Clive Barker on Zombies

While I was in Portland at the Zompire Film Festival, I picked up a copy of Clive Barker’s A–Z of Horro at Powell’s Books. Generally, I’m not a big fan of glossy film books (or anything that claims to explain a topic “from A to Z,” for that matter), but when one of your favorite horror writers comes out with a book on the genre…well, how could I resist? Clive Barker has always been one of my great horror loves, from his short stories to his epic multi-volume novels. His films, too, have always been genuinely creepy and fascinating to me: Hellraiser, of course, Nightbreed, and especially Lord of Illusions.

The book is a great read. While laid out in the dreaded A–Z format, the book doesn’t make any pretenses of being an authoritative guide to horror; instead, Barker wisely picks and chooses a handful (okay—26) of his favorite themes to write about. Some are focused and specific: “M for Mistress of the Night” is a love letter to cult actor Barbara Steele, while “N for Nightmare” explores the Nightmare on Elm Street series. Others are more vague and creative: “A for American Psycho” is an essay on real and fictional serial killers, including four movies inspired by the disturbing story of Ed Gein’s murders: Psycho, Deranged, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Silence of the Lambs.

But let’s cut to the chase. As you might have guessed by now, the book ends on “Z for Zombies.”

Barker opens this essay with a lengthy discussion of what would today be considered an unusual trend: the photographing of dead people, which in the nineteenth century was extremely popular. These photographs were taken as mementos and memorials, often becoming the only photographic evidence of the person having ever existed. Cosmeticology became increasingly important in the mortuary industry, driven by families desires to see their loved ones as they were in life—or even better than in life.

Barker quotes photo historian Dr. Stanely Burns: “It was a novel way to solve the contradiction . . . the need to push the dead away and the need to keep the dead alive.”

That thought—our desire to keep the dead alive—is echoed by Barker, who writes, “Many people yearn for immortality—for themselves or for a loved one—but, as the sages say, be careful what you wish for, it might just come true.”

Naturally, any essay on zombies has to include the 1968 classic Night of the Living Dead, and this one is no exception. Night screenwriter John Russo notes that before the film was released, zombies weren’t “heavyweight fright material . . . but when we made them flesh-eaters it gave them a whole new dimension. And then the fact that they didn’t die, it was like having a kind of eternal life that nobody really wants.”

Marilyn Eastman, who played Helen Cooper in the movie, reflects that “Everybody wants to believe in life after death, and I think the living dead is the closest thing to that idea. Except people do come back—so you get your wish for immortality—[but] they come back as horrifying things. [. . . .] That’s very difficult for people to handle, because they do want to believe that there is life after death, but they don’t want to believe that it’s monstrous.”

“Zombies are about dealing with death,” Barker summarizes. “They represent a specific face of death. And the fact that we can even talk like this about a horror movie creation puts down the theory that the genre can’t be taken seriously.”