As we draw closer to the scariest of all holidays, I thought I’d offer a quick Halloween survival lesson, drawn from the very best zombie thrillers ever made.

For anyone terrified of the undead, wondering what to do when they rise from the grave and start craving human brains, consider this your rapid-fire response plan - six great ways to stomp out a zombie:

1. Use Gasoline

"Night of the Living Dead" (1968)

Sure, you can take down a zombie with just about any blunt object. But how can you really be certain that the corpse is dead again?

In George Romero’s "Night of the Living Dead" - a standard-bearer of the genre - early zombie fans learned the most efficient way to guarantee a zombie death: Light the bodies on fire. As the action veers into a gas station, the zombies far outnumbering their prey, a group of terrified Pennsylvanians scramble to the gas pump, hoping to fill up a car to flee to the open road. But as the zombies draw near, the men start splashing gasoline around, lighting them on fire with a torch. It’s a smart plan - if they didn’t manage to light their own car on fire in the process.

Nevertheless, the message was clear: In your emergency zombie arsenal, don’t forget about that blow torch.

2. Grab a Louisville Slugger

"The Return of the Living Dead" (1985)

"The Return of the Living Dead" was a hilarious spoof on the zombie genre - the kind of movie where a zombie gobbles up all the responding police officers, and then gets on the radio, ordering the dispatcher to "send more cops."

But the single greatest sight gag of the film is the one that involves the mighty swing of a baseball bat. Trapped in the corner by a zombie who’s bolting across the room, one of our unlikely heroes swings the bat and the head goes flying across the room - a headless homer, if you will, in only one swing. The head flies clean off so quickly and brutally that audiences couldn’t help but gasp, as some of cinema’s oldest villains met up with America’s favorite pastime.

3. Use Your Words

"Pontypool" (2008)

From the basement of a church in Canada, we watch the host of a low-budget morning radio show field calls from listeners about mayhem being wrought by zombies all across the city. He quickly learns that the one unleashing this terror is none other than himself - spreading chaos through his voice, via a virus embedded in his language.

When the bloodthirsty mob finally reaches the church, he and his producer quickly start dissecting the words that are poisoning these brains, improvising a new language that will hopefully de-program the plodding hordes. Here’s a zombie adventure for the Oxford set - truly a thesaurus thriller.

4. Turn Them On Themselves

"Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn" (1987)

A corpse rises from the dead with chainsaw in hand and murder on its mind. But as it lunges at Bruce Campbell, he blocks the blade, grabbing the attacker’s arms and entering into a tug of war. In one of the most glorious zombie splatterings of all time, Campbell stops the would-be killer dead in his tracks, pushing back against the attacker’s arms and lifting the chainsaw high in the air.

It’s here where the standoff takes an odd turn, as Campbell keeps pushing, bending the hands of the zombie backward until it kills itself with its own chainsaw. Call it murder, salvation or assisted suicide against a creature of the graveyard - it’s nevertheless a killing that takes quite some time to fully process, veering from terror to relief to utter befuddlement.

5. Be Creative In Your Weapons

"Shaun of the Dead" (2004)

Very little about "Shaun of the Dead" follows the model of your standard zombie thriller. For starters, Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright - who play the film’s two hapless antiheroes - don’t even realize for half the film that zombies are in their city, moving in on their neighborhood. And by the time they realize what’s going on, the groaning army of brainmunchers is already marching down their street.

Panicking, the two rush about, looking for anything that might help them flee to safety. Finding a box of old vinyl records, they start throwing the discs at their attackers - the LPs slicing into one zombie’s brains, dropping him instantly. As their eyes light up, out comes the full record catalogue, serving as a retro twist to ninja stars - a truly ingenious secret weapon.

6. Raid the garage.

"Dead Alive" (1992)

Chalk it up as one of the most glorious gory scenes in movie history - the lawnmower scene of "Dead Alive," which advances a whole new theory as to how to dispose of a crowd of bloodsucking killers. Grabbing a lawnmower and holding it up with the blades facing away from his chest, Lionel goes on a rampage, calling out to the mob as he gets the mower revved up.

One by one, as the zombies charge him, the mower slices and dices, lacerates and liquifies, acting as a sort of zombie blender as it unleashes quarts of blood that fly in every direction. Yes, it’s a disgusting spectacle, but in terms of battle strategy its pure genius, raiding the garage in a bid to find the perfect instrument of mass murder. The only question now is where to go next: A zombie film that perverts the leaf blower?

E-mail: SnyderReviews@hotmail.com