Zombie? Let Austen Flesh It Out

To Thicken Classic Plots, Simply Add the Undead

As you may have heard, Pemberley has been overrun by zombies.

The news was announced in the recently released novel "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies," which recounts the struggle of Elizabeth Bennet and her sisters to simultaneously annihilate the undead invading their idyllic community and to marry well.

Were it just the zombies, the Bennet sisters would surely triumph, armed as they are with advanced weaponry knowledge and Shaolin martial arts training. Unfortunately, however, aliens, vampires, robots and dragons are also about to descend on the village.

What is it about Jane Austen?

Her works have inspired unauthorized biographies, cookbooks, television miniseries, Jane Austen book clubs, a book about a Jane Austen book club, and a movie about the book about the Jane Austen book club. And now, having exhausted every Austen story line humanly possible, authors and screenwriters are turning to what is inhumanly possible. Lizzie Bennet + monsters. Mr. Darcy the Martian. Steampunked "Emma."

The glowing reviews of "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" prove that we'll accept anything in the Jane Austen spinoff genre. The question is why these silly, campy things work so well.

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"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains." The first half of that line, FYI, is Austen's; the second half is California author Seth Grahame-Smith's. That's pretty much how the whole book reads: The Bennet sisters are minding their own business, hanging out in their Empire-waistline dresses, when all of a sudden reanimated human corpses stagger into the setting.

Consider the famous ball scene, in which Elizabeth first meets the haughty Mr. Darcy. Darcy says rude things, Jane and Mr. Bingley dance, and then, "Unmentionables poured in, their movements clumsy yet swift, their burial clothing in a range of untidiness. Their flesh was in various states of putrefaction. . . . As guests fled in every direction, Mr. Bennet's voice cut through the commotion. 'Girls! Pentagram of Death!' "

"In the original 'Pride and Prejudice,' there are so many things suited to make it into a horror," Grahame-Smith insists. His book is actually 80 percent original Austen text -- he's simply woven a complementary monster story line into the existing romance. For example, in Austen's work, Grahame-Smith says: "There's a regiment of soldiers camped out in Meryton for apparently no reason. It's not a big leap to say that the regiment is there to burn coffins and kill zombies."

Obviously.

Others agree with Grahame-Smith's horror-setting assessment. In "Pride and Predator," a screenplay recently picked up by Rocket Pictures, Austen's beloved characters are terrorized by a ruthless alien who lands on Regency-era Earth, then begins mass slaughter. "We've seen Will Smith and Arnold Schwarzenegger and Tom Cruise take on aliens," screenwriter Will Clark writes in an e-mail from London. "It's time to see if the likes of Judi Dench, Alan Rickman or Emma Thompson can handle themselves," too.