After being introduced to the works of Italian horror director Lucio Fulci through the jumpy and nonsensical City of the Living Dead (AKA The Gates of Hell), watching his wonderful Living Dead rip-off, Zombie, was a joy (and a sigh of relief).
A sailboat drifts around New York harbor, apparently abandoned, and two coast guard/boat cops are sent to check it out. When a Tor Johnson look-alike zombie pops out and bites one of the cops' jugular open, the metro police realize something is amiss. So do the newspapers. Ann (Tisa Farrow, not getting the roles that sister Mia got), the daughter of the man who owned the boat, is questioned by the cops about the big zombie (who they don't know is a zombie, 'cause he fell off the boat to sleep with the fishes), her father's whereabouts, and, generally, what the puck is going on here? Reporter Peter West finds her at the boat one night and together they discover a letter that Ann's father wrote which mentions a horrible disease, a tropical island, and the dead rising from their graves. The newspaper, always interested in stories about the undead (which explains the coverage this election fiasco has gotten), sends the two of them to the tropics to investigate.
What is perhaps most remarkable about this movie after seeing City of the Living Dead is that Fulci actually builds a cogent story. There are clear main characters, likeable secondary characters, and a sense of pacing that speaks of the directors pacing with the material. We know Fulci wants to show us some Zombie ass-kicking, but he develops the story so that said ass-kicking means a whole lot more. Considering that Fulci's reputation is built upon gore galore, this is no mean feat.
Of course, what you really see these films is to be horrified, so a slow, developed story might be a hindrance. I liked getting story and character before the infamous gore and gouging. Fulci is the horror film equivalent of a pornographer, giving us explicit zooms on severed ears, gushing blood, and all manner of maiming. He makes his name by the money shot. Logic would say that plot would only foul up the good stuff. When was the last time you watched a porno for the story?
Granted, while both porn and gore films exist primarily for titillation, they are a dime a dozen. To get noticed you need to have something of merit: a hook, jaw-dropping excess, or craftsmanship. Fulci manages (here) to incorporate those elements into his film, though often only in moderation. The box sells the film on its excess, those moments of gore so outrageous that they are mentioned twenty years later on Internet message boards. It also mentions a couple of the hooks, the things that were either well timed or completely new. But it mentions naught of the craftsmanship and remarkable restraint that Fulci shows when he gives us our vicarious thrills.
The moments of excess are ultimately what will sell this film. The much talked about splinter-in-the-eye scene is worthy of all the hype. It's a drawn and tense moment that ends with an impeccably gross payoff. The zombies look great, whether freshly dead and gushing blood or long buried with worms in their eye sockets. The busted head effects are pretty gory, and, hell, even the squibs are full of little bits of zombie. Blood gushes freely from wounds, flesh tears like tissue, and the dead rot in front of us (even though some of them look like they've just got a bad case of psoriasis). If you dig Euro-gore, you'll be in for a treat here.
Also big on the lips on fanboys around the globe are the hooks. Perhaps not as relevant today is that Zombie played as an unofficial sequel to Romero's Dawn of the Dead. Dawn was titled Zombi in Europe and this film was titled Zombi 2. But Zombie came as one of the first and perhaps most influential crop of zombie films trying to play off of Romero's success. Even today, Fulci is known for his zombie films, even though the IMBD show that only about seven of his 50 or so films had zombies in them.
The other big hook is a single, wildly inventive scene. At one point, a zombie battles a large shark. It's a very convincing scene that must have taken some steel plated cojones, because the guy playing the zombie actually wrestles with the shark. Yep, that's right, he grabs ahold of that bastard, shakes him, even gets his arm bitten off (a prosthetic, don't worry). I'd say it's worth the rental for this scene alone (and the splinter-in-the-eye scene, but hey, that's just me).
Anchor Bay's gorgeous widescreen print of this film really shows of the wonderful cinematography and scenery in this film. Granted, Fulci isn't the artist that fellow Italian horror director Dario Argento is, but when he wants to, he can shoot an effect scene. It's was a nice choice filming this movie in a bright exotic locale instead of a dank pit, as the action is much easier to follow, and easy on the eyes. Fulci tries a couple of ill-advised shots, sure, even shows off some of his trademark jarring editing, but overall, the direction here is remarkably assured and effective.
There are more than a few plot contrivances here, though I can pretty much forgive them (I'm still pointing them out, though). In order to get our heroes on foot, they swerve their jeep into a tree only after hitting a zombie they were trying to avoid. In one of the film's creepier moments, hands of long dead conquistadors grab our heroes only to be forgotten about after they are left out of frame for a while. The whole zombie finale, while a pretty decent riff on the Night of the Living Dead barricading bit, has no real basis for starting up. You've been on this island trying to figure out zombies for how long and only now do they all decide to rise up against you?
I was happily surprised to find that, yes, Fulci can create a cohesive, sensical horror film without creating imagery for imagery's sake. His reputation as the Italian zombie master is no doubt deserved, as his foray here shows that there was still a little more to be squeezed from the zombie concept after Romero made his seminal films.
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