SUBMITTED BY Timbo

March 18, 2004 — In video games, on DVD and at the movies, fans just can't get enough of zombies, something that the upcoming "Dawn of the Dead" remake is sure to benefit from.

"There is something inherently cool about zombies," says Zack Snyder, a commercial director making his feature debut with Dawn. "There is a bubbling groundswell for these kind of films that don't feel like a Hollywood movie exactly, one that puts the cult experience back in."

That proved true last fall when an update of another underground horror classic, 1974's Texas Chainsaw Massacre, buzzed its way to $80 million-plus at the box office.

A sign that zombie fever is heating up: A just-released remastered DVD of the original Dawn, last available in 1999, is selling briskly even before the remake opens. Mark Ward of Anchor Bay Entertainment, which will bring out a multidisc edition packed with extras in September, calls Dawn collections "our Lord of the Rings" and says it's the company's most-requested oldie.

"Zombies have long lives," says Bryan Senn, author of Drums O' Terror: Voodoo in the Cinema, who links the word's origins to the African term "nzambi," the spirit of a dead person. "It's both our fascination and our fear of death that makes them so popular. We want to believe in something after death, but we sure don't want to be a zombie. They attract and repulse."

They certainly attracted Sarah Polley (My Life Without Me), who takes a major detour from art-house fare to star as a zombie destroyer in the big-studio Dawn. "I love zombies," says Polley, 25. "Who doesn't?" She used to play zombie games as a kid, even though she didn't personally witness any movie ghouls until she was a teen.

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