Zombie (1980)
Directed by Lucio Fulci
Written by Dardano Sacchetti, Elisa Briganti
Starring Tisa Farrow, Ian McColluch, Al Cliver, Auretta Gay
Release Date August 25th, 1979
Published July 12th, 2003
With the release of the much buzzed about 28 Days Later and the revival of the zombie movie, it's important to look back on zombie movies of the past. What better place to begin than with the goriest, most disgusting of all zombie movies, from Italian legend Lucio Fulci, 1979's Zombie (or Zombie 2, depending on who you ask). It’s often cited as the best or worst of the genre. With mind numbing gore and idiot dialogue, it's very easy to dismiss. However Fulci's artistry in shooting and especially in the film’s remastered soundtrack is undeniable.
We open on an eerily disheveled sailboat floating aimlessly in New York harbor. A pair of New York's finest are dispatched to investigate. At first they find nothing, until one officer checks the pantry and is attacked by a zombie. The other officer dumps the zombie over the side of the boat. His partner is dead, or he's supposed to be.
The boat belonged to the father of Anne Bowles (Tisa Farrow, yes Mia's sister). When Anne is called to the scene her father is considered the main suspect in the murder. However, she is certain that when she last heard from her father he was vacationing in the Antilles Islands. She sneaks aboard the boat after the cops leave to search for evidence and bumps into a journalist named Peter West (Ian Mccolluch). West has uncovered an important piece of evidence that states Anne's father was indeed in the Islands and not on the boat. From there the two head for the Antilles and the island known as Masul.
With the help of a pair of vacationers (Al Cliver and Auretta Gay), Anne and Peter make to the island where they meet Dr. David Menard. The doctor has been on the island for a number of years. Despite rumors of a voodoo curse that has the dead rising from the grave to eat the living, Dr. Menard is determined cure the disease that he thinks is the real cause.
Okay so logic isn't the film’s strong suit, hey it's about zombies, we’re going to have to suspend some disbelief here. Of course if the doctor had simply accepted what he had seen as supernatural and simply up and left, maybe hundreds lives may have been saved, but that my friends, is revisionist history. Director Lucio Fulci's strength is not in the storytelling but rather in window dressing of the story.
The makeup in Zombie is as spectacular as anything Oscar nominee Rick Baker has ever dreamed up. Especially fun are the rotting maggot-infested corpses of the Spanish Conquistadors who rise from the grave to interrupt Anne and Peter's first kiss. Also memorable is the sight of zombies snacking on what remains of the doctors wife, played by Olga Karlotos. And I don't ever again want to see the wife's death scene, which sees her impaled through ..... oh I can't even say it. Excuse me a moment.
Of course the thing that people will always remember about Zombie is the final scene of the film in which an army of zombies slowly cross the Brooklyn bridge into New York as a voiceover newsman informs us that the zombies have taken over. Zombie is classic, gory, blood-soaked Italian horror from a master of the genre. If 28 Days Later can be as good as this we can happily welcome back the zombie movie.
