Zombies have become ubiquitous globally in film and television. This undead ghoul keeps returning and finding new ways to infect our screens. Here, I look at Cholo (John Leguizamo) from George A Romero’s Land of the Dead (2005), one of the few Latinx zombies in film, delving into what this ghoul represents.
In 1968 the zombie film forever changed with the release of George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. This black-and-white low-budget horror flick now marks the before and after of zombie films. Before Night of the Living Dead, zombie films saw a transition from the fear-inducing film White Zombie (1932) to more comedic zombie films like 1945’s Zombies on Broadway. After Night of the Living Dead, zombies not only morphed from a voodoo creation into undead ghouls of unknown origins but also moved from exotic lands, outside of the U.S., to Pittsburgh. Thus, zombies were no longer ghouls that inhabited “uncivilized” spaces where tourists, the military, and corporations were at risk but were now an integral part of the American landscape.
