20 Movies Improved By Zombies

Battlefield Earth (2000)

The Original: Enslaved humans rise up against their alien Psychlo overlords. Is it Scientology propaganda, or are they just sick of John Travolta's ridiculous dreadlocks?

With Zombies: The humans renounce L. Ron Hubbard, get zombiefied and start a new religion based around munching on thePsychlos for afternoon tea.

Key Scene: Travolta inadvertently re-enacts his Saturday Night Fever dance moves while trying to fend off the zombie hordes.

Spice World: The Movie (1997)

The Original: Y'know. Posh. Ginger. Baby. Sporty. And, most pertinently here, Scary.

With Zombies: Killed in the first scene 24 hours away from their biggest ever gig, can the band's management team stop the Girls trying to eat everybody long enough to get them on-stage?

Key Scene: David Beckham's short-lived lunch date with Posh.

Gigli (2003)

The Original: Martin Brest's Bennifer rom-com about the misadventures of a rubbish mobster (Affleck) and a lesbian hitwoman (Lopez), hired to kidnap/kill a mentally challenged Baywatch fan.

With Zombies: The kidnappee turns out to be immune to a new zombie virus, which makes him valuable as a guinea pig for experimentation.

Now Gigli must fight off zombies and shadowy scientists while trying to convince J. Lo that she'll need to have sex with him to keep the human race going.

Key Scene: Lopez asks Affleck to go down on her, little realising he's now the flesh-eating undead. Gobble, gobble.

Swept Away (2002)

The Original: Guy Ritchie's career gets stranded on an island with Madonna, where he is inexplicably asked to direct a rom-com

With Zombies: Madonna, cast adrift on the Island of the Zombies. Clearly, it's a musical.

Key Scene: Madonna kills two zombies at the same time with her conical bra.

The Da Vinci Code (2006)

The Original: Ron Howard's two-hour long remake of Countdown , with a mulleted Tom Hanks piecing together the clues from Dictionary Corner.

With Zombies: Look closer at Da Vinci's The Last Supper , and you'll see that he's painted the disciples as zombies. But modern-day zombie cultist Paul Bettany doesn't want the truth to get out.

Key Scene: Ian McKellen sets up a Powerpoint to explain the plot...but thankfully a zombie interrupts the exposition by chewing through the power cable.

The Happening (2008)

The Original: Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel try to escape a mysterious neurotoxin that causes people to kill themselves. The culprit? The trees, who are trying to stop M. Night Shyamalan making new movies.

With Zombies: This one's a no-brainer. The neurotoxins causes people to kill themselves...so they can come back as zombies.

Key Scene: Wahlberg is too busy talking to a plant to spot the zombie lurking behind it. Chomp.

The Hours (2002)

The Original: Stephen Daldry's time-spanning epic in which Nicole Kidman's Virginia Woolf manages to make life miserable not just for herself, but 60s housewife Julianne Moore and contemporary artsy-type Meryl Streep.

With Zombies: Virginia Woolf accidentally writes a new version of the Book of the Dead and is beset by marauding zombies.

Years later, Moore and Streep reopen the book. Can Woolf leave clues to help her future-sisters reverse the tide?

Key Scene: You don't expect Kidman to wear a fake nose in a zombie movie and not have it bitten off, do you?

The Postman (1997)

The Original: Kevin Costner wanders a post-apocalyptic landscape to deliver the post. For three hours.

With Zombies: Post-apocalypse you say? But the twist here is that Costner's the zombie, and he's crossing the country to mop up the survivors.

Key Scene: Costner finds a mailbag full of letters, but dumps it by the roadside when he realises that envelopes aren't good eatin'.

The Love Guru (2008)

The Original: Mike Myers' dubious comedy about a 'hilarious' Indian shaman hired to help a sportsman rediscover his mojo.

With Zombies: When a basketball team is attacked by zombies, the survivors become the walking undead. But can the guru convince them to fulfil their hoop dreams?

Key Scene: Training goes horribly awry when a rogue ball decapitates the team's star player.

Indecent Proposal (1993)

The Original: Robert Redford makes Woody Harrelson an offer he can't refuse: $1 for a night with Demi Moore.

With Zombies: In this version, Moore's a zombie owned by sick millionaire Redford, who goes around luring hobos into a fatal date with her for sadistic laughs.

Key Scene: Harrelson's drifter tames zombie-Moore and they join forces to stop Redford.

The Wicker Man (2006)

The Original: Neil LaBute's bizarre remake of the 70s pagan classic, in which Nic Cage is lured to a remote island ruled by bee-worshipping, bearsuit-dressing crazy women.

With Zombies: Much the same, except the islanders worship brains and wear suits made of human flesh.

Key Scene: Nic Cage runs up and tries to punch a zombie-woman...but she chomps his fist off.

PS I Love You (2007)

The Original: Dead Gerard Butler leaves letters around forcing widow Hilary Swank to do what he tells her...from beyond the grave.

With Zombies: A little more literal. Swank wants to move on with her life, but undead hubby Butler refuses to take it lying down and keeps eating her prospective new boyfriends.

Key Scene: Swank discovers that Butler has been writing letters to her and thinks, maybe, he's trying to express his love for her... but it turns out to be illegible smearings of his victims' blood.

Crash (2005)

The Original: Deep down, everyone's a racist. Especially Sandra Bullock.

With Zombies: L.A. is a divided city. The humans openly hate the "deadies." And the zombies... well, they want to eat the humans.

Key Scene: Unable to break into the human's gated communities, the zombies learn to drive so they crash into the human's cars when they leave the compound.

Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace (1999)

The Original: George Lucas' attempt to convince us that Vader's back story was all trade federations and midchlorians...

With Zombies: ...whereas really Vader ended up looking like he did because he got half-eaten fighting off alien zombie invaders.

Key Scene: Jar Jar gets torn to shreds.

Glitter

The Original: Mariah Carey's misjudged star vehicle about a girl from the wrong side of the tracks becoming an R'n'B star with the help of that well-known musical guru, Max Beesley

With Zombies: From Dusk Till Dawn -style, Beesley kidnaps Carey but inadvertently takes her to a nightclub run by zombies.

Key Scene: Beesley is eaten, but Carey kills the zombies with her caterwauling vocal range.

Batman and Robin (1997)

The Original: Batman and Robin camp it up in a neon-soaked, pun-filled hell of Joel Schumacher's devising.

With Zombies: Batman goes it alone when Gotham City is overrun by zombies and Robin gets devoured. When Arkham Asylum falls, he's really got his work cut out for him.

Key Scene: Batmobile vs street full of zombies. Goriest blockbuster scene ever.

Catwoman (2004)

The Original: Halle Berry dons a leather catsuit after being killed and brought back to life by a magical cat.

With Zombies: Technically, she's already a zombie, but we're thinking more of a Romero vibe. Bring on the zombie cat, in other words.

Key Scene: Berry shambles up to her victims, but when they point and laugh, those zombie cat reflexles kick in.

Chocolat (2000)

The Original: Lasse Hallstrom's sickly confection about a sexy cook (Juliette Binoche) who brings back a French village's va va voom with chocolate.

With Zombies: When the dead start rising, it isn't long before they've killed all of the villagers. Can Binoche satisfy their hunger by sweetening the increasingly rotten flesh with chocolate?

Key Scene: Binoche makes a tiramisu out of blood and entrails.

Forrest Gump (1994)

The Original: Idiot Forrest (Tom Hanks) winds his way through the baby-boomer years and achieves inexplicable success by spouting folksky homilies and not being one of those goddamn liberals

With Zombies: More or less the same, but here his stupidity renders him blithely oblivious to the fact that America is overrun by a swarm of the undead.

Key Scene: Forrest goes for a six-year-long run. The (fast) zombies race after him, but eventually they give up as their legs snap off from overuse.

The Hottie and The Nottie

The Original: Paris Hilton's Christabel would be quite a catch, if it wasn't for the fact that she's best friends forever with a pugly. Yes, really, that's the premise.

With Zombies: Imagine the counter-cultural comedic potential should the 'Nottie' be a zombie. That's some gooseberry to contend with.

Key Scene: Dinnertime proves awkward when Christabel's latest boyf has to contend with her mate scoffing on a human heart.