Zombies On My Birthday

Local puppet group Angry Young Men, Ltd. had the rather ingenious idea of making a Night of the Living Dead Puppet Show a few years back. Every now and then when the opportunity arises, the group returns to a stage somewhere to perform the show again.

Over the years, the classic 1968 George A, Romero horror film has grossed over $18 million on an estimated production budget of $114,000. Yes, it was extremely low-budget, but some of the decisions made in making the film helped to solidly establish one of the great classics of horror cinema. Due to a strange loophole in copyright law when the film came out, the rights to the film had fallen into public domain. It’s now freely available online a number of different places.

The lack of copyright also allowed Angry Yonug Men the opportunity to work out a surprisingly faithful comic adaptation of the horror classic with head and torso puppets. It’s a staggeringly fun show that occasionally makes it to the stage. The latest appearance of those charming zombie puppets with candy-filled piñataheads happens to fall on a date that’s always had significance for me: March 19^th at the Marian Center for Non-Profits. The show starts at 7:30pm.

For those interested in seeing the film in its entirety, here it is in glorious blogovision:

Also: Angry Young Men somewhat recently did a strange internet video featuring zombie puppets. Here’s some idea of what you might expect with the show. This particular short rides the razor’s edge between extremely sophisticated and appallingly juvenile—remarkably clever and remarkably stupid. It’s actually quite a good example of the types of moods Angry Young Men plays with in Night of the Living Dead . . .