Okay, does anybody else remember the episode of the Smurfs where they turned purple and rabid and began biting each other? (Swear to god, it exists.) It freaked me out completely as a kid, and is, to this day, the only episode of the Smurfs that I remember, except for vague bits of the one where Gargamel creates Smurfette as some kind of Manchurian Smurf. Gargamel had issues.* But the purple smurfs–that remained vivid.
I was half convinced that I had hallucinated it, since a number of people claimed to have never seen such a thing, and the sort of people who DID remember it were people like my friend Badger, which means I can’t rule out the possibility that they are stealing the image directly from my brain and that it never really existed in, y’know, consensual reality as we know it. Kevin had certainly never heard of it. But the internet confirmed that such a thing existed, although no clips of the Purple Smurf episode were on-line for viewing.
I had filed this into the odd memory vault until a chance read article pointed out WHY that was such a disturbing episode–it was a zombie movie. I mean, cute and blue (or at least purple) and all, but totally a zombie movie. The last survivors are barricaded into their homes while their friends and loved ones snarl and slaver and try to get in and bite them. Eventually Papa Smurf is the LAST survivor, locked in his lab, while all his little smurfs claw at the doors. It was like Dawn of the Smurfing Dead–and it was originally written, in the Belgian smurf comic book, nearly a decade before Romero’s movies arrived on the scene.
Fast zombies, no less. FAST ZOMBIE SMURFS.
God, no wonder I had nightmares.
*Seriously, eat them or turn them to gold, I don’t care which, but PICK ONE.
