Zombie (AKA Zombi 2) (1979)
Directed by Lucio Fulci
Return of the Living Dead (1985)
Directed by Dan O’Bannon
Been having zombies on the brain recently, so I decided to watch two well-known classics of the zombie subgenre, Lucio Fulci’s “Zombie” (AKA Zombi 2), which is renowned for its use of heavy gore effects, and the much more comedically slanted Return of the Living Dead, which is perhaps most famous for starting the ‘zombies eat brains’ trope. These were two exceptionally different viewing experiences, and interestingly enough they both have direct links to George Romero’s classic Night of the Living Dead. I mean, all modern zombie films owe a great deal to that particular movie but both films have a particular link that I’ll get more into shortly. Let’s start with Zombie, the Italian gore extravaganza!
Zombie’s Story!
Zombie (AKA Zombi 2) starts off in the New York City harbor, where a derelict ship floats toward the city’s coastline. After boarding the ship to investigate, two harbor patrolmen are attacked by a shambling corpse hidden among the filth and refuse found aboard. With one patrolman in the morgue and the corpse lost at sea, the police turn to the daughter of the boat’s owner to try and figure out what is going on. Teaming up with a reporter, she decides to investigate the Caribbean Island her father was last known to be at, in the hopes of finding some explanation for what is happening. When they get to the island though, they find things more horrible than they could imagine.
Zombie’s Background Info
Before I get too into my thoughts on the movie let me explain the title. This film has been released in the US as “Zombie” (or rarely as “Zombie Flesh Eaters”) but in Italy, it was released as Zombi 2, because George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead had just been released as Zombi in Italy and was a huge hit. So when Zombie was released in Italy, the producers titled it Zombi 2 (which they were allowed to do because of Italian copyright law) and claimed it was a sequel to Dawn of the Dead. The film’s director, Lucio Fulci, reportedly had no idea this was going to happen and was rather unpleased, which is understandable because Zombie has nothing to do with the story of any of George Romero’s movies and makes no sense to be presented as a sequel. Why am I focusing so much on this backstory? Because I think it is more interesting than the movie.
Let The Harshness Commence!
Maybe that’s a bit harsh but Zombie did not thrill me. The majority of the movie is about a small group of people trying to make their way to a hidden away Caribbean island and, aside from a few notable sequences involving a shark, nothing exciting happens. Then they all get to the island spoiler alert and, again, nothing exciting happens but there are zombies around this time. Not every movie needs an intense and original story to succeed, but I needed something a bit meatier here, especially because the characters in this film are so light that they don’t even matter. They’re just vehicles for a story that isn’t particularly interesting. I’m sure part of my harshness is because I’ve been spoiled by so much good zombie media, so I’ll cut my rants short and talk about what I liked about the film.
To Be Fair, It Has Some Upsides.
Zombie is well known for its intense gore, and this is where the movie started getting interesting for me. While in many ways the gore effects are kind of primitive compared to what we have today, they hold up well enough that they still look convincing and one sequence, in particular, has an especially nausea-inducing effect that makes me cringe every time I think about it. If you look at this as less of a coherent narrative and more of a proof of concept for the impressive gore sequences and zombie effects, I’d say the movie improves quite a bit, especially when the graveyard zombies show up in all their earthen glory.
Not The Worst But There Is So Much Better Out There.
There are certainly some interesting concepts found in Zombie but I don’t think it has too much to offer anyone who isn’t a hardcore zombie fan looking to round out their knowledge of earlier zombie films. Hell, that’s why I watched it. For a casual movie watcher or even a horror fan, I don’t think there is a lot of reason to go out of your way to watch this. There are many zombie movies I would recommend over this one, particularly the early Romero trilogy, that do a better job at being meaningful and scary films with similar themes. If you’re really curious though, Zombie is available, along with many better movies, on the horror streaming service Shudder.
Return of the Living Dead
The Story of Return of the Living Dead!
Return of the Living Dead is about a group of intensely 80s teen punks who get mixed up in an over the top zombie outbreak set in a world where the film Night of the Living Dead is based on true events. The boyfriend of one of the punks gets a job at a medical warehouse and, through an amusing chain of events, releases a zombie causing mist that resurrects the corpses in a local cemetery. Stuck in place by a zombie horde, the teens try to figure out a way to survive against the seemingly unstoppable monsters as their situation gets worse by the minute. Surprisingly, hilarity ensues.
Pleasantly Mixed Tones
What surprised me the most about Return of the Living Dead was the level of genuinely hilarious comedy present. I wasn’t overly familiar with Return of the Living Dead, so when it started off as this ultra campy romp with a menagerie of 80s teen stereotypes hanging out in a graveyard and a worksite sitcom where a new hire gets it explained to him that there’s a bunch of mysterious government canisters in the basement, I was kind of floored. This starts off quite slapsticky, and I was a little worried that tone was going to be the whole movie, but once the zombies show up in earnest, oh boy does everything change.
Zombies That Are Actually Different
I don’t want to give too much away about the zombies here but they are some of the most legitimately scary zombies I have seen in a film, partially because I’ve been getting so used to the classic Romero shamblers that were common in this era. The main reason though is that the zombies completely change the themes that we see in the movie, this isn’t like other zombie movies where the zombies are just a stand-in for societal collapse, the zombies in Return of the Living Dead are a cataclysm that overwhelms everyone who encounters them. There’s an interesting compare/contrast of this film’s take on ‘zombies as a problem but people are the real danger’ idea that we see in a lot of Romero films.
Full Of Amusing Parody And Gags As Well As Horror
As the movie goes on we see the more specific tongue in cheek parody of the Romero films we all know and love, one of my favorite of these gags being that a group holding up in a large funeral home needs to make the building defensible, so someone asks the owner of the building if they have a hammer and nails. The amount of nails, hammers, and scrap wood that they would need to have everyone working at the same time to cover every single window of the dozens that this building has, in the time they would have to do it, is nothing short of absurd, and I love that joke because it is such a common part of zombie home defense movies to this day. There’s a lot of these tongue in cheek in-jokes for the zombie genre, but also a ton of other really out-there humor, like how one character confesses breathlessly that she fantasizes about being eaten alive and then she dances naked in a graveyard.
Pretty Out There But Enjoyable For What It Is
I wouldn’t exactly call the movie classy. There’s a joyously low-brow quality to the well-done gory zombies, the simplicity of the narrative, the easily understandable humor, and the excessive amounts of violence and nudity. It feels strange to call this a ‘comfort movie’ but even the first time I watched it, the film felt so pleasantly recognizable the way it mixed humor and horror, with even a few bits of sorrow for good measure, that it feels like a really loving tribute to the zombie genre in particular and old school horror movies as a whole. It’s definitely more for fans of over-the-top schlocky horror, but I had a great time with it and if the summaries here sound at all interesting you probably will too.
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