Nazi Zombies: Hollywood’s Most Beloved Villain Back from the Dead!
摘要
This chapter surveys the Nazi zombie subgenre, presenting an overview of the canon and picking it apart to uncover its drivers, conventions, and appeals. The discussion begins with unpacking the why of this hybrid, notably in light of zombies and Nazis independently being heinous, and thus exploring their diabolical union on screen. This union is often viewed as offensive—contributing, for instance, to the trivialization of the Holocaust—but also uniquely well suited to the horror genre. Not only are Nazis and zombies a perfect screen pairing because of the genre’s inclinations towards excess, but also because of some very specific attributes linking the two, notably death and the supernatural. Nazi zombies, however, are a unique presentation distinguished from other undead portrayals on screen in several ways, most notably they are much less likely to appear as mindless drones and instead frequently reference or even independently harbor an agenda. The two agendas underpinning most examples in this subgenre—mad science and super armies—are thus examined, along with the smattering of other more curious motives for undead terror.