Zombi 2 (1981)

Director: Lucio Fulci

Writer: Elsa Brigante and Dardando Sacchetti

While searching for a missing doctor on a remote island, a young woman, a reporter, their ship's captain, and his girlfriend are besieged by the living dead.

Fans of Italian horror films tend to break off into two camps. Either you're a fan of the more artistically and visually exciting Dario Argento or you're a fan of the equally nonsensical hyper-violent style of Lucio Fulci. I enjoy both but nine times out of ten, I'll watch an Argento film. Why the difference? I think it has largely to do with the filmmakers' unique approaches to their films and the finish products. While Fulci is the more prolific of the two, having director more than double the number of films; Argento has a more cohesive style. Fulci has worked in nearly every genre of popular cinema in Italy while Argento has stuck to horror and giallo.

At any rate, I'm getting on a "who's better" tangent. I'm sure the number one question right now is, "if this is Zombi 2, where is Zombi 1?" Zombi 2 is the European title of the film while in America it was known simply as Zombie. However, George A. Romero's epic Dawn of the Dead (1978) was recut by Dario Argento and released in Europe as Zombi. There's much debate over whether Zombi 2 is a rip-off or merely an attempt at cashing in on the success of the Romero picture. Whatever the case may be, Zombi 2 is a gorehound's dream come true.

Zombi 2 is vintage Fulci: there's a somewhat coherent plot, buckets of gore, and truly terrible dubbing. The plot breaks down thusly: a young woman's scientist father is missing on the island of Matool. She and an English reporter hitch a ride with a couple going on a two-month pleasure cruise. The four find the island, the girl's father, and an island full of zombies. Death and mayhem abound. The young woman and reporter escape to warn the rest of the world but it's too late, zombies have already started to swarm New York.

If you want to enjoy Zombi 2, don't worry about the plot, it's only there to connect the death scenes. To its credit though, the scene of zombie violence are some of the most memorable. Most notably, a half-naked chick vs. a zombie vs. a shark. That's right, A SHARK. The attractive girlfriend on the pleasure cruise decides to go scuba diving…in just her string bikini bottom and scuba gear. There's our eye candy. She swims around the deep until a zombie suddenly appears to kill her. She escapes but a shark swims over, possibly to investigate, and the zombie attacks the shark and bites it, which makes the shark swim off. Obviously pissed, the shark return and bites the zombie's arm off in retaliation. Possibly one of the greatest scenes in the history of the subgenre.

While the acting, story, and music are laughable, the effects are pretty top notch. The zombie makeup is a significant improvement on the gray-tone of Romero's film. These zombie look like they've been decomposing for a while, especially the famous worms-in-the-eye-socket zombie that graces the poster. My favorite moment is the eye-gouge scene. Fulci shows his ability to create suspense through editing with this scene. While the doctor's wife tries to protect herself from zombies by barricading her bedroom door, a zombie hand bursts through the door and grabs her head. Fulci cuts between her panicked face and a giant splintered chunk of the door. He zooms in on the wood when cuts to a wide shot of her face, eyes wide, approaching the door. He cuts back to the zoom-in on the wood then to an extreme close up of the eye and the wooden spike, now an inch away from each other. At first glance you think, "There's no way he's going to show that!' then you see the splinter enter the eye through the pupil, penetrate through the eyeball, and break off in the eye socket. It's unnerving despite the obvious use of a dummy and special makeup effects.

At the end of the day, Zombi 2 is not a great movie but it's a hell of a lot of fun to watch. While my favorite Fulci film is The Beyond (1981), this is a close second. Whether it's a rip-off, a marketing money machine, or just another exercise in extreme Italian-style horror goodness, this fact remains: Zombi 2 is going to eat you.