THE PLOT THUS FAR
Strangers looking for a woman’s father arrive at a tropical island where a doctor desperately searches for the cause and cure of a recent epidemic of the undead.
WHAT WE THOUGHT
“Zombie” opens with the daughter of the ship’s missing captain and a reporter team up to investigate a recent claim of zombie activity. Their trail leads to a small Carribbean island. To get there they require the assistance of two other Americans, one of whom is a beautiful woman who, for reasons never to be explained, likes to go scuba diving topless and wearing a g-string. This leads to the rightfully infamous “Zombie versus Shark” scene in which she encounters both a threatening shark and an underwater zombie, and escapes them both, leaving them to do battle with each other.
On the island, they discover a harried doctor, a nurse, an assistant, and the remains of the doctor’s wife. The assistant says, “When the dead come back to life, they will come suck the blood of the living!” Or something like that. Thus semi-justifying this film’s claim to sequel status with Romero’s work. Apparently, the zombies were created by voodoo. We often hear the tribesmen and voodoo chants, but we never see them. We also never find out why it is exactly they’re bringing the dead back to life. This film isn’t that complicated. At one point they’re in a graveyard of conquistadors, and the conquistadors rise from the ground to become zombies. This was an opportunity with latent social commentary potential, but while Fulci knows what aspects of Romero to rip off will bring in the cash, he has inherited none of Romero’s satirical or intelligent edge.
“Zombie” was absolutely no exception. This is a nasty ass movie. He literally goes for the jugular in this film. You see flesh tearing, blood squirting, eyeballs impaled on wood and the wood broken off into the eye, and more. It’s nasty, but it’s all in great horror movie fun. The nastiness and action is very prominent in this film. So much so that the first thirty minutes or so of the film that has no action, seems really boring and dragged out, though it’s not really that long. But, don’t get me started on the traffic flow of the Brooklyn Bridge during the finale
The Blu-Ray comes with the original DVD commentary, featurettes and related promo trappings ported over to the Blu-Ray. The 2K print restoration from the original negative is something to behold. If you want to see the mega breakdown of shots, I’d recommend heading over to DVD Active and checking out our mass comparison. Gabe Powers and I slapped it together to show everyone how far the restoration has gone. The uncompressed audio is pretty sharp, but I’m not sure if a DTS-HD 7.1 mix was the right way to go. Often, the back channels get no action and everything is forced to the front speakers. Oh well, it’s still worth a purchase.
RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW!
