The 4th Annual Spooky Classic Movie Blogathon: Night of the Living Dead (1968)
In the pantheon of fictional monsters, the zombie has been around for almost a hundred years. The first popular reference to these resurrected corpses dates back to the book The Magic Island , published by William Seabrook in 1929. Seabrook was an American occultist (and an alcoholic) who found success travelling to various parts of the world and publishing exaggerated accounts of witchcraft and satanism. Written after a trip to the Caribbean island of Haiti, The Magic Island supposedly details Seabrook's real-life encounters with the walking dead. The section dealing with zombies is titled «Black Sorcery» and it colourfully narrates a story a local told to Seabrook about voodoo rites used to revive the dead as soulless slaves to work in the sugar cane fields. Now in the Public Domain, The Magic Island was praised by critics at the time of its original release for its characterization of the Haitian people and culture, as well as its exploration of voodoo. Although Seabrook...