philosoraptor42

Lucio Fulci is a big name in Italian horror and he's quite keen on including zombies in his films. One of the big attractions of his films is his inventive use of gore, allowing him to provide zombies that are not only scary as hell, but genuinely look dead and rotting. Three of the films reviewed here were placed on the UK "Video Nasty" list: "Zombie Flesh Eaters", "The Beyond" and "The House By The Cemetery".

Zombie Flesh Eaters (Zombi 2) (1979)

I'd heard very mixed views of this. Just to clarify, this movie has several titles. The actual original title was "Zombi 2", posing as a follow-up to Dawn Of The Dead (which had the title "Zombi" in Italy). In some places the movie is known as "Zombie", "Island Of The Living Dead", "Zombie Island" and "Woodoo".

This film ties the zombie genre back to its origins in voodoo magick. A scientist is trying to explain the phenomenon of bodies seemingly rising from the dead, but he is unable to find an answer and meanwhile the appearances of zombies are only getting worse. Locals on the island can only presume that the voodoo magic is real, since what else can explain it?

Our protagonists come to mee this scientist later. At the beginning of the movie we see zombies appear on a boat which we later discover was returning from a tropical island. The daughter of the zombie victim teams up with a reporter and together they decide to check out the origin of the zombie threat themselves.

The plot is minimal, but some of the visual ideas are so inventive that they've kept the movie looking pretty fresh after all this time. The scene that is regularly talked about is the zombie vs shark fight. The zombie walks along the bottom of the sea and bites into a shark. There's no doubt about it, while some of the shots might be of a fake shark this is, for the most part, a real life shark on screen. I can only presume that the guy in underwater zombie makeup is also a fully-fledged shark trainer. Either that or this was possibly one of most risky bits of filming in movie history.

Lucio Fulci proves to be a master of gore. The top of a zombie head is chopped off revealing the brain. Zombie arms reaching through the window force a woman's eye onto a shard of wood in their efforts to pull her towards them. What's more the zombies look genuinely dead. At one stage we have particularly dead-looking zombies wandering around with clumps of earth filled with live maggots in their eye-sockets.

Night Of The Living Dead might have decent characterisation, a plot with a beginning, middle and end, the makings of a brand new genre and (arguably) genuine social commentary. However, Zombi 2 has something which gives it a run for its money all the same: It has zombies who look dead. If we compare it to Dawn of the Dead which has awful characterisation, a pitiful attempt at social commentary (zombies are in the mall because they lived in the thrall of capitalism *facepalm*) and barely has a plot, Zombi 2 (to my mind) beats it hands down. Zombi 2 is seriously creepy and while characters aren't always developed much, they are normally developed enough to get you upset when they meet their gruesome demise.

I began this movie thinking it was low budget trash and ended it thinking it was one of the best zombie movies I've ever seen. Fulci is clearly much better at realistic gore effects than he is at pacing, storytelling or dialogue, but if you want horror Fulci has it in spades. Sure, if you aren't impressed by the time you finish watching the zombie fighting the shark, this probably isn't for you. However, I'd hazard that most zombie fans willing to stick it out into the second half will find it is well worth it. This is a real gem.

A- (Excellent, but not quite the best)

Zombie Flesh Eaters 2 (Zombi 3) (1988)

An entirely new setting and this time the zombies aren't linked with voodoo at all, but are entirely the fault of bio-chemical research. Scientists are working on viral research, but someone decides to steal their work and ends up accidentally unleashing it on the general public. After that, the military attempt to clean up the mess.

The main scientist struggling to create a cure berates the military, but if we were supposed to side with the scientists then I'm afraid that's a big failing in the writing. It seemed pretty clear that there was very little the scientists could do to stop their virus and that actually the military had a far greater chance of success, even if they were just killing everyone.

Overall this was a lot of fun and there are some very good scenes with zombies jumping out at people and a fair bit of creativity. However, there's nothing like the shark scene from the first film and I felt like there were few consistent characters to hold my interest. As per usual with Fulci movies, there is a lack of a consistent plot, but this was so much fun that I wasn't too worried about that.

Overall this was a good solid fun low-budget zombie film.

B- (Solidly good movie)

City of the Living Dead (1980)

When I first discovered this film it was part of a general search for zombie movies. I then discovered that this is the first of a whole trilogy of Lucio Fulci movies about gates opening to hell. The second installment is "The Beyond" and the third is "The House By The Cemetery".

At the beginning of the film we see a priest hang himself and this is seen by a psychic. I was a bit concerned about the psychic to start with. This isn't because I don't believe in psychics, since I don't believe in zombies or gateways to hell either. The issue is that psychics can sometimes be awkward to handle in movies. This can be particularly problematic when the psychics start complaining about their rights, as psychics were some kind of real life persecuted minority group. Thankfully this isn't an issue that the movie dwells on. Though that's partly because the movie doesn't dwell on anything at all. Things keep moving and often follow no particular logical pattern.

It is during this, my third Lucio Fulci film, that I finally realise that Fulci's movie not only move at a pretty leisurely pace, but they don't really worry too much about narrative structure. Stuff happens and the movie ends eventually. That said, there is somewhat of a plot here in that there are evil monsters and a threat to humanity as a whole and this threat is dealt with in some way (not to give too many spoilers).

The basic gist is that the priest who hangs himself has started a process of opening a gateway to hell. As part of this he comes back to life and acts as a kind of "master zombie" enlisting various new people into his undead army. He seems to have hypnotic powers, rather like a master vampire would. Oddly though, the means by which each victim dies and becomes zombified seems to depend on their gender. Men always seem to die by being grabbed by the head and having their brains pulled out, while women cry blood and then vomit their internal organs.... Lovely.

Fulci loves his gore and at one point the film goes on a bit of a tangent just so we can have a particular death scene. A misunderstanding means that a father believes another character is a troublemaker who is planning on defiling his daughter (or something), so the father gets very angry and decides to kill this character. What follows is a sort of reprise of the scene in Zombi 2 where a woman is gradually pulled closer and closer to a shard of wood until her eye is impaled on it. In this scene the poor unfortunate man has his head placed on a... um (showing my ignorance of woodwork tools).. sawing machine. His head is pushed down on the conveyor belt and the camera continually switches between a view of the father's angry and exertive face as he holds him down, the victim's horrified face as he realises his inevitable demise and the blade's uncaringly whirring as the distance slowly narrows. This is pretty gratuitous, it's superfluous to what little story there is (not least since this violence isn't done by zombies) and, to be frank, it doesn't work as well as the eye piercing scene in Zombie Flesh Eaters.

Anyway, the music is pretty awesome in this film, particularly towards the end and things end satisfyingly enough. However, the film plods along and there really didn't seem to be enough payoff to encourage me to keep watching. I was halfway inclined to give up on Fulci movies at this stage. Though Zombi 2 had been a pleasant surprise, Zombi 3 had simply been "alright" while City of the Living Dead had just turned out to be pretty dull. However, the next film "The Beyond" was supposed to be the real classic and I hung on in the hope that things would get better.

City of the Living Dead contains some unforgettable signature Lucio Fulci gore. However, there's not enough variety, so the movie as a whole feels repetitive, slow and dull. There are some aspects to enjoy, but this is really not a good movie, even taking into account the low budget.

D+ (Not a good movie, but containing some entertaining elements.)

The Beyond (1981)

I was a little worried going into this, but I decided to make a go of it. I made myself some pasta and sat myself down ready to go. I then quickly realised I was going to need to stop the movie and eat the pasta first, because the film begins with some pretty nasty violence and gore that really threatened to put me off my food.

This, more than any of the other Lucio Fulci movies I watched, has pretty much no narrative arc. Sure there are characters with specific identitities, but what they are doing in the film and how they are developing as people is anyone's guess. Some events in the film seem to happen entirely at random without really being resolved. This is particularly true of a scene where some acid randomly falls onto the floor and begins to fill a room, quickly leaving no possibility of escape. (Even as I'm writing that, I'm wondering how it makes sense. However, it is nonetheless what I saw in that scene.) Did the character we are following in this scene escape? Or were they eaten by the acid? Not a clue.

There are some absolutely inspired moments in "The Beyond", the most notable of which for me is the scene where an impromptu lightening strike causes a man to fall off a ladder and then be eaten alive by killer tarantulas who appear out of nowhere.

"The Beyond", like "City of the Living Dead" before it, is about a gate to hell opening. However, while they may not develop exactly, there are distinct characters who we really get to follow and who feel like real people. The gory scenes vary. What's more the mysterious blind woman with her pet dog is pretty iconic. Sure the ending makes absolutely no sense, not to mention most of the content of the movie, but the whole film is a successful experiment in general creepiness.

The Beyond is a masterpiece in and of itself. It has the same ridiculously low budget as all the rest of Lucio Fulci's movies, but there's a real classic feel to this ridiculous film.

A+ (Classic!)

The House By The Cemetery (1981)

Okay, so I came into this one with a very different attitude to "The Beyond". While I knew this wasn't supposed to be as good, I couldn't help but hope for the best. From a fanart poster on Reelizer (see above) I realised that the eponymous house is the same one where the mysterious blind girl lives in "The Beyond". However, it seems that's more for budgeting reasons. There isn't actually any clear connection between this film and "The Beyond" at all. In fact there's actually no mention of gates to hell.

The plot of this film is actually probably the most solid plot I've seen in any of Lucio Fulci's movies. There's a very solid structure for what happens and there is genuine development of characters.

Sadly of the two child actors, the little boy can be irritating as hell and both actors are incomprehensible at a few points.

There's some level of misdirection about the source of the threat in the movie, but it becomes pretty clear that the cellar is not a good place to be. This makes things particularly annoying when characters keep on going to that same staircase down into the cellar, falling into the same trap again and again. The horror movie "lemming" instinct really seems to have set in badly here.

Also a source of irritation is the way the camera keeps quickly zooming into the adult male protagonist's face to show just his eyes. This seems to be intended to show that he's understanding more about their situation in the house, but it just comes off looking daft.

When the threat is finally revealed it does admittedly look pretty damn cool. Also there are some good bits of gore earlier in the movie, with a particularly notable bit involving a super-resilient vampire bat. Upon first appearing it just looks cheap and nasty, but by the end when things have got really messy it all feels worth it.

The film was somewhat satisfying by the end. However overall, in spite of a far better constructed narrative, this wasn't really any more fun than City of the Living Dead.

Oh and the ending doesn't make sense, though by this stage that seems like par for the course with Fulci's movies.

D+ (Not a good movie, but containing some entertaining elements.)

X-posted to