September 9, 2011

A Mr Movie Fiend Post-Labor Day Special

The Plague of the Zombies (1966)


So, another summer, and another nice, refreshing Labor Day weekend have come and gone. It’s hard to imagine these days, but Labor Day started out as — you guessed it — a celebration of good old fashioned labor. According to the venerable Wikipedia:
Labor Day is a United States federal holiday observed on the first Monday in September (September 5 in 2011) that celebrates the economic and social contributions of workers. The first big Labor Day in the United States was observed on September 5, 1882, by the Central Labor Union of New York. It was first proposed by Peter J. McGuire of the American Federation of Labor in May 1882, after witnessing the annual labor festival held in Toronto, Canada. (Of course there’s more to it than that, but you get the drift.)
I don’t know about you, but I don’t often sit around on Labor Day thinking about the economic and social contributions of the virtuous, common worker (or even my own meager workplace contributions). Like most everyone else, I relax– I eat, I drink, I channel surf, and of course, watch a movie or two.
There’s not much to celebrate on the labor front anyway. Lately, the average working stiff’s contributions have been rewarded with shrinking paychecks, dwindling job opportunities, underwater mortgages, deflated 401k plans, steadily rising prices, and sundry other threats to his economic well-being.  Come to think of it, maybe now’s the time to put the celebration of labor (or at least a grudging appreciation) back into Labor Day.

Despite being made way back in 1966, Hammer’s The Plague of the Zombies is a cautionary (and morbidly entertaining) tale for our own times. Think you’ve got it bad now? Don’t think social security will be there for you when you retire? Thinking you’ll have to work until you drop? It could be worse. You could be like the villagers in The Plague, where even death doesn’t prevent soulless bosses from giving you maximum overtime for no pay.

See the full post at Mr Movie Fiend.


"No corpse can remain at peace in this village of the undead!"

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