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Zombies first shambled onto our cinema screens in the 1932 film White Zombie staring Bela Lugosi. Early incarnations involved voodoo reanimation and lacked the whole brain-eating aspect. (There’s a really interesting article by Carnegie Mellon University that charts the early history of the zombie). But let us jump to what modern audiences consider a zombie. For that, we have George Romero to thank. Interestingly, he didn’t call his creations zombies but ghouls, and claimed he was inspired by I Am Legend. It’s easy to see why, given there’s no voodoo involved and we’re now into the whole flesh-eating aspect – a strong feature of ghouls in mythology.
From there, zombie films were given a whole new lease of life. We had Resident Evil zombies from a video game; we had 28 Days Later zombies that could run fast. There’s been World War Z and the immensely fun Zombieland, not to mention the comics and TV series of The Walking Dead. And who can forget Shaun of the Dead, described as a zom-rom-com?
And while zombies don’t appear in fiction as much as vampires or werewolves, there have been some interesting novels about zombies over the years, such as Warm Bodies and The Girl With All the Gifts, both stories that incorporate the zombie’s point of view.
In his BBC article Nicholas Barber compares and contrasts zombies with werewolves and vampires. He notes that while Dracula and the Wolfman might “tuck into the odd innocent bystander”, zombies are “either the cause or a symptom of a complete societal breakdown.” Vampires and werewolves are frightening because of their power and cunning. But zombies, Barber points out, are “frightening because of how dismal it would be to become one yourself.”
So, zombies destroy society. It’s miserable to become one, a far from glamourous life, and you likely end up eating those you love. They can only be overcome by the most grizzly and dangerous of means. They sound like the most depressing monster in history, and yet we keep coming back to them again and again and again. At the cinemas right now is 28 Years Later, a film following up on a zombie apocalypse. Why are readers and movie-lovers still obsessed with this monster? Is there anything new we can say about zombies given what’s gone before? And if we’ve moved from voodoo to ghouls to infected humans, where might we go next?
Luckily we have Leigh Radford, debut author of One Yellow Eye, joining us to find out.
Leigh Radford trained as a broadcast journalist. She produced and presented arts and entertainment content for commercial radio, Time Out, The Times and The Sun, along with documentaries for the BBC, including Rilke’s Women for Radio 4. A former book publicist, she is a 2023 graduate of Faber Academy. She is currently developing content for film and television through her production company Kenosha Kickers. One Yellow Eye is her debut novel.
