead invade the bunker. Perhaps the most iconic death scene in Romero's filmography occurs at the end, when the villainous Captain Rhodes meets his doom. Cornered by vengeful zombie soldier Bub, Rhodes is shot, then torn apart by the living dead. As he watches the lower half of his body dragged off down the corridor, he croaks his final words: "Choke on 'em… choke on 'em..."
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