New Book Release: Zombie 1979

Several years in the making, Afterdays Media is proud to announce the release of our first book publication.

Zombie 1979: Life at the Dawn of the Dead is a cultural history of the early years of the now oh-so-familiar pop-culture zombie phenomena. Back in the day, in the weird years at the end of the Cold War, zombies weren’t nearly so hip. They were an obscure, acquired taste – consumed at the local drive-in, on very expensive VHS tapes, or in hard-to-find fantasy movie magazines.

This full color, heavily-illustrated volume combines personal narrative, film history, and cultural commentary, and is strewn with vintage images of abandoned places and homemade corpses. This is where the walking dead-thing began, in all of its corn-syrup-bloodied and mildewed concession stand glory.

So, if you have even a passing interest in the American zombie, dead malls, old drive-ins, fake corpses, or the homemade Super 8mm apocalypse, have a look at this one. An archaeology of a strange time in American history. Available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other on-line retailers.

Springfield Drive-In: A Study in Slow Decay

The Springfield Drive-In was the first outdoor theater to open in that Midwestern city – sometime during the early 1950s, I believe. It closed during the early 1980s, after 30 years of intermission jingles and dubious picture and sound quality. The first image is of the concession stand as it was about five years into its abandonment – around 1988. 

As it turns out, the building is still standing. So below are two more shots of this ghost of cheap Midwestern entertainment, retrofitted for commercial storage years ago.

Dead Places, Kept Clean

When they mow these dead places, what remains there looks like art or historical preservation. Lovely.

The Postmodernism that is Zombie Holocaust

The layers of post-apocalyptic, postmodern irony in pop culture phenomena such as the film Zombie Holocaust are thick and complex.

Even the opening titles of the film seem folky now.

To being with, the film (directed by Marino Girolami in 1979) is essentially a hybridized imitation of a hybridized imitation. Holocaust was shot immediately following the surprise success of Lucio Fulci’s Zombi 2, which itself was an “unauthorized sequel” to Dawn of the Dead. Zombi 2 mixed Romero’s new zombie ideas with the aesthetic of the Italian westerns of the 1960s and 1970s. Holocaust then took Zombi 2 and grafted it to the "cannibal film" genre of the later 1970s. If that was not enough, a portion of an unfinished domestic horror film was stitched to the beginning of Holocaust, to give it more of an “American” context.

1979 Italian ad art, following a very 1970s aesthetic. 

Like many such films of the era, this is as close to outsider art as professional motion picture production can get. The story follows its own, internal logic; the make-up effects are wonderfully abstract, imaginative, and entirely inept; and the general tone seems primitive and obscure. 

Like most films of the time, Zombi Holocaust played to limited audiences in urban “grindhouse” theaters before dying a quick death. Then, by the late 1990s, this and other films were resurrected as hip, ironic artifacts from a lost age. DVDs were released, ad art became collectible, and now, a new generation of artists is mimicking the apocalyptic aesthetic of the 1970s and early 1980s. Limited edition posters are printed for single screenings, or just for the sake of what is a complex, culturally-reflective art form.  

Reanimating dead pop culture about fake dead bodies.

A 21st century re-imagining of Zombie Holocaust ad art.

Fossil Aerosol Mining Project Anniversary - Moog

Celebrating 25 years of obscure recordings of very damaged things, here is a preview from  an upcoming Fossil Aerosol Mining Project release. Its actually older than 25 years – recorded with a Moog Prodigy back in 1983, four years before the naming of the band. Listen for the Zombi 2 relics, found at the abandoned drive-in. Click on the Moog to listen.

Enjoy, and please visit iTunes for more songs about the decay of us.

Dead Drive-In Artifacts

The objects found in dead drive-in theaters represent their own class of artifacts. Fragments of marketing pitches for fake food, mixed together with the debris of selling second-run cinematic fiction. All stirred together in a post-apocalyptic, pop-culture, mildewed stew. We started collecting such material during the early 1980s. One of the more surprising relics - a cassette recording of the audio from Zombi 2 (evidently made by someone in the projection booth), was used in some of the earliest Fossil Aerosol Mining Project recordings.

A cache of concession stand packaging.

A display counter acetate of a zombie hot dog.

A box for selling Sprite.

A pleasantly decayed copy of ad mat for “Foolin Around” and “Hot Stuff”.
Poorly pasted-together mock-ups of ads, with notations and bird-dropping patina. Lovely.

Dead Drive-In Theaters 1

There is something about abandoned drive-in theaters. We always found them little epicenters of post-apocalyptic irony, as they provided a physical reality to the apocalyptic fantasies predicted across their very screens during the 1970s and 1980s. Life following art quite nicely. 

Anyway, in celebration of summertime, I will post some dead drive-in images and relics, harvested a long time ago. First up is some footage that is probably some of the oldest drive-in abandonment video posted online at the moment. Shot way back in 1983, in a concession stand in central Illinois. Watch for the posters on the wall, and for a figure that appears in a shattered window- he wasn’t part of our film crew.

Next post, some drive-in artifacts.