Zombie movies. Too few good, too many bad, not enough of them ugly! Are you with me?

Of the hundreds of zombie films in existence, the tip of the pyramid is composed of classics, like George Romero's series, now four in number, as well as several other blockbusters, i.e. the EVIL DEAD world; the amusing RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD series; the up-for-debate 28 DAYS LATER, and Stephen King's creepy PET CEMETERY. And one of my personal favourites from Italy, the poetic DELLAMORTE DELLAMORE (aka CEMETERY MAN/DEMONS '95).

At the base of the pyramid, the excruciating long list of cheesy zombie flicks is far greater, and much too long to go into, but some near and dear to my noir heart are: HARD ROCK ZOMBIES, which I saw in one of those continuous-loop, twenty-four hour sticky-seated cinemas they used to have that showed bad porn and less-than-B-movie-quality horror films; NIGHT OF THE ZOMBIES, seen in the same theatre; CHOPPER CHICKS IN ZOMBIETOWN, featuring Billy Bob Thornton in a cameo; ZOMBIE LAKE, which a friend kindly taped from TV for me; and the 1959 so-bad-it's-good zombie-or-whatever cult film from Edward D. Wood, Jr., PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE.

The earliest zombie movies on screen include the 1932 goreless WHITE ZOMBIE, staring Bela Lugosi, hot off his role as Dracula on Broadway (1927) and in one of the first talking horror films (1931), and I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE (1943), about a zombified wife needing treatment—this film was reputedly inspired by the novel JANE EYRE! Since then, all hell has broken loose!

Today's zombies are of at least two ilks. One is the dead-brained individual, an otherwise normal human beings who through little or no fault of his/her own is poisoned, frequently by a bokor, a sorcerer who practices the African-based-moved-to-Haiti-and-sometimes-in-New-Orleans religion Voodoo.

A drinkable concoction of secret ingredients, the main toxin of which seems to be tetrodotoxin derived from the puffer fish, is slipped to either a hated individual, or a Person Selected At Random, which I guess means just about any of us could become zombolized. Tetrodotoxin blocks the sodium channels between nerve endings, causing paralysis, low metabolism, killing speech so you can't cry for help, and inhibiting the ability to react. This is the granddaddy of today's date-rape drugs.

Anyway, unless the Voodoo potion kills the victim outright, the hapless ordinary man or woman soon "dies" and then is dug up from their not-so-eternal resting place and turned into a slave that frequently is sold for work-by-rote to a sugar cane plantation in Haiti or another Caribbean island. Sometimes the victim functions in some other on-going subservient capacity, like scullery maid. (Where can I get one of those?) Or sex slave. (Hmm . . . I'll take one of those too!). Wade Davis' book and Wes Craven's 1988 film of the same title—THE SERPENT AND THE RAINBOW—explore much of the "whys" and "wherefores" behind the Voodoo zombie, valid or invalid, to be debated ad nauseam. An off-shoot of this "type" are those poor souls zombified by machines or natural phenomena.

The second main category of zombie is those infected with something from somewhere, maybe from elsewhere, maybe from space, possibly from the centre of the Earth, or the bottom of the ocean, via some visible or invisible source like toxic waste, gamma rays, pesticides, dust from falling stars and/or meteors, or various other chemicals or natural substances, known or unknown.

Such infection is not directed at an individual, but touches all or most it comes into contact with, and frequently can be transmitted by tainting blood through a bite, or other means. Romero, bless his dark heart, is probably responsible for much of this zombism-for-the-masses. Of course, NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968) owes a huge debt to THE LAST MAN ON EARTH (1964), that brilliant B&W zombish/vampirish movie staring the marvellously eerie Vincent Price. That film, based on Richard Matheson's brilliant novel I AM LEGEND (1954) was followed in 1971 by a mini-skirted remake entitled THE OMEGA MAN, which starred Charlton Heston, who surely must have felt that after playing Moses fifteen years earlier in the wildly popular THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, the role of Robert Neville—the last truly living human left on a planet full of not-quite-living people—was quite a comedown. But I digress. Mildly.

Zombies strike a cord with us, that's for sure. Clive Barker wrote the best-ever and most quotable comment on mass-infected zombies which I read once, somewhere, and, with apologies to Clive, I paraphrase outrageously from memory: Zombies are the liberal nightmare. They are the masses, that you would love to love, who appear at your door with their faces falling off. And you're trying to be as humane as you possible can, but they are, after all, eating the cat.

Stumbling upon a great little scary zombie flick is rarer than finding a vampire novel or movie with a fresh approach to that version of the undead. This viewer tends to sit down with her spousal unit to watch a zombie film having checked her expectations at the door. I have easily seen over fifty zombie movies in my life, and because 99.9% of them are God-awful, my lingering hope is that the zombie movie I'm about to view will be so bad that it is, if not good, at least mildly amusing.

Recently I attended the 10th annual FanTasia in Montréal, Canada, a cinema-lover's buffet of horror films from all over the planet, weird and creepy Asian movies, and combos of both. FanTasia is one of the most congenial film festivals I've ever been to. You not only see amazing films, some of which the average horror movie aficionado might never get his or her mitts on, but there are also outstanding shorts, and frequently attendees encounter an up-close-and-personal with directors and stars. Every July, I meet people from all over the world who talk about how they come back year after year for those very reasons, and have made some lasting friendships with like-minded darkophiles. No, I don't own shares in FanTasia. It's just a wonderful event where two theatres are packed with super-enthusiastic crowds that adore horror movies. It does my wretched writer's heart good to be surrounded by such cheerful proponents of the dark side.

This year, FanTasia screened ZOMBIE HONEYMOON. I went with my usual No Expectations policy in tow (see above). Tony Timpone, from FANGORIA magazine, a regular at FanTasia, introduced the movie, and praised it wildly, calling it both ". . . poignant and disturbing. A love story." Okay, I thought, Tony's a nice guy, he's doing the intro, and it's his job to say pleasant things. Then the movie came on and guess what? It was all that he said, and more!

ZOMBIE HONEYMOON, written and directed and co-produced and general brain-child of Dave Gebroe, made under his film company Hooligan Pictures, opens with a wild wedding. A bride and groom fly out of a small chapel, followed by their good friends and best man/woman. The fresh-faced nuptial couple, she in a red dress with a black and red veil, he in a medical jacket with bow tie, jump in the car, crank up the rockabilly, and get to some drivin'-in-the-car lovin', pronto.

Denise (Tracey Coogan) and Danny (Graham Sibley) are a cute, vivacious, spontaneous, thoroughly enamoured-with-one-another pair, vowing undying love, as only the young can. With their life together before them, imbedded with hopes and dreams, they head to the New Jersey seashore for a honeymoon at an uncle's house. Everything is wonderful until one day, while lying on the beach, him napping, her sketching an ominous picture, a man, or what's left of him, comes up out of the sea and heads to shore . . . What would you do if your spouse became a zombie (presuming you love him or her with all your heart, and aren't thinking: so, how's that different?) It's a dilemma, as are the underpinnings of this film. Rarely does a horror movie blend so many emotions together. FANGORIA wrote "ZOMBIE HONEYMOON will move your heart, then tear it out!" VARIETY magazine said, "ZOMBIE HONEYMOON scores simultaneously as romantic, tragic, grotesque, and screamingly funny . . . this strong, well-thesped pic has a real shot at becoming a cult classic."

But what reviewers don't mention is the cruel-hand-of-fate metaphoric quality of this movie. How does Denise, a woman in love, cope when her new bridegroom Danny suddenly wakes up dead? How does any person stand by a spouse when that spouse is out of control, for instance, an alcoholic, drug addict, abuser, or one who gambles away the family home? Catch my meaning? Star-crossed relationships are full of happy beginnings, and sad endings. The real-life pathos so deeply imbedded in the story is what resonates with viewers and what, more than anything, makes it work. All that Denise goes through rings with that pathos. Her denial, and her actions are completely understandable, while at the same time totally infuriating. The magic comes from being tortured by the filmmaker. We don't know what Denise will do, what she can do. We only know that Denise and Danny love each other, and that things are bad, we watch them turn worse, and we know in our horrified hearts that this story cannot end well.

After the screening, Dave Gebroe—who has made a dozen shorts and the feature film THE HOMEBOY (2002)—did a Q&A, offering up titbits about the filming. ZOMBIE HONEYMOON was shot in a house in which the residents were still living (and refused to vacate!) Sibley (Danny) spent time in a cancer ward trying to absorb what he could of physical, mental and emotional decline in order to make his character's deterioration seem as natural as possible in the film. But the most intriguing information began when Gebroe teased the audience as the lights went down: "This movie is based on a true story."

After the final credits rolled, he explained that the main characters in this low-budget flick are patterned after his sister, and his late brother-in-law (a surfer who died in a freak accident). Their personalities, their taste in psychobilly music, their love of horror films, their dreamed-of trip to Portugal, their "foul mouths"—it's all in there. Gebroe was a tad nervous writing a movie based on the couple, but his sister gave him the go-ahead, and she loves the finished product. It is, he says, always an emotional experience when they watch it together. "No matter how many times I see it, it still makes me really sad."

Because so many parts of the story are personal to him, Gebroe wanted to pull spontaneity out of his cast. Consequently, he opted not to rehearse the film at all, but to shoot it "live" in three weeks. Prior to the taping, he plunged his actors into guerrilla theatre situations all over New York, and he made the leads sleep in the same bed at night so that a closeness would develop which would imitate the love he was trying to present on-screen. The latter worked exceptionally well because Coogan (Denise) and Sibley (Danny) fell in love during the shoot and as of this writing are still together.

Gebroe believes, "There's a very real love story at the centre of this movie . . . it's hopelessly romantic. And love in the face of death is the most intense kind of love possible."

Wrapping up horror, romance and humour together in the same package is not common and to make that hybrid work, Gebroe relied on a low-expectations trick not unknown to horror writers and film-makers: "If [people are] going to see a movie called ZOMBIE HONEYMOON, their guard is lowered—they probably don't know they're going to be hit by something a lot deeper than they were expecting."

Director/actor/writer/producer John Landis got behind this project early on by offering feedback, and by hooking Gebroe up with the right people, or this film might not have seen the light of day . . . or night. Landis calls it ". . . the first truly romantic flesh-eating corpse movie."

Oh, I could tell you more. But I won't. There's nothing worse than giving away the plot. You've got to see this little gem for yourselves. Look for it when it opens in October, hopefully at a theatre near you. Or on DVD, which will be out early in 2006. But don't be fooled by the title. ZOMBIE HONEYMOON is an excellent horror movie, visually splendid, with good SPFX, superb acting, and a highly unusual story line.

Yes, there are a few plot-holes, but how many zombie movies are perfect? And if you are lucky enough to see it, likely you will be fulfilling one of Dave Gebroe's deepest desires, because he says he fervently hopes viewers come away from watching this film with, "Heartache and a stomach ache. Is that too much to ask?"