Zombi 2

The most well-known of Lucio Fulci's films, Zombi II sparked an obsession with zombi films across Europe and made Fulci a horror icon. Upon its release in 1979, Zombi II was ridiculed for having no connection to the original Zombi and was scorned for its extremely bloody content, yet the film was a tremendous success.

Zombi II was a pseudo-sequel to George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead. Dawn was re-edited and re-scored for European markets by Romero's collaborator, Italian horror master Dario Argento. Argento released as his new version of Dawn of the Dead as Zombi and treated it as a film that was the beginning of a whole new story, not a contination of Romero's Night of the Living Dead

Plot

An apparently abandoned yacht drifts into New York Harbor, which the Habor Patrol investigate. On board, a huge rotting man kills one of the patrolmen by tearing out his neck with his teeth. The remaining patrolman manages to knock the hulking man into the sea.

A young woman named Ann (Tisa Farrow) is questioned by the police when it's discovered that the boat belonged to her father. She doesn't know anything except that her father left for a tropical island far away for research. Meanwhile, a reporter named Peter West (Ian McCulloch) is assigned by his news editor (director Lucio Fulci in a cameo) to get the story on the mysterious boat. Ann and Peter meet on the boat and decide to work together after finding a note from Ann's father. The note says that he's on the island of Matool and that's come down with a strange disease. Enlisting the add of a sea-faring couple, Brian (Pier Luigi Conti) and Susan (Auretta Giannone), to help find Matool.

On Matool, Dr. David Manard (Richard Johnson) is hard at work studying. Matool is a cursed place where the dead rise to attack the living, and Manard is determed to find out why. When Ann, Peter, Brian, and Susan reach Matool the island itself seems to come alive, vomiting forth all the dead buried on the island to kill them.

Zombi II in Europe

Zombi II 's incredible success in Europe re-ignited Fulci's sagging career and reinvented the director as a horror maven. Fulci would go on to direct several more horror films, and Zombi II introduced several of his trademarks: zombies, hyper-realistic gore and blood, and the infamous "eyeball gag" (a character is impaled or otherwise stabbed through the eyeball). Although Fulci's detractors labled the film as a cash-in on Dawn of the Dead 's incredible success, it's interesting to note that the Zombi II screen play was actually completed before Dawn of the Dead even premiered (hence the lack of connection between the two films).

Despite the massive popularity of the film, Zombi II was banned in several countries due to the massive gore content. inculding Great Britian (actor Ian McCulloch, who lives in Great Britian, had never actually had the opportunity to watch the film until he recorded a commentary for a DVD release of Zombi II some twenty-two years later and was shocked at the gore level).

Zombi II's massive European box office take also paved the way for three more sequels, although none retain the infamy of Fulci's film.

Zombi II in the United States

Zombi II was released merely as Zombie in America and was considered a stand-alone film here with no connection to Romero's zombie canon. The theatrical trailers for Zombie provided the memorable tagline of "We Are Going to Eat You!" and showcased the some of the make-up effects, but did nothing to indicate the plot of the picture (the audience WAS warned to the graphic content of the film: a humorous crawl at the end of the preview promises "barf bags" to whoever requested them upon viewing the film). Although the film was released unrated, persons under the age of seventeen were not permitted to attend viewings of the picture, even with a parent.

The film picked up a massive cult following once it made it to videotape, although a muddy full-screen transfer angered hard-core fans of the film. Twenty-two years later, Anchor Bay released a DVD version of the film to a tremendous response. Not to be outdone, companies Blue Underground and Shriek Show films released three years later competeing Twenty-Fifth Anniversary editions of the film; the Shriek Show version is considered the better of the two.