LEICESTER SCARE:
The '07 London Zombie Walk

By Sarah Dobbs
           

It's 9am. It's a bank holiday. Most people are still fast asleep, or at least still at home, relishing the fact that they don't have to go to work. But for anyone who unwarily wandered into Leicester Square on Monday 27th August, there was something scary lying in wait. The August bank holiday in Leicester Square is almost synonymous now with the FrightFest film festival: five straight days of horror movies in the heart of London. This year, the celebrations included an attempt to break the world record for the biggest zombie walk ever, a record previously held by a gathering at the Monroeville Mall. The walk was a tie-in to a later screening of The Zombie Diaries, a British indie horror flick, but also a chance for the hundreds of assembled horror fans to dress up and show off. And show off they most certainly did.

Despite its fame, Leicester Square really isn't very big. So when dozens upon dozens of people dressed as zombies show up, it's really, really effective, perhaps even slightly overwhelming. A sound system had been set up on one side of the square, pumping out atmospheric music - mostly soundtracks from zombie movies - to get people in the mood, while professional makeup artists were dotted around the place ready to transform anyone who wasn't in costume into yet another member of the shambling undead horde. But although you'd think dressing up as a zombie was fairly easy, almost no-one had gone down the quick-and-easy-squirt-of-ketchup route; most of the costumes being paraded around were incredibly detailed, and worn with pride. Highlights included a zombie Spider-Man, a zombie cheerleader, and two paramedics who stayed in character for most of the time, shuffling around and offering 'brains' (a grisly concoction made of mashed bananas, maple syrup and red food coloring) to anyone who dared eat them. And that's before you start noticing all the circus zombies, zombie doctors and zombie nuns. Even the statue of Charlie Chaplin at the edge of the square didn't escape zombification - his face was smeared with white makeup and fake blood, and, bizarrely, a Hawaiian-style lei was hung around his neck. The paving stones ended up splashed with fake blood from a hundred different sources, which must have looked quite sinister later on in the day, when the revelers had cleared out.

To begin with, as the zombies started to trickle into the square, no-one really knew what to do with themselves. But once everyone was assembled, the games started. A crowd of zombies pushed at the railings encircling the square, making guttural moans and chanting for brains, their hands grabbing for passersby (many of whom posed for photos mid-'attack'). Cameras were omnipresent; everywhere you looked, someone was pointing a camera at a zombie, who'd be enthusiastically mugging away, or advancing menacingly. Someone, somewhere, decided it'd be a good idea to start a zombie conga line, and suddenly there was a chain of people snaking all the way around the square, shuffling and groaning and holding onto one another. From the relative safety of the balcony atop the Odeon cinema, the festival organizers, along with several directors associated with FrightFest including Adam Green (Hatchet) and Joe Lynch (Wrong Turn 2 ), looked down on the chaos below, while Evil Aliens star Emily Booth got right into the crowd and became part of the action, with some particularly impressive gore all over her face.

As the conga line inevitably disintegrated, a game of piggy-in-the-middle started up as a group of zombies played uncoordinated catch with someone's papier-mâché brain. One particularly enthusiastic - and loud! - zombie in a top hat instigated an enormous game of Hokey Pokey (pity the poor cameraman who decided it'd be a good idea to get into the middle of that to film, evidently not having realized what the Hokey Pokey entailed) and then everything devolved into pandemonium. A crowd of zombies invaded McDonalds, to be greeted by some unimpressed staff and some confused tourists. After being chased out, they stumbled off to wreak havoc in a souvenir shop; then to a bakery, to demand cake (and brains).

A London open-top tour bus stopped nearby, and was invaded by zombies who ran upstairs and flung their hands out of the sides, reaching for anything they could grab. When another bus pulled up at the stop, the street was suddenly blocked by bodies, banging on the windows, waving their arms around, and generally acting like they'd crawled out of their graves craving human flesh.

Luckily, before anyone had time to panic and call in the riot police, everything calmed down. At 11am, the doors to the cinema opened and the FrightFest ticket-holders poured in, still slathered in their make-up. The much depleted crowd of brain-munchers started another conga line (which was spotted some hours later circling the fountain in Trafalgar Square) but for most people, by around midday, the zombie frolics were over, and it was time to go home and get changed. And upload the videos onto YouTube, naturally.

So, the only question that remains is, did they break the world record? Well, er, no. The final head count totalled 689 zombies. Better luck next time, eh?