Different ways to raise the living dead
by RagingR2 | created - 18 Sep 2012 | updated - 10 Jan 2019 | PublicAccording to popular cultural, there are several tried & true methods of raising the living dead, i.e. create zombies.
It's interesting how over time, these explanations of where zombies came from changed between (voodoo) magic, evil scientists, demonic curses, nuclear weapons, chemicals and pesticides, aliens, bioweapons, virusses and sicknesses, with the odd case of crashed meteorites or even sheer force of will.
There are also those films who don't supply an explanation at all; i.e. the explanation you get is that people become zombies by getting bitten by zombies (duh) without explaining where the first zombies came from, although these examples are harder to find than you might expect in the zombie genre.
Additions are welcome. I am trying to limit the number of movies with identical explanations and limit it as much as possible to cases that are at least marginally different from other films in some small way.
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1. Frankenstein (1931)
Passed | 70 min | Drama, Horror, Sci-Fi
Dr Henry Frankenstein is obsessed with assembling a living being from parts of several exhumed corpses.
Director: James Whale | Stars: Colin Clive, Mae Clarke, Boris Karloff, John Boles
Votes: 79,735
Method: a mad scientist combining different dead body parts to build a new man, bringing it to life with lightning.
Granted, it is arguable whether Frankenstein is a real zombie. He is reanimated of course, and he is also slow, hulky, very strong, and he makes zombie-like noises instead of speaking. But we aren't lead to believe that he is especially hard to kill in the way most zombies are, and he is also more misunderstood than he is malevolent. He doesn't attack people to eat them, and we aren't lead to believe that if he would bite people, that this would have some sort of contaminating effect.
On the other hand he may just be different than modern zombies because this is the oldest film in this list, and it does make sense to see him as a proto-zombie, or the ancestor of all modern zombie stories.
2. White Zombie (1932)
Passed | 69 min | Horror
A young man turns to a witch doctor to lure the woman he loves away from her fiancé, but instead turns her into a zombie slave.
Director: Victor Halperin | Stars: Bela Lugosi, Madge Bellamy, Joseph Cawthorn, Robert Frazer
Votes: 11,658
Method: a failed attempt to use magic to win another one's love
3. Things to Come (1936)
Not Rated | 100 min | Drama, Sci-Fi, War
The story of a century: a decades-long second World War leaves plague and anarchy, then a rational state rebuilds civilization and attempts space travel.
Director: William Cameron Menzies | Stars: Raymond Massey, Edward Chapman, Ralph Richardson, Margaretta Scott
Votes: 9,070
Method: the 'wandering sickness' causes people to walk slowly and insensibly
4. I Walked with a Zombie (1943)
Passed | 69 min | Drama, Fantasy, Horror
A nurse is hired to care for the wife of a sugar plantation owner, who has been acting strangely, on a Caribbean island.
Director: Jacques Tourneur | Stars: Frances Dee, Tom Conway, James Ellison, Edith Barrett
Votes: 13,666
Method: Voodoo magic
5. The Mad Ghoul (1943)
Passed | 65 min | Horror, Sci-Fi, Thriller
A university chemistry professor experiments with an ancient Mayan gas on a medical student, turning the would-be surgeon into a murdering ghoul.
Director: James P. Hogan | Stars: David Bruce, Evelyn Ankers, George Zucco, Robert Armstrong
Votes: 891
Method: a chemistry professor experimenting with an ancient Mayan gas. Ehm... 'an ancient Mayan gas', what the heck is that? Sounds like the writers had chemistry and the occult mixed up. :)
6. Batman (1943)
Approved | 260 min | Action, Crime, Family
The very first serial to adapt the comic book character of the Batman. In it, the Batman is a secret U.S. government agent, attempting to defeat the schemes of Japanese agent Dr. Daka operating in Los Angeles at the height of World War II.
Director: Lambert Hillyer | Stars: Lewis Wilson, Douglas Croft, J. Carrol Naish, Shirley Patterson
Votes: 2,471
A Japanese mad scientist turns people into 'electronic zombies'. How...? Not really an explanation.
7. I Eat Your Skin (1971)
GP | 92 min | Horror
A playboy adventure novelist joins his publisher on an expedition to Voodoo Island in the Caribbean, where a cancer researcher is being forced to turn the tribes-people into zombies.
Director: Del Tenney | Stars: William Joyce, Heather Hewitt, Walter Coy, Dan Stapleton
Votes: 1,660
Method: snake venom
8. The Last Man on Earth (1964)
Not Rated | 86 min | Drama, Horror, Sci-Fi
When a disease turns all of humanity into the living dead, the last man on earth becomes a reluctant vampire hunter.
Directors: Ubaldo Ragona, Sidney Salkow | Stars: Vincent Price, Franca Bettoia, Emma Danieli, Giacomo Rossi Stuart
Votes: 21,508
Method: a bacteroid disease (plague)
9. Teenage Zombies (1959)
Approved | 73 min | Horror, Sci-Fi
A crazed female scientist uses nerve gas to turn local teenagers into her unquestioning slaves.
Director: Jerry Warren | Stars: Don Sullivan, Katherine Victor, Steve Conte, J.L.D. Morrison
Votes: 1,261
Method: nerve gas
10. Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957)
Not Rated | 79 min | Horror, Sci-Fi
Evil aliens attack Earth and set their terrible "Plan 9" into action. As the aliens resurrect the dead of the Earth, the lives of the living are in danger.
Director: Edward D. Wood Jr. | Stars: Gregory Walcott, Tom Keene, Mona McKinnon, Duke Moore
Votes: 40,431
Method: aliens executing 'Plan 9' to prevent humanity from creating a doomsday weapon
11. No Survivors, Please (1964)
93 min | Crime, Sci-Fi
Aliens attempt to take over the Earth by taking over the bodies of humans at the moment of their death, and using them as tools for their invasion plans.
Directors: Hans Albin, Peter Berneis | Stars: Maria Perschy, Uwe Friedrichsen, Robert Cunningham, Karen Blanguernon
Votes: 71
Method: possession by aliens
12. The Astro-Zombies (1968)
92 min | Horror, Sci-Fi
The Plan - to build a super human. How? By murdering innocent, convenient victims, and using various bits of them. The result? Creatures on the rampage.
Director: Ted V. Mikels | Stars: Wendell Corey, John Carradine, Tom Pace, Joan Patrick
Votes: 2,788
Method: a failed attempt to build superhumans from body parts
13. Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Not Rated | 96 min | Horror, Thriller
A ragtag group of Pennsylvanians barricade themselves in an old farmhouse to remain safe from a horde of flesh-eating ghouls that are ravaging the Northeast of the United States.
Director: George A. Romero | Stars: Duane Jones, Judith O'Dea, Karl Hardman, Marilyn Eastman
Votes: 139,184 | Gross: $0.09M
Method: radiation from a fallen meteorite
14. Horror Express (1972)
R | 88 min | Adventure, Horror, Sci-Fi
While on the Trans-Siberian Express, an anthropologist and his rival must contain the threat posed by the former's cargo: a prehistoric ape which is the host for a parasitic life-form.
Director: Eugenio Martín | Stars: Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Alberto de Mendoza, Telly Savalas
Votes: 12,771
Method: an ancient man found frozen in ice is host to an extragalactic evil presence, that sucks peoples learning and memories out of their brains through their eyes.
15. Tombs of the Blind Dead (1972)
PG | 101 min | Horror
Medieval knights executed for their black magic rituals come back as zombies to torment a group of vacationing college kids.
Director: Amando de Ossorio | Stars: Lone Fleming, César Burner, María Elena Arpón, José Thelman
Votes: 6,412
Method: presumably drinking human blood and making sacrifices to the gods.
Knights templar who drank human blood and made sacrifices in the 13th century questing for eternal life were subsequently punished to death for their crimes, and are now ressurected. It is a bit unclear whether in the end it was their blood drinking and sacrificing that was succesful after all, or the punishment that they got for that, or another factor altogether that brought about their resurrection.
16. The Dead Are Alive! (1972)
R | 105 min | Crime, Horror, Mystery
A photographer on an archaeological expedition digging up Etruscan ruins in Italy begins to suspect that not all the Etruscans buried there are actually dead.
Director: Armando Crispino | Stars: Alex Cord, Samantha Eggar, John Marley, Nadja Tiller
Votes: 1,059 | Gross: $0.11M
Method: presumably people getting burried underneath ancient ruins
In other words: no real explanation is given.
17. The Death Wheelers (1973)
PG | 85 min | Adventure, Horror
An amiable, psychopathic leader of a violent teen motorbike gang is spurred by his mother, a Satan-worshiping spiritual medium, into committing suicide and returning to life as an "undead".
Director: Don Sharp | Stars: George Sanders, Beryl Reid, Nicky Henson, Mary Larkin
Votes: 3,148
Method: a pact with the devil to return yourself as a living dead
18. Vengeance of the Zombies (1973)
Not Rated | 89 min | Horror
An Indian mystic uses magical chants to raise women from the dead, then sends them out to perform revenge killings for him.
Director: León Klimovsky | Stars: Paul Naschy, Romy, Mirta Miller, María Kosty
Votes: 905
Method: an Indian mystic reciting magical chants
19. Let Sleeping Corpses Lie (1974)
R | 95 min | Horror
A cop chases two hippies suspected of a series of Manson family-like murders; unbeknownst to him, the real culprits are the living dead, brought to life with a hunger for human flesh by ultrasonic radiation being used for pest control.
Director: Jorge Grau | Stars: Cristina Galbó, Ray Lovelock, Arthur Kennedy, Aldo Massasso
Votes: 9,321
Method: pesticides used by local farmers
20. The Grapes of Death (1978)
R | 85 min | Horror
A young woman discovers that the pesticide being sprayed on vineyards is turning people into killer zombies.
Director: Jean Rollin | Stars: Marie-Georges Pascal, Félix Marten, Serge Marquand, Mirella Rancelot
Votes: 2,752
Method: pesticides
21. Dawn of the Dead (1978)
Unrated | 127 min | Horror, Thriller
During an escalating zombie epidemic, two Philadelphia SWAT team members, a traffic reporter and his TV executive girlfriend seek refuge in a secluded shopping mall.
Director: George A. Romero | Stars: David Emge, Ken Foree, Scott H. Reiniger, Gaylen Ross
Votes: 128,636 | Gross: $5.10M
Method: no explanation at all, i.e. the zombies were just there to begin with.
Arguably, this is a sequel to the Night of The Living Dead, so the explanation is still the crashed meteorite from that film, although it recieves no mention in this film.
22. City of the Living Dead (1980)
Not Rated | 93 min | Horror
A reporter and a psychic race to close the Gates of Hell after the suicide of a clergyman caused them to open, allowing the dead to rise from their graves.
Director: Lucio Fulci | Stars: Christopher George, Catriona MacColl, Carlo De Mejo, Antonella Interlenghi
Votes: 19,362
Method: opening the gates of hell
23. Toxic Zombies (1980)
R | 89 min | Horror
Marijuana growers deep in the woods are hit with a new toxic herbicide, and they turn into mindless cannibals killing everyone they come into contact with.
Director: Charles McCrann | Stars: Charles McCrann, Beverly Shapiro, Dennis Helfend, Kevin Hanlon
Votes: 1,157
Method: weed-killing chemicals
24. The Evil Dead (1981)
NC-17 | 85 min | Horror
Five friends travel to a cabin in the woods, where they unknowingly release flesh-possessing demons.
Director: Sam Raimi | Stars: Bruce Campbell, Ellen Sandweiss, Richard DeManincor, Betsy Baker
Votes: 232,466 | Gross: $2.40M
Method: demonic possession
25. Kung Fu Zombie (1981)
R | 80 min | Action, Comedy, Horror
A criminal comes to town in order to kill Billy Chong over a past dispute. But instead of getting his own hands dirty, he hires a Taoist wizard to animate some zombies to do the job for him... See full summary »
Director: Shan Hua | Stars: Billy Chong, Lau Chan, Chung-You Chang, Kang-Yeh Cheng
Votes: 505
Method: Tao magic
26. Re-Animator (1985)
Unrated | 84 min | Comedy, Horror, Sci-Fi
After an odd new medical student arrives on campus, a dedicated local and his girlfriend become involved in bizarre experiments centering around the re-animation of dead tissue.
Director: Stuart Gordon | Stars: Jeffrey Combs, Bruce Abbott, Barbara Crampton, David Gale
Votes: 71,529 | Gross: $2.02M
Method: a mad scientist reanimating the dead
27. The Return of the Living Dead (1985)
R | 91 min | Comedy, Horror, Sci-Fi
When two bumbling employees at a medical supply warehouse accidentally release a deadly gas into the air, the vapors cause the dead to rise again as zombies.
Director: Dan O'Bannon | Stars: Clu Gulager, James Karen, Don Calfa, Thom Mathews
Votes: 68,930 | Gross: $14.24M
Method: a chemical produced by the U.S. army.
28. Braindead (1992)
R | 104 min | Comedy, Fantasy, Horror
A young man's mother is bitten by a Sumatran rat-monkey. She gets sick and dies, at which time she comes back to life, killing and eating dogs, nurses, friends, and neighbors.
Director: Peter Jackson | Stars: Timothy Balme, Diana Peñalver, Elizabeth Moody, Ian Watkin
Votes: 103,322 | Gross: $0.24M
Method: getting bit by a Sumatran rat-monkey
29. Army of Darkness (1992)
R | 81 min | Comedy, Horror
When Ash Williams is accidentally transported to 1300 A.D., he must retrieve the Necronomicon and battle an army of the dead in order to return home.
Director: Sam Raimi | Stars: Bruce Campbell, Embeth Davidtz, Marcus Gilbert, Ian Abercrombie
Votes: 194,408 | Gross: $11.50M
Method: screwing up the last word when trying to recite a magical phrase
30. My Boyfriend's Back (1993)
PG-13 | 85 min | Comedy, Fantasy, Horror
A teenage boy comes back from the dead because he is determined to win the most beautiful girl in school.
Director: Bob Balaban | Stars: Andrew Lowery, Traci Lind, Danny Zorn, Edward Herrmann
Votes: 5,025 | Gross: $3.34M
Method: sheer force of will; not wanting to die because you're in love
31. Half-Life (1998 Video Game)
M | Action, Sci-Fi, Thriller
Dr. Gordon Freeman must fight his way out of a secret research facility after a teleportation experiment goes disastrously wrong.
Directors: Gabe Newell, Randy Pitchford | Stars: Kathy Levin, Harry S. Robins, Mike Shapiro, Bill van Buren
Votes: 11,277
Method: infection by 'head-crabs', one of many kinds of monsters that came through a rift opened to another dimension when experiments in transportation technology went disastrously wrong
32. Bio-Zombie (1998)
Not Rated | 94 min | Comedy, Horror, Sci-Fi
A group of young shoppers and employees must band together when a zombie outbreak over runs their Hong Kong shopping center in the middle of the shopping day.
Director: Wilson Yip | Stars: Jordan Chan, Emotion Cheung, Sam Lee, Yiu-Cheung Lai
Votes: 2,726
Method: experimental Iraqi biological weapon disguised as a soft drink
33. Wild Zero (1999)
Not Rated | 98 min | Comedy, Horror, Music
Only legendary Japanese garage rock band Guitar Wolf can stand between a race of aliens from destroying earth with an army of zombies.
Director: Tetsuro Takeuchi | Stars: Guitar Wolf, Drum Wolf, Bass Wolf, Masashi Endô
Votes: 3,799
Method: alien invasion
34. Versus (II) (2000)
R | 119 min | Action, Drama, Fantasy
There are 666 portals that connect this world to the other side. These are concealed from all human beings. Somewhere in Japan exists the 444th portal.... The forest of resurrection.
Director: Ryûhei Kitamura | Stars: Tak Sakaguchi, Hideo Sakaki, Chieko Misaka, Kenji Matsuda
Votes: 13,729
Method: The evil spirit from the 444th portal to 'the other side'
35. Stacy: Attack of the Schoolgirl Zombies (2001)
80 min | Comedy, Horror
Girls surrounding 17 years old are affected by an illness that make her to be 'Stacies': they feel a strange and momentary happiness until they become zombies.
Director: Naoyuki Tomomatsu | Stars: Norman England, Tomoka Hayashi, Yukijirô Hotaru, Ryôichi Inaba
Votes: 1,678
Method: a mysterious disease affecting 15 and 17 year old girls
36. Resident Evil (2002)
R | 100 min | Action, Horror, Sci-Fi
A special military unit fights a powerful, out-of-control supercomputer and hundreds of scientists who have mutated into flesh-eating creatures after a laboratory accident.
Director: Paul W.S. Anderson | Stars: Milla Jovovich, Michelle Rodriguez, Ryan McCluskey, Oscar Pearce
Votes: 288,531 | Gross: $40.12M
Method: The T-virus, a genetically engineered bio-weapon
37. 28 Days Later (2002)
R | 113 min | Drama, Horror, Sci-Fi
Four weeks after a mysterious, incurable virus spreads throughout the UK, a handful of survivors try to find sanctuary.
Director: Danny Boyle | Stars: Cillian Murphy, Naomie Harris, Christopher Eccleston, Alex Palmer
Votes: 445,970 | Gross: $45.06M
Method: a mysterious, incurable virus
38. Shaun of the Dead (2004)
R | 99 min | Comedy, Horror
The uneventful, aimless lives of a London electronics salesman and his layabout roommate are disrupted by the zombie apocalypse.
Director: Edgar Wright | Stars: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Kate Ashfield, Lucy Davis
Votes: 594,140 | Gross: $13.54M
Method: waking up on the wrong morning A.k.a. providing no explanation at all, the comedy way
39. Planet Terror (2007)
R | 105 min | Action, Comedy, Horror
After an experimental bio-weapon is released, turning thousands into zombie-like creatures, it's up to a rag-tag group of survivors to stop the infected and those behind its release.
Director: Robert Rodriguez | Stars: Rose McGowan, Freddy Rodríguez, Josh Brolin, Marley Shelton
Votes: 223,323
Method: an experimental bio-weapon
40. S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl (2007 Video Game)
M | Action, Adventure, Horror
You play as a scavenger suffering from amnesia inside the exclusion zone of a nuclear power plant in the Ukraine which exploded, creating mutants, and weird paranormal activity.
Director: Zach Hanks | Stars: Anthony Green, Aleksandr Vilkov, Anatoliy Bogush, Andrey Podubinskiy
Votes: 1,676
Method: nuclear disaster
41. Zone of the Dead (2009)
R | 101 min | Action, Horror, Sci-Fi
InterPol agents must join forces with dangerous prisoner to fight zombie hordes.
Directors: Milan Konjevic, Milan Todorovic | Stars: Ken Foree, Kristina Klebe, Emilio Roso, Miodrag 'Miki' Krstovic
Votes: 3,309
Method: Biohazard created by ecological holocaust
42. The Last of Us (2013 Video Game)
M | Action, Adventure, Drama
In a hostile, post-pandemic world, Joel and Ellie, brought together by desperate circumstances, must rely on each other to survive a brutal journey across what remains of the United States.
Directors: Neil Druckmann, Bruce Straley | Stars: Troy Baker, Ashley Johnson, Hana Hayes, Jeffrey Pierce
Votes: 76,143
Method: Fungal infection
43. Deus Ex: Human Revolution (2011 Video Game)
M | Action, Adventure, Drama
After a shadowy black ops team kidnaps several scientists security manager Adam Jensen was sworn to protect, he must harness the power of his new-found cybernetic augmentations to save their lives.
Directors: Jean-François Dugas, Blade Zavier | Stars: Elias Toufexis, Stephen Shellen, Andreas Apergis, Michelle Boback
Votes: 5,913
Method: (mechanical) body augmentations gone awry.
Note 1: A bit arguable whether they are zombies or zombie-like, but when playing this part of the game, they certainly reminded me of zombies in their erratic, unpredictable and agressive behaviour.
Note 2: There is no mention of nanobot augmentations in DE:HR, since chronologically, it precedes DE 1 & 2.
44. Splinter (I) (2008)
R | 82 min | Crime, Horror, Sci-Fi
Trapped in an isolated gas station by a voracious Splinter parasite that transforms its still-living victims into deadly hosts, a young couple and an escaped convict must find a way to work together to survive this primal terror.
Director: Toby Wilkins | Stars: Shea Whigham, Jill Wagner, Paulo Costanzo, Charles Baker
Votes: 40,939
Method: a mysterious infection (is it even a lifeform?) that forms growing splinters attracted to life forms by method of heat detection. Both humans and animals are affected. Arguably, we're not even talking about the living dead anymore, because a corpse will keep moving toward heat sources even after it has been mauled beyond recognition. It does use the body's muscles though, or what remains of them, so it has some characteristics of zombie-esque behaviour and movement.
45. The Expanse (2015–2022)
TV-14 | 60 min | Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi
The disappearance of rich-girl-turned-political-activist links the lives of Ceres detective, accidental ship captain and U.N. politician. Amidst political tension between Earth, Mars and the Belt, they unravel the greatest conspiracy.
Stars: Steven Strait, Dominique Tipper, Wes Chatham, Shohreh Aghdashloo
Votes: 172,390
Hybrids are created when humans are infected with the protomolecule, a mysterious (alien?) artificially intelligent substance.
Note: I thought the hybrids were notably similar to the 'husks' in Mass Effect 1/2/3. Mass Effect was released in 2007, 4 years before the first book in the Expanse series, 'Leviathan Awakes' from 2011. Also the Expanse TV series started airing in 2015, 8 years after the world first saw how the husks looked in the first Mass Effect game. The look is very similar, but I included The Expanse anyway because the back story is slightly different, even though not totally different: in both cases the origin is an extra-terrestrial artificial intelligence.
46. Mass Effect (2007 Video Game)
M | Action, Adventure, Drama
In a technologically advanced future, an elite human soldier takes command of a prototype star ship and works to defend the galaxy from danger.
Director: Casey Hudson | Stars: Steven Barr, Kimberly Brooks, Keith David, Seth Green
Votes: 19,819
The Husks were first encountered fighting for the Geth in Mass Effect, but in Mass Effect 2 it was revealed that they were of Reaper origin. The reapers are an alien synthetic (part machine, part organic) artificial intelligence. Husks are created when human corpses are infected with cybernetics via the installations known as Dragon's Teeth.
Note: I thought the hybrids in The Expanse looked notably similar. The Mass Effect game was released years before both the Expanse book series and TV Series. Even their origin (an extra-terrestrial artificial intelligence) is pretty similar.
47. Slither (2006)
R | 95 min | Comedy, Horror, Sci-Fi
A small town is taken over by an alien plague, turning residents into zombies and all forms of mutant monsters.
Director: James Gunn | Stars: Nathan Fillion, Elizabeth Banks, Michael Rooker, Don Thompson
Votes: 88,899 | Gross: $7.77M
An asteroid brings an infestation of leech-like creatures that turn people into zombie-like creatures, part of it's hive mind intelligence.
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