Project Phoenix: tm Dead Rising, Brings the Dead Back to Life!

What truly frightens you? Could it be when the day surcomes to the dark night or maybe the roar of a diesel engine approaching your little Sedan from behind on an unfamiliar backroad at three in the morning? Is it any matter of insect, such as spider or ant? Or maybe a rodent the size of a cat?

Do you want to run off screaming into the night when Frankenstein's monster lumbers onto the screen? Or do you get the willies when Freddy appears in your peaceful dreams?

Maybe you are a freak of sorts who can not stand the taste of grapefruit or two-piece suits?

Whatever it may be, I will let you in on a little secret of my own. One of the most horrible things that I can imagine to as the ultimate monster is nothing to giggle at. It is a terror that can grab you and eat you alive if you are not careful. At times you may be doomed even if it merely scratched you. It looks human, it at times moves like a human and use certain tools in its primitive brain matter that is sliding around in its cracked skull. At one time, it to was human and may have been a loved one. Now though, it is nothing more than a shell, a shell that decided to get up and start walking around on its own.

The living dead.

In a certain since, Lazarus was the first zombie to step into history as Jesus rose him from the dead. Yet he was brought back to life as a human, unlike the zombies that we have learned to love in all of their decaying form.

Mary Shelly's Frankenstein (the monster) could be thought of as a dead man who gets up and walks around, but he was assembled through numerous body parts by the good doctor. (Which of course was Frankenstein, and even though the monster never had a name, it was also referred to as Frankenstein.) He was brought back by lightning.

Either way, they were still dead tissue that was regenerated into living flesh. So in certain terms, they were the living dead in more ways than one.

The E.C. Comics line, 'Tales From the Crypt' by Willian Gaines who went on to create MAD Magazine after the witchhunt censorship of the '50s that blamed the comic industry for the delincacy of minors, came about, they focused on venegeance of the dead upon their murderers who always got their just desserts.

Then in 1968, a little known director named, George A. Romero, help to create a stark black and white instant film classic about a tale of would-be survivors after an armaggedon of the dead began to take over the world we called home and life would never be the same again. About ten years later, he made the official sequel, 'Dawn of the Dead', to the original known as 'Night of the Living Dead'. This time he filmed it in a shopping mall instead of a lonely farm house and blamed commercialism on the downfall of society and how people could not seem to survive without their daily shopping habits.

Around 1980, Lucio Fulci, an Italian film director, created what he considered the sequel to the foreign name of Dawn, known as 'Zombie: Dawn of the Dead', and Zombie 2 was created, based on a voodoo island of sorts. It was released in the states as simply, 'Zombie'. It had some pretty gruesome effects that were not as colorful or had the comic book splatter feel as Dawn, but it still provided fans with some of the worst gore to ever hit the silver screen.

By 1985, George filmed 'Day of the Dead', to complete his trilogy, even though his original vision for the film fell through due to the fact that he wanted to make it an Unrated picture and the studio cut back on his expenses due to that.

Around this time, John Russo who had co-authored NOTLD, had sold the rights to his 1972 script and 1978 book of 'Return of the Living Dead', an unofficial sequel to Night. Instead of filming this version and really only buying the title, Tom Fox had Dan O'Bannon rewrite and direct the film version which spawned two more sequels that got more inferior as they went.

There were a number of other zombie films filmed over the years, many being forgettable because of their bad acting and bad scripts, but now in the new century, zombie films are heating up once more. In fact, there is a web site that is all about Romero's dead trilogy in England called, www.homepageofthedead.com . Here, you will find anything you wanted to know about them, including some original fiction stories, scripts, short novels and poems of zombies that will leave you breathless.

As for books, beyond the novels based off of the movies, there was a great collection called: 'Book of the Dead' that had a story by Stephen King and a short work by Philip Nutman called, 'Wetwork' which would be expanded into a novel later on. The sequel to BOTD, was 'Still Dead' with an introduction by Tom Savini, who helped to do make-up for many of Romero's early films, including the dead series.

With the success of Capcom's Playstation title, 'Resident Evil', they helped to bring a younger audience and the rest of the masses back to the living dead.

In which now brings me to a new epic story that will be told in three parts, or a trilogy of books. The first is called: 'Project Phoenix tm Dead Rising', which shows you what happens when a secret military project gets out of hand at a secluded base in a little town called, Bachman, Ohio. It is the ultimate B-Movie in print and as not only a great storyline loaded with interesting and well-developed characters, but action, gore, and good old-fashioned in your face attitude.

Just think cheerleaders with uzis...