Living and the Undead: Slaying Vampires, Exterminating Zombies

In this book, Gregory A. Waller shows why the vampire continues to fascinate us in film and fiction. Waller focuses upon a series of interrelated novels, stories, plays, films, and made-for-television movies: Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897); several film adaptations of Stoker’s novel; F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu, A Symphony of Horror (1922); Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979); and George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968) and Dawn of the Dead (1979). All of these works, Waller argues, speak to our understanding and fear of evil and chaos, of desire and egotism, of slavish dependence and masterful control. This paperback edition of The Living and the Undead features a new preface in which Waller positions his analysis in relation to the explosion of vampire and zombie films, fiction, and criticism in the past twenty-five years. Gregory A. Waller is professor and chair of the Department of Communication and Culture at Indiana University, Bloomington. His books include Main Street Amusements: Movies and Commercial Entertainment in a Southern City, 1896-1930.