Review by Roger Carpenter
After George Romero’s remarkable international success with Dawn of the Dead (entitled Zombi in Italy), the Italians, always ready to hop on the celluloid bandwagon, rushed to churn out tons of unofficial sequels to the film as well as their own originals, just so long as “zombie,” “living dead,” or something similar was featured in the title. Thus, we have films such as Hell of the Living Dead, Burial Ground, and Zombi Holocaust, as well as the “sort-of” zombie film, Nightmare City, along with many others. But the first of the zombie films to hit theaters after Dawn of the Dead was Zombie (Zombi 2, as it was known to Italian audiences).
Though the title certainly was a blatant ploy to ride the coattails of Dawn of the Dead, director Lucio Fulci always chafed at the notion the film itself was a rip-off of Romero’s smash hit. I won’t go into the arguments here because frankly, it doesn’t matter what my opinion—or yours, for that matter—is on the subject. Simply put, no matter how one classifies Fulci’s film, few will argue it doesn’t stand alongside Dawn of the Dead as a scorchingly visceral and exciting piece of horror. There are plenty of other standalone zombie films, sequels, and semi-sequels, all originating from Italy, and many of them are fun in their own way. However, Zombie is a genuine horror classic that re-launched Fulci’s film career and rebranded him as a horror director forever.
The film opens mysteriously in a third-world hospital as an as-yet unidentified doctor puts a bullet into the head of what seems to be a corpse. The body is wrapped up, face covered, as if it is dead. Suddenly the body sits up before its head explodes from the gunshot. Cut to The Big Apple as the NYC Harbor Patrol investigates a seemingly abandoned sailing yacht that has entered the city’s waters. Upon closer inspection one of the patrolmen discovers nothing living on the boat, and evidence of a great struggle. Unfortunately, the patrolman also discovers a zombie which attacks him, tearing out his throat as blood flows freely from the wound. The second patrolman unloads on the zombie, knocking it into the water and ending the attack.
We are then introduced to one of the main characters, Anne Bowles (Tisa Farrow, Mia’s little sister). It seems the derelict ship is her missing father’s and the police have brought her aboard to see what she knows about the disappearance. Farrow starred in a handful of low-budget Italian exploitation films around this time, with Joe D’Amato’s infamous and oft-censored Anthropophagus being one of these films. She never really made a name for herself and retired from acting after a relatively brief career. This performance may explain why. We are introduced to Anne, standing all wide-eyed and innocent in the bowels of her father’s boat. And that’s pretty much how she plays the entire film. To be fair, it doesn’t help that her performance was atrociously dubbed, making her sound like a school girl. All told, it’s not Farrow’s shining moment.
Anne quickly meets hard-bitten reporter Peter West (Ian McCulloch, who also stars in two other Italian horror sleaze classics, Zombie Holocaust and Contamination) and the two quickly forge a friendship and decide to set sail to the tropics where Anne’s father was last reported to be located, researching tropical diseases. Though author and film commentator Troy Howarth isn’t particularly kind when describing McCulloch’s acting in the film, I would disagree, as I found it to be more than adequate. The pair meets up with Brian Hull (Al Cliver) and Susan Barrett (Auretta Gay), who kindly forgo their vacation plans to take these total strangers to a spooky isle rumored to be not just scary, but deadly to step foot on. Cliver was a blue collar actor who starred in tons of Eurotrash, beginning with Ruggero Deodato’s sleaze-epic Waves of Lust and continuing on with Forever Emmanuelle, Rulers of the City, and Jess Franco’s White Cannibal Queen and Devil Hunter, before starring in a long line of Fulci flicks, including The Black Cat, The Beyond, Demonia, and many others. Auretta Gay was only in about a half-dozen films around the time Zombie was made. While her role is a relatively minor one in Zombie, it is perhaps her best-known role as she strips for the camera in one of the all-time great scenes in exploitation films: the zombie-shark scene. More on that later. Aside from about five minutes of nude underwater glory, she too, has her throat memorably ripped out in glorious, blood-red detail. It is well-documented that Fulci practically tortured Gay throughout the filming because he didn’t respect her as an actress. Again, I must disagree with The Maestro as, even with very little to do, Gay does a decent job at playing first the beautiful debutante and then the role of terrorized zombie victim.
Our intrepid foursome lands on the island and are picked up by Dr. Menard (Richard Johnson), who explains that he was the assistant to Anne’s father, who unfortunately died of the very same disease he was trying to prevent. Menard goes on to explain to the group that the dead are coming back to life and he is frantically trying to stop it. Met with some skepticism, Menard nonetheless invites the group to look in on his wife, Mrs. Menard (Olga Karlatos) while he continues his experiments. Karlotos was perhaps even more stunning than Auretta Gay, and it’s a pleasure to watch her disrobe and take a shower. Her acting chops are solid as well, and she ably portrays them as she argues with her husband about leaving the island. It’s a spirited performance and, along with a completely gratuitous—and much-welcome—nude scene, Karlotos has the scene to end all scenes, and the one that solidified Fulci’s reputation as the Italian Godfather of Gore…the infamous splinter in the eye scene. Johnson was perhaps the most experienced and serious actor of the group. A legitimate Shakespearean stage actor, he appeared in a number of prestigious films including 1963’s The Haunting as well as 2008’s The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. Along the way he also starred in some Eurotrash epics such as Screamers and Alligator. He has a rip-roaring time and chews the scenery compared to the others.
Though the acting ranges from excellent to wooden, Zombie is no Dawn of the Dead rip-off. Sure, it’s low budget (note the sometimes bad dubbing as well as small details like the wormface zombie whose makeup hilariously stops at the neck, briefly exposing completely normal human shoulders), but if one overlooks a few budgetary faults and a handful of silly plotting contrivances as well as the extreme gore, one will notice some genuinely excellent moments in the film.
For example, the beginning sets up a mystery right away. It isn’t until well into the film before we realize who the anonymous doctor that shoots the animated corpse actually is…and even later when Fulci ties the introductory scene in a nice bow for viewers when it is revealed just whose corpse Menard was shooting. It’s a nice little one-two punch that continues to catch new viewers by surprise. Fulci was harshly criticized for the gore quotient in the film; however, viewers upset by the gore were unable to focus on the suspense the movie built. There are numerous atmospheric scenes including the double-opening of the film, Auretta Gay’s death, and even the final shot that helps viewers to understand just what is getting ready to happen across the globe. A further scene, right around the time the living dead really begin to rise and take over the island, depicts several zombies in medium close-up. Each face is turned to the camera and each is more horrific than the last. These aren’t the comic book blue-green zombies Romero depicted. These are the true living dead, shown in various states of decomposition. They aren’t cartoonish, as Romero intended, but horrific, as Fulci intended. It shows that when Fulci was in good health and given a decent budget which allowed him to afford solid technicians, he could turn out quality product.
Speaking of excellent technicians, Sergio Salvati was Fulci’s longtime cinematographer. He filmed all of Fulci’s classic horror films as well as many of his classic non-horror films, too. Typical of Salvati, his cinematography is excellent, especially the low angles when the zombies are on the march, which add an extra sense of foreboding to the proceedings, as well as his cinematography during some of the effects sequences. Fabio Frizzi scored the film, leaving fans with a unique and memorable score, including many island rhythms as well as the grinding bass tones and slow drumbeat made famous as the zombies go on the attack. Giannetto De Rossi created the gruesome effects, including lots of gory squibs and exploding head shots, a few throats getting ripped out, one of the grossest arm bites in the history of film (it makes my arm ache every time I see it), and the most famous effect, when Mrs. Menard gets her eye pierced by a huge splinter. This last sequence is a stunner and justly famous for its outrageous gore. However, on closer look, note the editing (by Fulci fave Vincenzo Tomassi), the cinematography, and the music cues, all of which work in tandem to create a scene filled with tension. The importance of this scene cannot be overstated. More than any other modern horror scene, this is the one that didn’t tease the audience only to cut away. It’s the scene that went all the way. So many horror scenes can be directly traced to this scene. I believe it was Hitchcock who described suspense as a bomb placed under a dinner table. The viewers know it’s there but the characters don’t. Tension and suspense are created the longer the bomb ticks without exploding. Fulci, along with his superb film technicians, essentially created the same type of tension. Each time the scene cuts away the viewer momentarily lets his or her breath out in relief, only to suck it back in when Mrs. Menard’s eye is inexorably drawn to the splinter. And, just at the point when splinter meets eye, the viewer is thinking, “Where’s the cutaway?” And then the eye explodes as the splinter is slowly pushed into the character’s socket. Fulci is no Hitchcock, but this particular scene shaped decades of horror films much like Psycho’s shower scene shaped the future of horror beginning in 1960.
If that’s not enough, the almost equally famous sequence when Auretta Gay is attacked by a shark only to be “saved” when an underwater zombie attacks the shark itself, is also a showstopper. Unfortunately, there is no really good way to have an unarmed man literally hug a shark without harm coming to the stuntman, so the shark is clearly drugged. It’s a bit awkward to note how fearful the actress looks in the face of this mighty (sleepy) animal. It’s also a bit awkward to see the zombie stuntman struggle to make his scene with the shark as scary as possible when the shark is barely able to keep afloat. These problems aside, the sheer audacity of all involved to film this scene is simply incredible. All criticism aside, while the scene isn’t perfect, barring the use of CG effects, which were nonexistent in 1979, this is still a stunning scene.
Zombie was a smash in every country it played, including the U.S., which famously ran a campaign using the wormface zombie with the tagline, “We are going to eat you!” Some will blame the lurid ad campaign for suckering movie-goers. Others will point to the lack of morals of the U.S. audience for allowing themselves to be sucked in. The fact of the matter is, Zombie is a darn good horror film. The gore quotient may not be to everyone’s tastes but even overlooking that, the film is simply a great piece of cinema exploitation that delivers the goods—something not all movies actually do. Fulci had one of his largest budgets, was at the height of his creativity, wasn’t suffering from ill health, and could afford excellent technicians behind the scenes, all of which, when put together, makes Zombie an entertaining thrill ride that never lets up.
Which brings us to this new Blu-Ray release and the inevitable question of why yet another release of the same film? There are several outstanding DVD versions in wide release, including the Millennium Edition, a 25th Anniversary Special Edition, and let’s not forget The Ultimate Edition. Each comes with a nice set of special features. Then there are the Blu releases, which include Blue Underground’s regular release as well as their Ultimate Edition, also both with some excellent features. And now, BU has released the 3-disc special Limited Edition, which collects a good deal of the extras from previous editions as well as adding a couple of new features for this version.
While I didn’t compare my multiple versions of this film to the new 3-disc Limited Edition set, I can say that the picture is clear and crisp while the sound is also fairly stunning. The film looks and sounds like a brand new release. Frankly, the film has never looked better as it’s been restored in 4K from the original camera negative. Comparing this version to BU’s 2K restoration, Ultimate Edition, all the features from those discs are also on this new 4K Limited Edition, plus a few extra. First, there is an additional audio commentary with the aforementioned Troy Howarth, which is quite entertaining. There is also a 33-minute interview with Stephen Thrower as well. And, to sweeten the pot, the third disc contains a nine-track soundtrack to the film.
Ultimately, it’s your decision on whether to spend more money on yet another edition of this film. The quality is superb, it includes a soundtrack disc, and there are a couple of juicy new extras if you’re into those kinds of things. The package is rounded out with a nice booklet with writing from Stephen Thrower as well as a very nice slipcover (three different versions). For more information or to order this package, go to blue-underground.com or Amazon.
