I heard about this documentary on NPR’s Fresh Air podcast  last week and happened to see that it was playing at my favorite local indie theater, The Beverly Theater, and decided to spend part of my Saturday afternoon revisiting the music scene of the 1960s and onwards. And actually, unlike the recent Led Zeppelin documentary, that cut their story a bit short, only covering from the band’s formation and through the recording of their first two albums, and then stopping there, this documentary told the whole story from the band’s origins, unexpected Number One charting first recording and right on through all the highs and lows to the present (well, 2023…). Given the musical style changes over the decades and the Zombies very melodic beginnings, there’s a part of me that could see how a mockumentary like This is Spinal Tap, could find inspiration over the long journey a band might take. Except that the original Zombies broke up in the late ‘60s, over a year before their song, “Time of the Season,” would become number one on the charts in the U.S. That kind sums of up the hard luck the band experienced. 

One thing that I love when a documentary is done well, is how well they transport you to those times, before MTV, before home computers, before the internet, when we were all dependent on the radio to hear our music. Also, how well do they portray the lives of the artists before they became who they became, what were their families like, how did they become lucky enough or talented enough to capture the attention of someone who took them from the high school dance circuit to a recording studio and then the radio? One thing this documentary does a great job at, that tends to be missing in other documentaries, is what happened to the bandmates after the bottom dropped out of their careers and they got dropped from their record label? The Zombies definitely took that ride from number one to “whatever happened to the zombies?” Now I want to the spend the rest of the night listening to their music. Frustrating but in keeping with the notion that the band can’t quite catch a break, when I went looking for the 1998 box set of the band’s recordings, “Hung Up on a Dream,” it’s no longer available. Damn. Guess I’ll have to settle for downloading a couple of their hits from iTunes… 

[Movie viewed on 2025-05-24 at The Beverly Theatre.]

Here’s the Fresh Air interview of lead singer, Colin Blunstone, that got me interested in seeing the documentary. Enjoy.

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Tags: 2025 movies, music documentary, music history, the zombies, video Mondays 

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