1. Zombies
Probably the favourite sub genre of cult movies, zombies (as we know them now) were set in motion by George Romero's 1968 classic Night of the Living Dead. In the film, the dead return to life and are human flesh hungry ghouls motivated only by the urge to eat living people. A group of people are trapped in a farm house and must defend themselves against the advances of the living dead. Eventually, they all die except for Ben the hero. He is accidentally killed as the authorities come in to knock off the zombies and burn them. Extremely downbeat, Night of the Living Dead subverts the notion that good guys always win in the end and it also brought graphic zombie entrail eating onto the screen. Some fabulous zombie films emerged in the wake of Night of the Living Dead such as Jorge Grau's Living Dead At the Manchester Morgue. This is a fantastic little film which no zombie film fan should be without. It makes great use of its locations, it has an original premise to it, it contains highly explicit and well executed gore scenes and it has an ending that mitigates the tragedy of what happened to Ben in NOTLD. Romero returned to the zombie film arena in 1978 with Dawn of the Dead - a contender for the greatest horror movie title of all time. Following a group of survivors who hole up in a shopping mall, and their eventual demise at the hands of an invasion by bikers, Dawn of the Dead was satirical and had a playful feel to it - particularly in the latter scenes with the bikers throwing pies in the zombies' faces. It was also an exceptionally violent and gory movie with hordes of zombies chowing down on human intestines and zombies getting their heads exploded by shotgun shells. The impact of Dawn of the Dead was felt most in Italian exploitation film making with several Dawn of the Dead rip offs - in one instance, an Italian Dawn of the Dead wannabe film called Zombie Creeping Flesh lifted Goblin's score from the original film! The best Italian zombie movie to emerge from this period was Lucio Fulci's atmospheric Zombie Flesh Eaters set on a dark and moody Caribbean island where the living cannot cope with the sheer numbers of dead reviving. This is my personal favourite zombie movie - I love the gore, the scene of the Conquistadors reanimating, the bleak ending - it is just fabulous. Fulci went on to make a couple more worthy zombie movies including The Beyond, City of the Living Dead and The House by the Cemetery. Zombies are now mainstream. The smash hit Resident Evil video game franchise gave zombie fans a chance to go interactive and blast the brains out of their undead heads. A successful Resident Evil movie franchise sprung up in its wake. The Walking Dead is a popular drama series set in a post apocalyptic zombie filled landscape. Romero has been active again with Land of the Dead, Diary of the Dead and Survival of the Dead produced in recent years. According to the Horror Channel's schedule, about half of the horror films out there are zombie movies. Whether someone can produce something innovative or the genre will be mired with copycats remains to be seen.