Zombie sendups knocks ’em dead

They crave the flesh of the living.

They are pounding at the door and breaking through the windows.

At Southwestern College the living dead eat brains and make pop culture references.

Ruff Yeager directed two live adaptations of iconic zombie movies in a double-feature performance at Mayan Hall. They were frightfully good.

Headlining the show was a comedic interpretation of George A. Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead.” The play followed the general plot of the original, but sacrificed horror for humor.

A semi-faithful adaptation of Ed Wood’s “Plan 9 From Outer Space” followed that was far more bearable than the original 1959 film that tops most “Worst Movie Ever” lists. The play featured nearly all of the film’s dialogue interspersed with jokes and fourth wall-breaking asides that helped turn this tragedy of a science-fiction/gothic horror abomination into a real comedy.

The two plays paired well together, like fine wine and stinky cheese. Both were adapted by actor and playwright Mark Landon Smith.

“Night of the Living Dead” sparked a zombie phenomenon that refused to die since it first haunted moviegoers in 1968. It presented audiences with an inescapable and inevitable doom in the form of untiring undead.

This cult classic shares the futile efforts of a small group of random survivors struggling to coexist and with the threat of zombies just outside.

Romero recognized that humanity has always been its own worst enemy.

“I have always liked the monster-within idea,” he said. “I like the zombies being us.”

Smith’s interpretation of “Night of the Living Dead” held on to the human drama that helped make it incredibly popular. The injection of jokes and pop culture references, made the play feel more like an episode of “Mystery Science Theatre 3000” rather than a staple horror movie.

The play got a lot of mileage from the clever farmhouse created by set designer Mike Buckley. It allowed the audience to see into it while giving the illusion that the fragile structure protected the survivors from the outside threat. There was even a little hole where the TV went, where the news people would stand a read off their slow drip of information and make snarky comments about the zombie threat.

After Barbara (Wisdom Yarborough) had escaped the zombies that chased her from the cemetery to the farmhouse, she argued with Ben (Julian Sobejana) about whether or not her brother Johnny (Daniel Ward) is still alive.

“You’re brother is dead!” Ben shouted. “Just like my career!”

“No! He’s not dead!” Barbara screamed. “Unlike your career!”

While the plot follows the same path as the original, in which a group of very different survivors band together, but ultimately fail to protect each other, there are some differences.

In this version, zombies lie about being Avon salespeople and pizza deliverymen, news anchors fight over for screen time even as their co-workers are picked off and survivors have to choose between a defensible position in the living room and foosball in the cellar (and certain death).

Characters make snappy jokes that juxtapose their dread with dark humor.

“My brother was killed!” said Barbara. “Hello? Sympathy?”

Unfortunately, this story does not have a sympathetic ending.

In the original, Ben manages to escape the zombies swarming the house only to be shot in the head by an armed posse that mistakes him for a zombie. In the SWC version, Ben escapes the house that has descended into chaos, but is quickly engulfed by the hoard of hungry undead that lurk outside.

“Plan 9 From Outer Space” pitted a race of inept spacemen desperate to make contact with humanity and their raygun-controlled zombies against a colonel, a police lieutenant, a commercial pilot, his wife and a policeman.

Spacemen try their best with Plan 9, their last hope to stop the Earthmen from destroying the universe with “Solaronite,” a substance that would ignite “sunlight molecules” emitted from the sun and would spread to other stars as well.

Despite the poor special effects, nonsensical plot and ridiculous over-acting, the film presented itself with sincerity and undeserved pride, despite zero merit to the pseudo-philosophical ramblings of the main characters and deranged narrator.

Joseph Fallon, a third-year student at SWC whose performance as the narrator was his first acting experience, perfectly captured the desperate yet goofy hysteria of the original narrator.

Unlike Romero’s zombie masterpiece, Wood’s low-budget take on the living dead is limited to just three zombies who are expected by their alien masters to help humanity acknowledge the presence of extraterrestrials.

Several B-movie icons made appearances in the original “Plan 9,” including Bela Lugosi, Maila Nurmi (also known as Vampira) and Tor Johnson, who appear as slowly shambling zombies who silently stalk their inept victims.

“Plan 9” featured not one, not two, but three funeral scenes. In the original, a widower killed himself after his wife is buried by stepping into oncoming traffic.

In the SWC version, the widower ironically walked in front of a car while arguing with the narrator about his lack of suicidal tendencies. Some characters are also renamed for comedic effect, such as Colonel Edwards being renamed Colonel Sanders to set up a joke about being chicken.

While the human characters try to resolve the mystery of missing bodies, they stumble across the plot and are herded by the zombies towards the answers that lie within the spaceship.

Two aliens in charge of the debacle explain that humanity is about to ignite universal destruction. But the humans do not take it well and get into a fight that seriously damages the ship.

The humans escape the burning, aluminum foil UFO that flies through the air on an almost-invisible string. Despite the cheap craftsmanship of the film prop, Colonel Edwards remarks about how advanced the aliens are. In the play, the irony is palpable when Colonel Sanders (Daniel Ward) said the same thing.

“We got to hand it to them, though, they’re far ahead from us.”

On stage the story is transformed into something genuinely enjoyable. Bad props, strange costumes, bizarre acting and lame dialogue transcended the source material.

“Plan 9” is one of the few films that are so bad they become almost good. It becomes a comedy because it tried and failed to be something powerful and culturally significant. “Plan 9” is seen by many as one of the worst movie ever made, but to Wood it was one of his best films.

“Plan 9 is my pride and joy,” he told an interviewer.

Though “Night of the Living Dead” and “Plan 9 from Outer Space” depict the opposite ends of the spectrum of zombie movies, they paired well and glimpsed the zombie phenomenon before it really took off.

They have infected all aspects of popular culture.

They have adapted to every kind of genre.

And it does not seem like the zombie trend will die anytime soon.