BRAINSSSS...or lack thereof

Yeah, we know you’ve all seen “Night of the Living Dead,” “28 Days Later...,” “Shaun of the Dead” and “Zombieland.” Lots of people have, but that doesn’t make them zombie lovers. Who wants an interesting film when all we really want are zombies?

Sometimes it’s just more fun to watch an awful (or not), guilty pleasure horror B-movie that the “Twilight” crowd would’ve never heard of. Here’s a list of some our favorite, goriest and dumbest zombie movies ever made. So, if you’re like a zombie looking for brains, this is not the list for you.

“White Zombie” (1932)
One of Hollywood’s first interpretations of the zombie is 1932’s “White Zombie.” Based on Haitian folklore of ‘zombis,’ Bela Lugosi (better known for his title role in the 1931 classic monster movie, “Dracula”) plays Murder Legendre, a voodoo sorcerer with the power to raise the dead to work in his sugar mill.

Unlike other zombies, these undead are meant to be objects of pity, not fear. As the first of its kind, it is an important zombie movie to check out, but with weak performances and unbelievable dialogue, “White Zombie” is a one-time watch. — Charles Scudder

“The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living And Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!?” (1964)
This verbosely-titled film is probably the worst zombie movie ever made, and I don’t mean that as a compliment to some gloriously campy send-up. It’s actually just a terrible, boring movie with some tangential attachment to zombies — who, according to this film’s special effects crew, just look like people. This movie is only notable because it is responsible for one of the funniest episodes of “Mystery Science Theater 3000.” — Brad Sanders

“The Astro-Zombies” (1968)
“The Astro-Zombies” is one of those films that you feel embarrassed for everyone involved with by the time the movie is done. There are some movies that are so bad that they’re good, but “The Astro-Zombies” is not good.

In a nutshell, a “space agency” scientist goes rogue and creates a zombie, the zombie breaks loose and goes on a killing spree, the CIA tries to track down the zombie, somehow a Mexican gang gets involved, there’s a damsel in distress and in the end, well, in the end you’re just confused. — CS

“Zombie” (1979)
Italian director Lucio Fulci’s most famous film (known everywhere but America as “Zombi 2”) is a scary, fun romp through the jungles of fictional Matul Island.

It’s a solid enough movie all around, but it’s still talked about today primarily because of one particular scene involving a zombie, a woman and a shard of wood. YouTube “Zombie eye scene” and have your life changed forever. — BS

“The Evil Dead” (1981)
In director Sam Raimi’s (“Spider-man”) first feature film, five college-age students go on a trip to an abandoned cabin in the woods. As usual in such situations, stuff goes wrong.

Someone reads an ancient passage from an old book, the forest attacks a girl who tries to leave and people start turning into zombies — really anything that could go wrong does. This isn’t your normal back-from-the-grave zombie, but more of a possessed-spirit zombie.

“The Evil Dead” is one of the most extraneously bloody zombie movies out there, but it’s definitely one not to miss. Make sure to check out the sequels, “Evil Dead II” and “Army of Darkness.” — CS

“Return of the Living Dead Part II” (1988)
While the first installment in the now five-part long “Return of the Living Dead” series is considered a minor classic, it’s the second film that perfectly encapsulated the 1980s horror-comedy vibe that director Ken Wiederhorn was trying to accomplish.

Every performance is overacted to the max, the special effects are fantastically cheesy and the plot drips with late Cold War paranoia about government secrets and conspiracies. The entire series is worth at least one run through, but if you’re likely to revisit one movie, it’s “Part II.” — BS

“The Serpent and the Rainbow” (1988)
This is perhaps the most notable film in the “real life zombies” subgenre. Wes Craven’s mid-career masterpiece is based on a nonfiction book of the same name that details an herbal brew concocted by Haitian witchdoctors that generates the symptoms of being “undead.”

The film’s protagonist, a Harvard ethnobotanist, goes to Haiti to investigate the drug for a pharmaceutical company but becomes obsessed with the zombies instead. — BS

“Dead Alive” (1992)
Before Peter Jackson was tossing off billion-dollar masterpieces in the early 2000s, he was a young Kiwi with a camera and a love for gore, zombies and over-the-top schlock.

“Dead Alive” (released as “Braindead” outside of the U.S.) might be the best film from this era of his career, and it is certainly the goriest.

And honestly, isn’t any film whose premise can be summarized as, “plague rats raped tree monkeys to create rat-monkeys who make humans into zombies if they bite them,” worth watching at least once? — BS

“Fido” (2006)
This Canadian comedy takes place in a world where living with zombies has become normal. In fact, zombies have been domesticated as pets/servants. The dead can choose to be decapitated and buried separately from their head or return as a zombie-slave.

But just like you hear news stories about supposedly “domesticated” tigers attacking their owners, this zombie-as-pet analogy was never meant to work properly. In this strange, twisted love story of a boy and his zombie, we see one of the most romanticized interpretations of the zombie to date. — CS

“American Zombie” (2007)
“American Zombie” is a mockumentary about the life of the modern zombie in their own world. Zombies are completely sentient but simply do not remember their past life. Some zombies spend time trying to re-discover their past while others attempt to re-integrate into “normal” life.

This movie puts an entertaining new twist on the old zombie, but the last half-hour flips the story on its head, keeping you on the edge of your seat until the final scene. — CS

“Zombie Strippers!” (2008)
This largely failed attempt at political satire and camp appeal tells the story of a strip club in which a stripper is infected with the zombie virus. After becoming undead, she becomes a more popular stripper, and so naturally the other strippers become zombies one by one to stay competitive.

The zombie strippers kill clients in private dances, begin fighting each other and overcome lackluster attempts to contain them.

Really, the only excuse for having seen this film is “I watch every movie with ‘zombie’ in the title” or “I really love Jenna Jameson,” the movie’s lead actress. — Corin Chellberg