The Returned (Les Revenants), Channel 4, Sunday evenings

[Nick Armstrong]

Oh that's how you are able to wear a cycling helmet to work and yet are able still to have 'big hair' in the office, Caliban

That takes you back! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzbvqW_dOwY

Isn't it all about waxes and gels and mousses these days? A recent (teenaged) houseguest had a pot of something that looked like Play-Doh which was smeared into his barnet

The present is a foreign country - they do things differently there!

But I fear we stray shamefully off topic.

Back OT: yes, Romero's 1968 schlocker "Night of the Living Dead" was the spur.... but one reads in Wiki:

Romero revolutionized the horror film genre with Night of the Living Dead, "a new dawn in horror film-making". The film has also effectively redefined the use of the term "zombie". While the word "zombie" itself is never used - the word used in the film is ghoul - Romero's film introduced the theme of zombies as reanimated, flesh-eating cannibals. Early zombie films like Victor Halperin's White Zombie (1932) and Jacques Tourneur's I Walked with a Zombie (1943) concerned living people enslaved by a Voodoo witch doctor; many were set in the Caribbean.

[Anna]

Oh that's how you are able to wear a cycling helmet to work and yet are able still to have 'big hair' in the office, Caliban

Ooooh - naughty Ams!
The Telegraph only has a few lines, not a preview, but says: it feels like a Gallic cross between Lost and Twin Peaks.

[amateur51]

Ooooh - naughty Ams!
The Telegraph only has a few lines, not a preview, but says: it feels like a Gallic cross between Lost and Twin Peaks.

I loved Twin Peaks despite understanding only 10% of it. Lost however was just that

[Nick Armstrong]

We appear to be in Harmony too, ferney!! (Not least - if I recall correctly - in our respective 100% lack of any need for hairspray!! )

I too loved Twin Peaks !

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

We appear to be in Harmony too, ferney!! (Not least - if I recall correctly - in our respective 100% lack of any need for hairspray!! )

(In case this puzzles anyone; I posted the same youTube link to the Harmony advert that Cali gave above; realized that we'd cross-posted, so deleted mine.)

[Anna]

Sorry to keep harping back to The Times (I only ever buy it on a Saturday, honest! because I like the jumbo crossword not to line the Murdoch coffers!) but there is a two page article entitled "Zombies are the new Vampires" how we now love them more than vampires and the outbreak of new zombie movies this year which are:
The Zombie Autopsies; World War Z; The Walking Dead; Warm Bodies; The Curse of the Buxom Strumpet*; The Evil Dead; Boyscouts v Zombies.
*In production, starring Ian McKellan, described as camp 18th century zombies!

[amateur51]

That takes you back! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzbvqW_dOwY

This takes you back even further ... to WWII (allegedly!) ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAPpXw-e1B8

[Ferretfancy]

Did you know that the phenomenon of zombies arrived only as late as 1968? - twas on the radio last evening

'Fraid not, Ams.

How about- I Walked with a Zombie ( 1943 ) I don't remember the plot, but Jacques Tourneur directed it, and it starred Frances Dee and Tom Conway. Tourneur also directed Cat People and Out of the Past, the latter is one of Robert Mitchum's best movies.

I doubt if zombies decomposed back in the 1940s, but you never know.

Just to be on the safe side, a disclaimer on the credits read -"Any similarity to any persons living, dead or POSSESSED is entirely coincidental"

[amateur51]

'Fraid not, Ams.

How about- I Walked with a Zombie ( 1943 ) I don't remember the plot, but Jacques Tourneur directed it, and it starred Frances Dee and Tom Conway. Tourneur also directed Cat People and Out of the Past, the latter is one of Robert Mitchum's best movies.

I doubt if zombies decomposed back in the 1940s, but you never know.

Just to be on the safe side, a disclaimer on the credits read -"Any similarity to any persons living, dead or POSSESSED is entirely coincidental"

I was misinformed by Radio 4, Ferret -

[Nick Armstrong]

'Fraid not, Ams.

How about- I Walked with a Zombie ( 1943 ) I don't remember the plot, but Jacques Tourneur directed it, and it starred Frances Dee and Tom Conway. Tourneur also directed Cat People and Out of the Past, the latter is one of Robert Mitchum's best movies.

I doubt if zombies decomposed back in the 1940s, but you never know.

Just to be on the safe side, a disclaimer on the credits read -"Any similarity to any persons living, dead or POSSESSED is entirely coincidental"

Nice...

There's an earlier one that that yet, Ff http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Zombie_(film) Another of the Haiti-based voodoo zombie jobs...

I was misinformed by Radio 4, Ferret -

I think the 1968 film is where they start shuffling around rather closer to home... so R4 were referring to what one thinks of as the mainstream 'zombie genre'

[amateur51]

I think the 1968 film is where they start shuffling around rather closer to home... so R4 were referring to what one thinks of as the mainstream 'zombie genre'

Gotcha Caliban - I think you've solved the mystery

[Serial_Apologist]

This takes you back even further ... to WWII (allegedly!) ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAPpXw-e1B8

Wonderful!!!

[Ferretfancy]

Gotcha Caliban - I think you've solved the mystery

I think Caliban has hit the nail on the head, which of course wouldn't work on a zombie. Back in 1943 zombies were more genteel.

[mangerton]

I too shall record this and catch up during the week. I heard about Les Revenants on Radio 4, but from the way they were talking I thought I'd missed the start.

[Padraig]

"Back in 1943 zombies were more genteel", Ferretfancy.

If I remember correctly, which is most unlikely, the Zombies back then were proportionately more scary than the later manifestations, hilariously taken off by Father Ted and Co.
I hear a calypso.........

Her eyes are open
But she cannot see.
Shame and sorrow for the familee..........

Ring a bell. Ff?