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Zombie is the American title of the film Zombi 2, a movie that was renamed to cash in on the success of Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, whose title upon release in Italy was Zombi. You would think that a film with the audacity to pretend to be a sequel to a successful film would be a waste of time, but this is Lucio Fulci’s version of zombie horror and despite its cheap marketing tactics, it stands on its own. Imagine if Goodfellas had been called The Godfather Part 4, despite having nothing to do with the movie… Goodfellas would still be a fantastic movie, even though some people were offended by its tactics.

The story of Zombie is rather thin in execution, even though it sounds alright on paper. A boat sails into New York harbor without a captain, what they find on the boat is a giant fatboy zombie that kills a cop and then falls into the harbor. The daughter of the boat’s owner and a newspaper reporter travel to a remote island named Matul in the Caribbean sea. Once on the island they find that a supremely bland doctor is trying to cure the villagers of a disease that causes them to return to life after they die… well, you don’t really find it out, you kind of have to infer it yourself because much of the plot isn’t explained or dwelled upon. The zombies come to life and start killing everyone.

The direction by goremaster Lucio Fulci is spot on in the film. Even though many of the locales are intrinsically boring and the feel is swathed in dull brown colors, Fulci manages to bring life to what could otherwise be a boring film. Fulci’s underwater zombie vs. topless chick and zombie vs. shark scenes are worth the price of the DVD alone. Add in some deliciously violent gore and an amazing eye puncture scene and there is enough beauty in this film to make up for the lack of plot.

The biggest problem with this movie is its sound design. Since the cast is made up of actors who all speak different languages, there is no consistent language being spoken. Many of the actors are actually speaking in other languages, even though all version of the film are dubbed in English. The dubbing combined with the obviously unsynched mouth utterings of the actors is horrible and distracting in several scenes. Fortunately, not a single damn thing the actors say is important or necessary for the plot. It’s like if your girlfriend started yelling at you because you tossed a used condom on her stain free carpet… who cares?

The gore in the film rivals that of Dawn of the Dead, some of the colors are off a little bit, but the imagery is so gross that you don’t really mind. My only problem with the gore scenes is again due to the sound design. I’m pretty sure that when a jugular gets bitten over the blood doesn’t sound like a trickling stream… I may be wrong, but it’s just not realistic.

The characters are also pretty lifeless. They seem like vague copies of interesting people. They talk about nothing important, their reactions are totally deadpan throughout most of the film, and they just don’t seem like people… but more like lame wannabes sitting at an L.A. bar after 11:00 PM. You could care less if the earth sprouted a giant butthole and they were all sucked into the dirty brown chasm.

Despite Zombie’s attempt at being exploitive of someone else’s success, it’s complex Zombie makeup, over the top gore, and beautiful/horrific imagery keep it from simply being known as a movie that tried to rip off Dawn of the Dead. Fulci’s Zombie is a classic in its own right and Fulci’s zombies are still some of the best looking that have ever been captured on film.

Final Synopsis: If you love zombies and don’t care about the technical aspects of filmmaking… then you have to see this. For most casual horror fans, it’s worth a watch, but if you can’t handle a little gore, pointless nudity, and bad dubbing… you should probably stay away.

Points Lost: -1 for terrible dubbing, -1 for bland characters, -1 for boring set design

Burning Question: Would you make your husband or wife stay on an island all by theirself when you knew that the dead were returning to life and killing people? I guess it depends on how bitchy they are.

Zombie
7/10

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