OK, here's another ancestor of Mama Lona's Man, one that I probably haven't seen since I was nine years old (trust me, that has been a while). It's the "Zombie" episode of "The Night Stalker," which I loved as a kid even though it ran out of steam pretty quickly. However, it did go on to inspire "The X Files," so that's good.

The interesting thing, for me, is that this show dates to 1974, meaning it came out after Romero's "Night of the Living Dead," but it wasn't based on his flesh-eating creatures. It was instead a reference to the classical Haitian zombie.

According to TV.com, in this episode, "A voodoo priestess animates her dead son to take revenge on the gangsters that killed him." Now, that's not what happens in my book, but the plotline is not entirely dissimilar ... it just took a while for that idea to percolate through my brain and into the storyline, I guess.

Anyway, you can watch the whole thing here.