There are some movies you love more than they deserve.
Zombie - a 1979 Italian movie by Lucio Fulci - is one of those movies for me.
70's/80's Italian horror can be a bit of an acquired taste. They tend to be loosely written, slow and heavy on the gore. Horror fans raised on shaky-cam and jump cuts tend to find them unbearable. Oh well. Their loss.
And to that the fact that Lucio Fulci wasn't necessarily the greatest director of all time. He made loose, sloppy movies which moved slowly and in which acting was - well, incidental to the whole process. But there's a gleeful sleaziness to his movies, a willingness to get to the nasty gory point, that I just love.
So, on to what many consider his classic, Zombie. Well, it's known in America as Zombie. In the UK, it's known as Zombie Flesh Eaters. And in Italy it was released as Zombi 2. Interestingly, there was no Italian movie called Zombi. There was an American movie released in Italy as Zombi, which was known in America as Dawn Of The Dead. Confused?
Okay. Let's back up. While Fulci is making Zombie, Romero's Dawn Of The Dead is a huge hit in Italy under the name Zombi. To cash in on this, Fulci's film is then released as Zombi 2, as though it's a sequel to Dawn Of The Dead, which it's not. Still confused?
Oh well. Let's just call it Zombie.
Story time! A seemingly abandoned boat floats into New York Harbor. The harbor patrol discovers a zombie on board. The zombie attacks and is shot.
A journalist investigates the attack, and meets a woman whose father was supposed to be on the boat. They trace the trail - do boats leave trails? - back to an island with an outbreak of . . . malaria! Oh, I mean, zombies! They go to the island and zombie attacks ensue.
And that's pretty much the plot. But that's not why you watch this movie. You want to see disgusting zombies. And you do. Fulci's zombies also look more - well, corpse-y than Romero's zombies. They really do look like corpses. Like this guy:
And there's lots of gore. Gobs of it. Including one of the most infamous gore scenes of all time. If you haven't seen it, here's how it starts:
Guess how that plays out. And, there's also this:
And that's all you really need to know. This movie has a zombie fighting a shark.
A zombie. Fighting a shark.
Enjoy.
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