Vincent Price was right: “No mere mortal can resist the evil of the Thriller” -- even after the funk of almost 30 years.

Yes, 2013 will mark three decades since Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video stalked into the national psyche and, eventually, into the Library of Congress as “the most famous music video of all time.”

The zombie song-and-lurch remains as popular as ever because of a growing interest in learning the dance steps to perform at wedding receptions, school programs, civic flash mobs -- even while killing time in prison, as a group of Filipino convicts did in 2007, in a video that’s garnered more than 51 million views.

A crowd of Macon “zombies” will dance their own homage to the classic video Friday at downtown’s Cherry Street Plaza. Entertainment at the seventh annual Thriller Dance and Zombie Parade will start at 7 p.m., the dance is at 9 p.m. and a street party with DJ Dirt Dog begins at 10 p.m.

The dance isn’t a dead (sorry) ringer for Jackson’s “Thriller” video. “It couldn’t be,” said Monica Mohn, a former ballroom dancing champion in Minneapolis who is teaching more than a dozen “Thriller” classes this month. “That’s a 14-minute story and is very complex.” What she does, as dance instructors nationwide do, is piece together iconic parts of the video to make a sort of “homage to Michael Jackson.”

Stomps are expected. The twitches? Crucial. “And you need the claws,” she said.

-- Star Tribune (Minneapolis) and Telegraph staff reports