Pop culture has been so inundated with bad zombies as of late that the concept has become a bit of a farce. The common image of zombie now is of a person with a rash on their face who walks slowly with their arms out stretched.

Well, we have to hand it to the producers of the upcoming AMC series, 'The Walking Dead,' which is due in October. Their zombies look pretty darn frightening and in a advanced state of decay in images just released on the network's website. The series is based on the best selling comic by Robert Kirkman and it depicts survivors of an apocalypse beset by zombies.

The impression here is that 'The Walking Dead's' helmer, Frank Darabont, is seeking to add a dark and psychologically penetrating chapter to the zombie story.

"We are definitely taking a page from George Romero's mythos here,'' said Darabont in a promo interview posted on the AMC website. "There was always that pressure cooker at the core of it -- that ensemble of characters that were trying very hard to either do the right thing or get away with the doing the wrong thing with impunity.''

"This is a story about a group of people trying to survive difficult-to-impossible circumstances. They need to figure out how to survive it, but they also need to figure out how to survive each other.''

Darabont's major films, 'The Shawshank Redemption,' 'The Green Mile,' and 'The Mist,' all based on stories by Stephen King, incidentally, show he has an expert hand in the thriller genre and, more importantly, an ability to develop characters within that genre. This makes us very interested in 'The Walking Dead.'

"We hope to do for zombies what 'Mad Men' has done for advertising,'' Darabont said, referring to the AMC hit.

We just won't be looking for the skinny ties and wiggle dresses during 'The Walking Dead.'