Here are three tips to help you survive an encounter with a horde of moaning, groaning flesh-eaters.
- Short hair and tight clothing is helpful because it makes it harder for them to grab you.
- A shovel is often a better weapon than a gun because it never jams or runs out of ammunition.
- Never try to escape onto a rooftop unless the roof is flat and you know there's a helicopter on its way.
There. Now you're better prepared for today's London Zombie Walk.
For the first time in the Forest City, the living dead -- or at least some reasonable facsimiles thereof -- will take to the streets downtown between 5 and 7 p.m. today as local fans of movies such as Night Of The Living Dead, Dawn Of The Dead and 28 Days Later plan to take part in a Halloween homage to zombies.
"It's supposed to be a fun thing," says Teresa Tarasewicz, co-owner of the City Lights Bookstore on Richmond Street and official spokesperson for local zombies. "It's a way to be publicly silly without any sort of harassment or agenda."
As the website (www.londonzombie walk.com) explains, a zombie walk is an organized public gathering of people dressed and made-up to resemble zombies. Although London is jumping (or maybe shuffling) onto the zombie-walk bandwagon a bit late -- there have been similar walks in cities across North America, including Toronto, Guelph, Goderich and Hamilton -- organizers hope this event becomes an annual affair.
"A group of friends decided there'd been enough talk about how we're going to have a creative city," Tarasewicz says. "We're tired of all the meetings and talking and endless task forces. Not that they're a bad idea, but we wanted some immediate gratification. And we thought, let's see if we can get a bunch of people together to show that London can support something really fun."
The non-profit walk is open to to all ages (and stages of decomposition). The zombies plan to start gathering at 4:30 p.m. at the northwest corner of King and Clarence streets and start shuffling at 5 p.m. They'll follow a clockwise route that will see them head west on King Street, north on Talbot Street, east on Mill Street, south on Richmond Street, east on Dundas Street, south on Wellington and then west on King Street, finishing at the Salt Lounge (183 King St.).
Of course, not everyone loves zombies.
I recently chatted with Elizabeth Miller. A retired literature professor from Memorial University in St. John's, Nfld., Miller is also president of the Transylvanian Society of Dracula and a renowned expert on vampires.
When I asked Miller how vampires and zombies fit into the horror genre, she bristled.
"Vampires would be very insulted if they were compared to zombies because they have minds," she said. "Vampires have intellects. Some of them are professors at universities."
OK.
But when it comes to rating the horror rivals, I tend to agree with Tarasewicz when she says it's more difficult to relate to vampires because they tend to be upper-class nobility. (And they wear high-class capes.)
"I think the zombie is more working class, so I identify with that," Tarasewicz says. "And zombies can be anywhere. They can be at your grocery store or your hairdresser's. They come at you from every walk of life."
It's fair to say the modern popularity of zombies was disinterred with George Romero's 1968 movie Night Of The Living Dead, which was later entered into the United States National Film Registry because it was deemed "historically, culturally or esthetically important."
Romero's low-budget shocker revolved around a group of people trapped in a rural Pennsylvanian farmhouse while an epidemic of flesh-eating ghouls shuffled around (later versions of zombies were able to run) the countryside, spreading murder and mayhem.
Many observers have seen zombie cannibals as potent symbols of capitalism and mindless consumerism. Others see the monsters as mirroring the way many people sleepwalk through their days, dead to the life around them.
"I think they (zombie movies) touch a very deep part of ourselves," Tarasewicz says.
"They speak to the unspeakable inside us."
