“I love zombies. If any monster could Riverdance, it would be zombies.”

—Craig Ferguson

We’re not the only ones obsessed with—ahem—[[[The Walking Dead]]]. Everybody seems to be in on it.

Here’s a very, very, short list of zombie movies:

• [[[28 Days]]]
• [[[28 Days Later]]]
• [[[Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies]]]
• [[[Night of the Living Dead]]]
• [[[The Evil Dead]]]
• [[[I Walked with a Zombie]]]
• [[[I Was a Teenage Zombie]]]
• [[[I Was a Zombie for the FBI]]]
• [[[They Came Back]]]
• [[[Shaun of the Dead]]]
• [[[World War Z]]]
• [[[I am Legend]]]

There are lots more.

Probably hundreds.

Yeah, everybody loves zombies.

Everybody but me, that is. (Okay, I did love Shaun of the Dead.)

The first time I saw a zombie movie was way back when, and it was George Romero’s classic Night Of The Living Dead. Only I really didn’t see it because I was terrified and spent most of the time either cringing, with eyes closed, in my movie seat. Though it wasn’t the zombies themselves so much that scared me—it was the claustrophobic terror of being trapped with no way out that did me in.

It’s probably that experience that turned me off zombies forever. (Except for Shaun of the Dead).

Vampires? Love ‘em to death. My therapist would say that’s because Dracula and Angel and Spike represent the sexual fantasies that resonate with the underlying forbidden desires that lurk within my psyche. It doesn’t have anything to do with Frank Langella, David Boreanaz, or James Marsters.

Ghosts? The most popular theory professed by parapsychologists as to why people hang around after death is that he or she can’t let go of some relationship or need to right some great wrong. That’s gothically romantic. Especially since Patrick Swayze. Werewolves? Not so sexy or romantic. Okay, a million-zillion teenage girls on Team Jacob would argue with me. But they are sad souls—Seth Green’s Daniel “Oz” Osbourne in [[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]], David Naughton’s David Kessler in An American Werewolf in London, and the saddest of them all, Lon Chaney, Jr’s. Larry Talbot in The Wolf Man—for whom I can cry and with whom I can vicariously suffer the vicious vagaries of life as a monster.

But zombies?

No, thanks. I’ll pass.

(Okay, except for Shaun of the Dead).

Tonight (last night as you read this) is the premiere of Resurrection on ABC, which is based on the novel The Returned by Jason Mott and is produced by Brad Pitt’s Plan B Entertainment. The Sundance Channel had immense success last fall with the French television series The Returned, which was an adaptation of Les Revenants, which in English means They Came Back and which is on the list that opened that column.

Will it be more zombies?

It’s Zomb-A-Rama!!!!!