Zombie Hotel
Zombie Hotel is an animated children's program about a hotel run by zombies, produced by French production company Alphanim and shown internationally. The main characters are Fungus and Maggot, two child zombies who pretend to be human to get into their local school, and their family and boarders at the hotel run by their parents. They make friends with Sam, a human boy whose mother is away most of the time. Sam soon finds out about their zombie powers and all three make a team of friends. Sam uses an old railway carriage as his haunt. The plot often involves a risk of the discovery of Maggot and Fungus' zombie nature and the three trying to prevent this. The hotel itself is one of several main locations used in the show. Others include the school and Sam's railway carriage.
Episodes
Maggot and Fungus are excited to go to "human school" for the very first time in their entire lives, but the other hotel residents are worried, including Funerella who decided that she should check on the children to make sure they are doing okay. Maggot and Fungus met Sam for the first time and became friends after Sam found out about their Zombie powers.
Maggot and Fungus decide to kickstart the Colonel’s lovelife, to help him find the woman of his dreams. It seems that love is impossible between Dame Fedora and himself. On the advice of Sam, they go to a matrimonial agency… but behind the agency are two sharks determined to rip off the “old” colonel... they are in for a big surprise!
In order to repair the plumbing, cash is needed and in order to get some ready cash, the Zombies decide to have a garage sale. This works really well and they would certainly have enough to get the pipes back in order if certain other problems didn’t crop up: Dame Fedora has disappeared and a snoring Zombie of the worst possible sort has worked his way into the hotel. The school headmaster, who managed to buy a porcelaine dog containing Dame Fedora’s ghostly perfume at the garage sale, cannot comprehend why his school is suddenly accused of being haunted by a ghost who plays practical jokes.
In the run-up to Halloween, the pupils have to make a presentation on the mythical creatures that make this day famous. Ely, a friend of Maggot and Fungus, decides to use Zombies as his theme. Proud at first, Maggot is stupefied when Ely says that Zombies are smelly, nasty, feeble creatures. She decides to prove him wrong and introduces him to Wilson, who is delighted to promote his species. However, Ely then wants to meet the rest of the family... is Maggot really defending the honour of his family or rather putting them in danger??
A Zombie client arrives at the hotel with his offspring. With a malicious secret plan to buy the hotel, the client unleashes his bratty child on the Hotel and kids. The latter maliciously enjoys accusing Maggot and Fungus of hundreds of naughty things that he himself has committed. He even goes so far as to cause trouble for Fungus at school. How can they get rid of this little pest without upseting the client that the Zombie Hotel really needs?
Sam has to do a presentation on Ancient Egypt. However, Tut is incapable of remembering anything that could help him and the reading list is so large that Sam gives up hope. If only he could have the powers of a Memo Zombie - capable of taking in 15 books a minute. Fungus thinks it’s a great idea. Sam should become a zombie like them... except that it’s against family rules. Torn between wanting to make their friend happy and respecting family rules, the twins decide to make Sam believe that the transformation worked. In the meantime, Zombie hunters turn up at the hotel... Will Sam be able to save his “family”?
At school, it’s election time – for the class prefect. Challenging Chad, the handsome, Big Man on Campus, who is elected every year by an overwhelming majority, is a rival, Maggot. A ruthless electoral campaign is set up between the two competitors. After a few false starts, Maggot starts winning over her potential electorat. Chad, sensing the wind is about to change, makes a bet and hands over the election to... Fungus. It doesn’t take long for competition to overflow into the hotel and become a war of the sexes. All this against the backdrop of Chef’s demanding Vampire father who starts to relish the tasty necks of the Fungus and Maggot’s classmates!
Maggot and Fungus have to hand in an essay on their family history. In order to avoid telling the truth about the Zombies, they disguise the truth. However, the teacher realises this and suspects that something is up! She calls Funerella and Rictus into her office and announces that their children must be terribly unhappy because they feel the need to invent a parallel universe. She advises them to go on holiday together in order to get the family communication working again and even suggests a super campsite. She just forgets to mention that, by chance, she will also be there at the same time... to spy on this family that intrigues her so much. Maggot and Fungus are furious, going on holiday with the parents is bad enough but with the teacher! Our little zombies pull out all the stops to avoid being caught out by the teacher whilst Chef, Wilson and the others have their own problems with the arrival of the school headmaster who has decided to spend his holidays at... the Zombie Hotel.
At school, a “goth” girl takes a shine to Fungus. His “look” and clothes are really out of the ordinary and soon Fungus can’t get rid of his new admirer. She’s cramping his style to be invited to Lucy’s (the cool, hip girl) pool party. To shake off his admirer, he decides to take a 180° turn and play squeaky-clean “upper-class”. This trick works until Rictus’ father, Angus, decide to intervene and save his grandson from the ill effects of humans! He crashes the pool party and mayhem ensues.
The Safety Inspector arrives to make sure the Hotel measures up to Zombie standards. He runs a “fresh air drill” (clean air is bad!), checks Dame Fedora’s shriek for effectiveness and makes sure the dining room chairs aren’t too straight. Meanwhile, Fungus, Maggot and Sam are the laughing stock of the school for their science project. Wanting to help, the kind-hearted Francis steals the other kids’ experiments so that Maggot/Sam and Fungus will win. It doesn’t take long for the police to track down the culprit and cause more mayhem at the hotel.
Funerella’s deathday (Birthday) is approaching and Rictus is planning a surprise party. He runs himself ragged trying to keep the secret while Fungus and Maggot try to figure out how NOT to have their parents invited to the school concert. Things go badly when Funerella wonders why everyone is acting so strange and inadvertently sets in motion a series of events that cause the concert to be moved to the hotel. Now Maggot and Fungus must devise a plan to hide the residents from their classmates.
The Bogeyman is the Zombie Santa Claus. Fungus still believes while Maggot thinks she’s too old for such nonsense. Fungus sets out to prove her wrong. When he does indeed capture the bogeyman, he’s forced to switch places with Bogeyman so that Maggot will see him. What Fungus did know is that the Bogeyman scares humans and when they revolt he finds himself running for his life.
Maggot/Fungus suffer at school for being so out of fashion until they wear magical clothes found in the Colonel’s closet. When they go to school, all the kids see Fungus/Maggot wearing the clothes they wish they had. Things go bad when everyone wants the clothes off Maggot and Fungus’ back. At the same time, Rictus and Funerella are trying to impress a TV crew doing a spot on the hotel. Thinking they want “normal” Rictus/Funerella strain while the TV crew wants hip and exotic.
While their grandfather is away, Maggot and Fungus are to take care of Robert, his little pet newt… But beware, there is one very important rule: he must never eat anything else but pondweed. What is going to happen when Robert munches a few cookies? Meanwhile, Jeebies and Dame Fedora decide to organize a contest: who will succeed in giving this couple of human lovers staying at the Zombie Hotel the scare of their lives??
Sam is very sad: his mother, Araminta, has decided that Maggot and Fungus are just too weird to be her son’s friends… Maggot and Fungus are ready to prove her wrong with the help of the entire Zombie Hotel. Chef has lost his pet cockroach, Zachariah, and Funerella gives him leave to take a rest. Funerella decides to hire Araminta to cook for a week, which should make her realize that they are a perfectly “normal” family. Unfortunately, Araminta is a horrendous cook…
Maggot is furious: Mrs Harbottle is really unfair: she tells Maggot to work harder at school but she says nothing to Eli… Maggot decides to bring Mrs Harbottle a present: perhaps it will make her more tolerant toward Maggot? Unfortunately, Maggot picks a book from the Zombie Hotel library, a book that happens to carry a curse: it makes you say the opposite of what you want to say! What’s more, Wilson has hidden his winning lottery ticket inside it!
ctor Fungus Fungus catches two intruders stealing in the Zombie Hotel in the middle of the night… Inspector Wolf congratulates him: Fungus would make a perfect inspector... Fungus loses no time and immediately opens his own private detective agency to solve all the school and Zombie Hotel mysteries such as Jeebies’ disappearance, for instance. But inspector Fungus starts to see mysteries everywhere and ends up spoiling surprises and wrongly accusing students at school… which puts Maggot in a bit of a fix…
While Maggot and Fungus are getting ready to welcome two human children from a school exchange program, Tut and the Colonel decide to go to an exhibition on Ancient Egypt. There, they come upon two sarcophagi; could they be a couple of Tut’s cousins? They decide to check and bring the two sarcophagi back to the hotel. Unfortunately for the residents, they are none other than Tip and Tap, two monsters capable of morphing into anything they come across and who are dead keen on making the tomb of darkness legend come alive…
Miss Justine proposes that the students make a short film to bring to class on the following day. Sam, Maggot and Fungus are delighted: they’ve got just the characters for it. They’re going to make a film about zombies! Scenery, extras… they have everything at hand! Unfortunately, on that particular day, Chef happens to prepare some frog soup that gives everybody the hic-ups… not even the zombie physician knows anything about this disease. Interviewing the hotel residents is going to be somewhat difficult…
The football game-winning goal… though he did it in spite of himself! He becomes a total star at school until Clyde, a new boy - always perfectly groomed - arrives in the school; the latter is quite a sensation and steals the show from Fungus… Furious, Fungus bids higher and pretends Uncle Von is a very famous scientist. Miss Justine takes his word for it and decides to invite Uncle Von to make a presentation at the school … Clyde is ecstatic: he will at last be able to prove that Fungus is an imposter. But this is underestimating what Uncle Von might come up with…
Miss Justine needs a baby-sitter and that happens to suit Sam, Maggot and Fungus just fine since they want to earn money to go to the movies. Harvey, Miss Justine’s little boy, is delighted: he loves zombies! Everything goes rather well until Maggot and Fungus decide to take him to the hotel, where Harvey suddenly appears… Meanwhile, Rictus and Funerella decide to go and test the restaurant of one of their recently opened competitors, Flambini. Things go awry when Flambini mistakes Chef and Wilson for the new assistants he’s been waiting for…
Tomorrow is the last day before the school holiday break: the kids can bring a toy to school! Fungus is delighted and decides to bring his Xylo-os. Maggot is upset: she doesn’t have a doll to bring… She goes back to the hotel with a sheepish look on her face and walks over to Uncle Von’s lab where she finds a beautiful doll in a glass cabinet. She can’t help herself and pinches it discretely. Unfortunately, it is a very, very special doll… whoever has her in his or her possession has full powers on the witch Isabel who has just arrived at our friends’ hotel…
Maggot and Fungus have a week off school. Miss Justine has asked her students to work on an expose about their parents’ profession. Fungus really gets into it and decides to test “in the field” the new high productivity method he has just discovered in a book: he constantly bursts out singing “productivity, increased productivity and less coffee breaks!” for anyone who cares to listen… Rictus and Funerella are delighted and take advantage of this to go away for a week on a lovers’ holiday. But when Fungus wants to revolutionize everything in the hotel, the staff threatens to go on strike.
Maggot and Fungus are a little worried because their parents are coming to see the play the students are putting on at the school. Rictus and Funerella start to get friendly with Basil’s parents, the Mortimers, and are ready to let them come and stay at the hotel for a while so that Maggot, Fungus and Basil might get to know each other better. But the children are dead against this forced cohabitation! They decide to do everything in their power to make the Mortimers move out, right down to attempting to transform them into zombies with a little help from Uncle Von…
Maggot and Fungus are crushed by the news that Sam is going to move… His mother’s yoga teacher has declared that the house is unfavorably situated. And now Sam is going to have to change school! Seeing how sad the little zombies are, Francis promises to help them. He forages in Uncle Von’s lab and comes up with a recipe to make bubbles that make people happy as soon as they touch them. Uncle Von has a great time making bubbles that spread throughout the hotel: now everyone wants a cuddle! Sam, on the other hand, cannot understand why Maggot and Fungus are not more despondent about his leaving…
Francis finds a treasure in the cellar of the Zombie Hotel … Unfortunately, it is guarded by an evil spirit that takes possession of Francis’ body and transforms him into an Evil Francis. He persuades Uncle Von to help him conquer the world. The two accomplices make peanuts that transform anyone who eats them into a brainless robot for three days. Evil Francis wants to enslave the entire zombie population! But this is precisely the moment Funerella and Rictus have chosen to invite the most influential zombies around at the Hotel for an alumni gathering…
