Fan of the Dead

Documentary

Cheezy Flicks

R1 DVD

This is one of the strangest documentaries I have seen in a long while. Nicolas Garreau is a Frenchman with an incredibly bad haircut and an obsession with three George Romero films, Night of the Living Dead (1968), Dawn of the Dead (1978), and Day of the Dead (1985). He has finally realised his dream of travelling to the city where most of the films were made. The trip obviously made an impression on him, since every second sentence ends with Incredible !

We see the incredible cellar where the people hid from zombies and the incredible lamppost that they drove past on their escape. Garreau and his friends attend a Comic Convention where they meet like-minded obsessives and members of the casts. Then they get a guided tour of other shooting sites as well as a supermarket where some footage was shot. A tour of a shopping mall? Wow ! It’s all quite incredible.

One thing that surprised me was his encyclopaedic knowledge of the films and their individual scenes. Nicolas is a man with too much time on his hands, but other fans on the tours seem to be just as bad. Even some of the cast seem to have caught the disease. We meet the man who is The World’s Best-Known Zombie. He is proud of being on the cover of a Japanese publication, Directory of the Undead. We also meet a number of other zombie actors who seem to remember their parts with enthusiasm and affection.

Nicolas next embarks on a road trip to find other scenes and buildings used in the films. His ultimate goal is the cemetery from where the zombies came. It is almost a religious moment when he finds the cemetery and is able to retrace the action in the film.

This is true cult movie stuff. Initially I had a good time laughing at their obsession but after a while it became more of a homage to three trend-setting films. These people really know what they are talking about and their enthusiasm communicates itself to the viewer. A lot of people took part in the films and they seem rather proud of their parts, small though they may have been.

It’s all quite incredible.

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