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In 1968, George Romero did something remarkable - he invented a new iconic monster, and with it an entire genre of storytelling. Prior to Night of the Living Dead, the term "zombie" referred to voodoo folklore similar to (if not derived from) the golem mythology of ancient judaism. A zombie was nothing more than a slave, held under the control of a voodoo curse. Classic movies like White Zombie or Zombies of Mora Tau were invariably set in tropical jungle locations with curses and witch doctors and the like. All of that changed when Romero's cannabalistic zombies burst into drive-ins and midnight theaters across America. Virtually overnight, the flesh-eating zombie became a base horror icon as powerful and primal as the vampire, the mummy, or the werewolf.
A decade later Romero returned to the genre to create (in my opinion at least) the finest zombie film ever made - Dawn of the Dead. A major part of the financing involved giving the rights to Dario Argento to cut the movie for release in European markets under the title Zombi. It was a smash hit, and hot on the heels of its success along came Lucio Fulci to take full advantage. Within a matter of months he had put together his own zombie masterpiece, and titled it Zombi 2 to cash in on the success of Romero's film. The most interesting thing about Fulci's take on the genre is his blending of both the old and new zombie mythologies -- tropical settings, voodoo mythology, tribal drums, and yes, flesh-eating zombies. The two mythologies intertwined with each other in a dizzying manner to produce what I consider to be the second best zombie film ever.
I first encountered Zombi 2 at the tender age of 12, when I convinced my mother to buy me a ticket so I could see the matinee (in the U.S. it was released under the title Zombie). I was the only person in the theater, and for the next ninety minutes I was subjected to a level of explicit gore that I had never imagined. From the early scene in New York harbor where a coast guard officer has his throat ripped out, to the eyeball impalement in the second act (Fulci has an obsession with eyeball trauma), to the imagery of animated corpses rising from the ground with worms and millipedes dripping out of their eye sockets, this was a movie that no 12 year old should be seeing.
I was hooked.
Just tonight I was fortunate enough to be able to attend a screening of a newly struck print of Zombi 2 in all of its original uncut glory. How and why the Florida Film Festival decided to pick up this particular movie I will never know, but it was a real treat a quarter century later to re-experience the film in the theater once again, this time with a full audience. The crowd reactions alone were worth the price of admission. After starting with a bang the movie has a pretty slow first act, and then just as the audience was starting to wane along came the infamous "zombie vs. jaws" scene. The crowd ate it up, and it was nothing but full-tilt gut munching gore from there out. For all its bad dialogue and dreadful pacing in the first hour, in the end the movie delivers the goods and was a real crowd pleaser.
It's probably a good thing that there were no 12 year olds in the audience.
A decade later Romero returned to the genre to create (in my opinion at least) the finest zombie film ever made - Dawn of the Dead. A major part of the financing involved giving the rights to Dario Argento to cut the movie for release in European markets under the title Zombi. It was a smash hit, and hot on the heels of its success along came Lucio Fulci to take full advantage. Within a matter of months he had put together his own zombie masterpiece, and titled it Zombi 2 to cash in on the success of Romero's film. The most interesting thing about Fulci's take on the genre is his blending of both the old and new zombie mythologies -- tropical settings, voodoo mythology, tribal drums, and yes, flesh-eating zombies. The two mythologies intertwined with each other in a dizzying manner to produce what I consider to be the second best zombie film ever.
I first encountered Zombi 2 at the tender age of 12, when I convinced my mother to buy me a ticket so I could see the matinee (in the U.S. it was released under the title Zombie). I was the only person in the theater, and for the next ninety minutes I was subjected to a level of explicit gore that I had never imagined. From the early scene in New York harbor where a coast guard officer has his throat ripped out, to the eyeball impalement in the second act (Fulci has an obsession with eyeball trauma), to the imagery of animated corpses rising from the ground with worms and millipedes dripping out of their eye sockets, this was a movie that no 12 year old should be seeing.
I was hooked.
Just tonight I was fortunate enough to be able to attend a screening of a newly struck print of Zombi 2 in all of its original uncut glory. How and why the Florida Film Festival decided to pick up this particular movie I will never know, but it was a real treat a quarter century later to re-experience the film in the theater once again, this time with a full audience. The crowd reactions alone were worth the price of admission. After starting with a bang the movie has a pretty slow first act, and then just as the audience was starting to wane along came the infamous "zombie vs. jaws" scene. The crowd ate it up, and it was nothing but full-tilt gut munching gore from there out. For all its bad dialogue and dreadful pacing in the first hour, in the end the movie delivers the goods and was a real crowd pleaser.
It's probably a good thing that there were no 12 year olds in the audience.