Hot off the presses: Zombie movies reflect cultural anxieties!

Not to be snotty, but anyone who watches a lot of horror movies has already noticed that a.) horror is cyclical — it never goes away, but there are peaks and valleys, b.) horror movies flourish in anxious times and c.) ever since George Romero liberated the zombie from its narrowly defined roots in Haitian folklore, they've become the go-to monster metaphors for fear of everything from the oppressed underclass to nature run wild, global pandemics, mindless fanaticism, archaic disaster response systems, sinister mind control programs and the fragility of social structures and the ties of friendship and family.

Which is not to say that this Freakonomics graph correlating social upheaval and zombie-movie production that just appeared on the New York Times website isn't cool. Just that it's a blinding glimpse of the obvious.

Reasons to be cheerful, maybe: Nazi zombies in space and Gate remake

Hard on the heels of the Norwegian Nazi-zombies picture Dead Snow (right) comes word of another project that combines the undead and the Third Reich: The Finnish Iron Sky, which features Nazi zombies on the moon.

No, this isn't a joke. Well, actually it is. Sort of. Apparently the tone is tongue in cheek, which it would really have to be given that it's about zombified Nazis who escaped to the moon during WWII and are now plotting to come back to Earth and revive Hitler's grand plan. Oh, and it stars Udo Kier, whom I last saw playing a non-zombie Nazi in the Grindhouse trailer Werewolf Women of the SS. Yeah, I'm there.

And then there's the remake of The Gate, one of those odd little '80s horror pictures that I remember fondly without remebering much about it except that three kids (one played by Steven Dorff) accidentally open some kind of portal in a suburban backyard and unleash a horde of little demons. Loved the little demons Alex Winter (yes, the Lost Boys/Bill & Ted actor) is slated to direct and it's going to be in 3D. I'm intrigued.

So hey: Two things to kind of look forward to -- that's not bad!