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Being a child of the 80s, I had seen my fair share of horror films on cable and videotape, which back then was a good mix of slasher or Fangoria-chic FX films. They had lots of latex wounds, lots of cars that wouldn't start, and iconic bad guys that were more fun to root for, but horror was one thing that horror movies were (and continue to be) severely lacking. I remember my parents giving me a copy of Night of the Living Dead, which being before a time I appreciated Black and White films, seemed like it would be another one of those cheapies that was made for a generation that had been frightened by stop-motion lab skeletons and dime store rubber masks. I was living in an age of wall-splattering blood bladders and animatronic severed limbs did they really expect me to be frightened by some chocolate sauce blood and pancake makeup? Well, to humor them, and because I was a horror junkie at the time, I went ahead and watched my first zombie film.Hmm. Probably not.
It gave me nightmares for years. The concept of the undead was unlike anything I'd seen before. It was horror that you couldn't hide from. Unlike other horror films, you couldn't just avoid the summer camp where all those teens were murdered, or move away from Elm St. or stop playing with the demonic puzzle box no, zombies came to you. You could run from them, but they would eventually catch up with even more than before. You could hide from them, but there was no waiting for the sun to come up they would always be outside because they had time on their side. There wasn't just one monster to avoid there were hundreds, maybe thousands, maybe millions. You didn't know what was safe and you couldn't even trust people to work together to stop them. Zombies were a force that kept getting stronger while humanity got weaker. They didn't have clever taunts, or butcher knives, or hundreds of teeth they just looked at you with that blank expression, shuffling closer with the intent of ripping out your guts for no good reason at all. They weren't vengeful, or sadistic, or crazy, they just were.
After seeing the movie, I swore I heard them outside at night. I imagined them bursting out of overgrown bushes while walking home from school. Sometimes, when the radio was on, I knew any second there would be a breaking news story about the dead walking the Earth. I had that one dream where I was the last man on Earth trying to avoid the zombie hordes for. well, I guess, I still have that dream once in awhile, just like the one where I realize I have a final for a college class I never remember taking. That is horror, when it sticks with you that long, and thus, I became a fan of zombies. Years later, lo and behold, DoubleBear's first title is in no small way related to a fascination with the horror of how humanity would deal with such an unbelievable crisis. For all our sake, I'm really glad that my childhood fears hadn't grown out of a fear of murderous leprechauns.
