zombieflesheaters

With the phenomenal success of Dawn of the Dead in Europe, as well as the rest of the world, it wasn't long before Italian producers started commissioning rip-offs. Lucio Fulci was chosen to take the helm of this movie, one of the best post Dawn Zombie flicks. Up until his death in 1996 , Fulci often told interviewers that he " wanted to send them ( the zombies) back to their origins. This is why we shot the film in Santo Domingo ( in the Dominican Republic) ". The unique looking zombies in the film came courtesy of Fulci's regular makeup fx man , Gianetto DeRossi. The make-up was very basic by todays standards, consisting of a thin layer of latex covered by a mix of mud, clay, and of course the odd maggot. With this basic method , DeRossi succeeded in unsettling audiences to this day. Unfortunately, a lot of people ( including myself) haven't been allowed to appreciate the full extent of his work on Zombie, because we've only seen the heavily cut Zombie flesh eaters. Oh well, onto the review.

Zombie flesh eaters starts out with New York city water police checking out an unmanned sailing boat in the harbour. On board , they discover filthy conditions, human remains, Fulci's trademark maggots, and worst of all, a huge zombie that kind of looks like King Kong Bundy,or the huge bald guy out of The Wanderers. He tears one cops throat out, and the other retreats onto the deck, blasting the zombie into the water ( yet another floater added to New Yorks waterways). We find out that the boat belonged to a guy who was living on a small island called Matu in the carribean. His daughter Ann ( played by Tisa Farrow, sister of Mia.... wonder if Woody ever propositioned her?)pictured above, and a Reporter called Peter West, who reminds me a little of Micheal Caine ,decide to investigate. They hitch a ride to Matu with Brian (Al Cliver) and Susan ( Auretta Gay), an American couple touring the islands in their boat. They're almost to the island when Susan decides she wants to do some scuba diving ( and Fulci decides that a gratuitous breast-shot is long overdue). While she indulges in a spot of topless scuba diving, we are treated to what Quentin Tarantino has described as ' the coolest moment in cinema history'. Simultaneously, a shark, and a zombie attack her, but decide to attack each other instead. She makes it back to the surface unscathed, and the zombie returns to the seabed to continue doing whatever the hell it was doing there. The shark has rammed the boat and damaged the rudder ( or something ), but as luck would have it they're almost to Matu, and pull up in the harbour where they are greeted by Dr. Menard ( Richard Johnson). He explains that Ann's father died in a strange plague that's sweeping the island and causing the dead to return to life and attack the living. The good doctors main duties are now blasting these returning corpses in the head as they revive in the small mission hospital ( though I'm sure he charges the next of kin ridiculous ammounts of money for this service). He asks the four tourists to check on his wife on the other side of the island, lending them his landrover. Unfortunately the Docs' alcoholic wife has been skewered through the eye (yet another scene the censors rob us of) by zombies because for some reason he didn't think she'd need a gun in this zombie ridden environment ,even though the miserable bastard has two at the hospital. Our heroes don't want to wait around to see what the zombies have planned for their eyes, and hightail it through dense zombie filled jungle to an Assault on Precinct 13 style siege complete with molotov cocktails at the mission hospital.

Despite the version I saw being cut to shreds by half-wit British censors ( their strict censorship didn't exactly dissuade Peter Suttcliffe or Fred West did it?) I still liked this movie a lot. It was very atmospheric, especially the dusty, smoky, scene where we see a zombie ambling around a small village complete with pigs, and chickens. The whole movie had a very unwholesome, grimy feel, which was good. It had plenty of action and suspense when it got going , and the message that science doesn't always have the answers. If you love zombie flicks like I do, then other than Romero's Dead trilogy, you really can't do a whole lot better than this. Just try and get the un-rated version.

REVIEW UPDATE : I have just seen the unrated version of ZOMBIE for the first time, and it blew me away! Scenes that were once incoherent due to the butchery of U.K. censors now make sense. Some of the scenes that they hacked out were some of the most effective gore scenes ever , and the 'splinter through the eye' didn't disappoint at all. It was actually better than it was hyped to be. The zombie/shark scene is also much more impressive, with the zombie brutally losing an arm in the encounter. If you've only ever seen the Zombie Flesh Eaters cut of this film, I strongly urge you to seek out the unrated version A.S.A.P.