I've heard creating infected ghouls is bugged, is that true? The only thing better than zombies is zombies that can make more zombies. Also, can you exert more direct control over your minions, like get them to actually stay put?
I think infected ghouls are [EXPERIMENT_ONLY], so they can only be created 'directly' in worldgen. If one of them
bites you, on the other hand...
As for controlling your minions, from my current experience, the answer would be... sort of.
To wit, 'regular' zombies created by animate corpse are completely uncontrollable and will automatically attack anything living. Intelligent undead are slightly more complicated. If you recruited them at the start of your adventure, they'll be directly controllable by [Tab] and you can order them to stay put by changing between the characters and handling the conversation on both sides. If they're recruited after your adventure begins, you can't talk to them, equip them, or generally control them in any manner. This is probably due to the [NOTHOUGHT] tag in all Undead-making interactions, which (according to the creature tokens page on the wiki) has the side effect of preventing speech.
TL;DR: Infected ghouls are worldgen only unless one bites you (letting you make more by the same method), and minions are only controllable if they came with you from chargen.