The Hot Zombie

It’s true confessions time here at shootforthehead.com. How many of you got a bit of a stiffy after seeing the hot zombie from Return of the Living Dead 3? You know the one I am talking about; glass shards shooting out of everywhere and a penchant for eating people.

I bet more than a few horny 15-50 year olds had a wank session or two after seeing the undead Jenna Jameson in Zombie Strippers – so skanky and yet so good.

Traditionally, Zombies are ugly, nasty creatures with dripping flesh and in need of a desperate trip to the beauty shop, but there has been an ever increasing push to give a little sex appeal to the undead.

Let’s face it, sex has always been an important part of the B-movie experience. Jason and Freddy never seemed to kill the girl until she had fallen down and her boobs pop out, but for the most part, other then vampires, sexuality has been reserved for the victims or heroine. The creatures themselves have been left to their own less than sexy accords.

This got me thinking about the role of sexuality in zombie films. Can something be scary and grotesque and yet sexy at the same time? Glass shard zombie girl and strippers aside, can a true horror film have a sexy monster.

No one wants to see a George Romero movie filled with GQ and Victoria Secret models shambling about eating unsuspecting passersby. OK, yes I would, but that’s just because I am a freak. It wouldn’t be much of a movie because all of the model zombies would eat a pinkie and then have to throw it up out of the fear of getting fat.

Of all the zombie films I have seen, and I have seen many, there was only one where sexuality was used to arouse and disturb. It was Masters of Horror segment, Dance of the Dead, which featured everyone’s favorite egomaniac, Robert Englund, as a night club owner that specialized in reanimated dancers.

The premise was there was a substance that reanimated corpses into mindless animals. They didn’t attack or eat people, but they would respond to painful stimuli by thrashing about. Englund took dead girls and reanimated them, making them “dance” for his customers by administering electric shock.

This was a seriously disturbing concept because there was an element of sexuality to it, but also pity and revulsion at the same time. It hammered in the point that this was an immoral world where even the dead weren’t safe from abuse.

It’s one thing to make a zombie sexy for a humorous or campy movie, but to extend it into the realm of true horror requires a depth of depravity that only a few truly excellent story tellers can reach. What’s your favorite sexy zombie movie?