Theatre of the Dead #3 - Zombi 2 (1979)

Director: Lucio Fulci
Stars: Tisa Farrow, Ian McCulloch


Review:


The first natural reaction off seeing the title would be: where is Zombi 1? Upon release in Italy, the title of Dawn of the Dead was changed into Zombi, and in order to capture the success of Dawn of the Dead they decided to call this movie Zombi 2. In the States there is no Zombi 1 so the poster uses the title Zombie. Despite the confusing title, this movie have nothing to do with Dawn of the Dead.

I find this looks amazing visually. With fires it looks like gate of hell.

Zombi 2 takes a more traditional horror movie approach to the zombie scenario. In Night of the Living Dead zombie just appears right at the beginning of the movie with no explaination. In Dawn of the Dead, the zombie already taken over right at the start. Zombi 2 gives the backstory on how the zombie raises.

The movie starts with a discovery of an abandoned ship in New York. Two policeman go abroad to investigate, but one of them got killed. The police force believes that it has something to do with the shipowner, but the shipowner's daugter and a reporter does not share the same thought with the police. They find a death letter from the shipowner on the ship, that he was held on an island. They decided to went on that island, and find out the dead is coming alive.

She would turn around but I dont want to make this an adult site.

We seem to have heard the story many times before (the basic plot is a bit similar to Tombs of the Blind Dead 1971, in which in both movie the characters went to some far places and the dead come to kill them), and it contains all bad horror movie omens, such as a love subplot and un-necessary nudity. In the first half of the movie it does get a bit boring while the characters try to create suspense when we all have already know the answer. But later when the zombie attack is in full motion,the shock value even exceeds Dawn of the Dead. The zombie makeup looks way better and designed that they decays, and their flesh can easily be scratched off since they are dead. They rises from the grave with all the worms and insects, and looked way more nasty.

Compare these with the Dawn of the Dead zombies and you know what I mean.

Another thing this movie brings to the zombie formular is it gives more attention to the cause. In Night of the Living Dead we were told briefly that the zombie coming back to life is because of an outer space radiation bought by a spaceship back from venus. Nowadays we know that radiation does not work that way, but back in 1968 people was fed by tonnes of sci-fi movie of the 50s about ridiculous consequences of exposure to radiation. People in 1950s were afraid so much of radiation since they witnessed the nuclear bomb explosion first hand.

A zombie fighting a shark. The shark is real by the way.

Coming back to this movie, it goes back to the root of zombie legend, that the cause of zombie is voodoo, like in the movie White Zombie (1932), though we were not definitely told. The native on the island said it is voodoo, but the doctor that is researching the zombie phenonmenon on the island, speaking representing our logic, does not believe. However he tried pathology, virology, radiology, etc and nothing gives an explaination. So at the end we were not sure if it is really the cause, but it thrills you more with the mystery than just telling you it is a virus.

Ever played Resident Evil 4/5?

Zombi 2 is worth watching for its shock value, and it defines what a zombie looks like today. It spawns its own line of sequels, though seemingly not related to each other, and none of the sequels is worth mentioning. The director Lucio Fulci went on to make some other zombie movies that is unrelated to Zombi 2, like City of the Living Dead (1980). Nowadays George A. Romero is commonly hailed as the person who created zombies, but I consider Lucio Fulci's name in the Hall of Fame of the zombie genre with Romero and another director that I have yet to introduce.