A look at 9 of the most iconic female zombies in horror entertainment
Feminism, office politics, wage disputes and other gender-centric social concerns go right out the weird window when you’re dead. Death is the great equalizer, after all, the one state of being when an individual truly ceases to be an individual at all and isn’t chained to any of our mortal coil concerns. And the same goes for undeath, of course. Zombies are the evolution of society, because they are blind to prejudices of any kind; all races, all genders, all financial status. Indivisible.
But with that, all zombies are NOT created equal and let’s face it, females are just more interesting than men, especially when they walk the earth posthumously looking to feed. Maybe it’s the way we view women, as nurturers and as something softer and more graceful. We’re painting with a broad (ahem) brush of course, but to see a woman re-born as a moldering, shambling cannibalistic killer out to tear us to shreds is alarming and often instantly iconic.
So today, let’s high five all the female zombies out there and unleash a list ranking nine of our favorite and most famous estrogen-drenched living corpses from some of cinema’s (and, in one case, television’s) most beloved bloodbaths.
Swipe through the gallery below and see if your best ghoul-friend made the cut. If not, tell us who your favorite female zombies are in the comments!
9. Land of the Dead - Number 9
As played by Karen Baxter, "number 9" is a pretty thing, with big, bloodshot blue eyes and a torn cheek and a desire to help lead her Land of the Dead family to righteous victory against the tyrannical and tasty humans. She's living (dead) doll!
8. Dawn of the Dead (2004) - Little Girl Ghoul
The opening 10 minutes of Zack Snyder's DOTD remake are the best parts of the film and nothing beats the little girl who we see happy and sweet on rollerskates the night before and torn up and starving the next day. She's the first zombie we see in the film and her presence is alarming.
7. Return of the Living Dead 3 - Julie Walker
Mindy Clarke's Julie is a victim of the Trioxin gas who becomes a sort of S&M zombie. Brian Yuzna's second ROTLD sequel is a tragic love story and he ensures that Julie's brain eating, self-mutilating and miserable plight is as sad as it is shocking.
6. Living Dead Girl - Catherine Valmont
French auteur Jean Rollin's sad, sexual and bloody Living Dead Girl is a masterpiece of melancholy. Catherine is a dead woman who is brought back to life by toxic sludge and kills her victims with her fingers. She has to eat people and drink blood to live...but she doesn't want to. She's a little girl lost.
5. Demons - Rosemary
Geretta Geretta's hapless hooker Rosemary is a demon, sure. But in Lamberto Bava's kinetic 1985 masterpiece Demons, all the demons are in fact zombies, biting, killing and infecting each other. It's like Dawn of the Dead on crack. In Rome. Lorded over by Dario Argento. And Rosemary is a drooling, screaming banshee from Hell. Beautiful!
4. Return of the Living Dead - Trash
Linnea Quigley's sexed-up punk icon Trash gets her fantasy accidentally come true when old dead me circle her and chew up her brains, turning her into the animal-like, drop-jawed zombie queen. Quigley looks fab both dead and alive, of course...
3. Return of the Living Dead - Table Zombie
The other awesome girl ghoul from ROTLD, the table zombie lies strapped to a gurney after feeding on the brains of a poor punker and moans that the reason she eats brains is to balm the pain of being dead. It's a funny, macabre sequence with Don Calfa reacting with interest and revulsion. Brilliant zombie puppet, with desiccated breasts and leaking spinal fluid.
2. Night of the Living Dead - Karen Cooper
The most memorable early girl zombie is still little Karen in George Romero's 1968 landmark. She lies in chrysalis for most of the movie before springing to life, eating her dad and stabbing her mom to death with a trowel. Terrifying and iconic.
1. The Santa Clarita Diet - Sheila
Drew Barrymore's undead suburban real estate agent Sheila gets a whammy of a puke-ghoul curse and flips her family into a zombie hell of murder and cannibalism. Or does she? Everyone seems to thrive when Sheila becomes dead a liberated....except for her eviscerated victims. Disgusting and hilarious hipster horror show from Netflix that is returning next year for another season.
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