Wasn't though that in the old zombie movies, you'd kill them with fire? Or light a fire out of a corpse to keep them away? I seem to recall this from night of the living dead and several other zombie movies a fear/weakness to fire. It was like since they were already decaying courses, fire would tear through them easily.
I keep thinking that's why frankenstein feared fire too, cause he was made of old corpses. Course this was before the modern "kill zombies with a shotgun" method