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Italy
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1979
Directed
by Lucio Fulci
Starring
Tisa
Farrow
Ian
McCulloch
Richard
Johnson
Color
| 92 Minutes
| Not Rated
Format: DVD (R0 - NTSC |
2-disc set)
Blue Underground
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Also
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Review
by
Doug Red
Film:9
:DVD:10
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| Lucio
Fulci's Zombie (AKA Zombi
2, Zombie Flesh Eaters or
any number of other alternate titles) is a shuffling, lurching
cadaver of a masterpiece when it comes to zombie cinema. It delivers
excellent gore as well as finely developed sequences of genuine
cinematic fear wrapped around a two-fisted Day-Glo plot which
nevertheless remains firmly planted in manly pulp action-adventure. |
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Lithe and delicate Tisa Farrow, sister to the more famous Mia
and daughter of classic film babe Maureen "Jane" O'Sullivan, stars
as Anne Bowles, a woman searching for her father. Anne's father
wasn't particularly missing until his boat is found adrift in
New York harbor with a single passenger, which also happens to
be health guru Richard Simmons' worst nightmare — a fat zombie.
Fatto the Zombie manages to kill a cop before being blasted to
oblivion over the side of the boat. After the boat is recovered,
Anne teams with the overripe investigative reporter with the vaguely
porn star name of Peter West (stalwart Ian McCulloch), bearded
pleasure boater Brian (stern Al Cliver) and his exhibitionist
companion Susan (statuesque Auretta Gay) to search for the island
of Matoul, where her father was studying some rare tropical plague.
On Matoul, feverish Dr. Menard (the menacing, deep-voiced Richard
Johnson) works against time as more villagers succumb to disease,
while he slowly runs out of bullets to shoot the rising dead (in
the head, of course) to keep them in their grave. Not merely contending
with constant death, disease and zombies, Dr. Menard also has
to deal with his sexy wife Paula (hot tamale Olga Karlatos) who
likes to take long, sensuous showers and otherwise constantly
whine about island life and the spreading epidemic like she's
living in a soap opera. After Anne and her team have a few adventures
(not the least of which involves Susan's topless and nearly bottomless
encounter with both a shark and an underwater zombie), they reach
Matoul to search for Anne's father and instead meet the hungry
dead. |
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With
Zombie, Lucio Fulci created a fever
dream of nightmare cinema out of eclectic imagery of the past.
The film starts out similarly to how silent western The
Great Train Robbery (1903) ends, with a gun being pointed
and shooting directly at the audience. Spielberg's then-recent
Jaws is referenced in the scene where
supernatural zombie does battle with the living embodiment of
natural death on the seas, a mighty shark, with mixed results
for both combatants. A long shower scene before a murder (while
the victim is viewed by the killer and the audience) is a nod
in the direction of Hitchcock's Psycho
and the crimes of the voyeur. A corpse that is being devoured,
lying on the floor of a house, is posed and shot similarly to
the way many of the bodies were positioned and framed in Herschell
Gordon Lewis's trash classic Blood Feast.
Zombie thus becomes a necrophiliac
love poem to death, with gore and sex alike shot with beauty and
style. Fulci, like French auteur Jean Rollin, wants to show us
that death is inevitable: if you try to fight your demise, either
a giant zombie with maggot-ridden eyeballs will track you down
on tropical Matoul to munch on your delicate parts, or a fat zombie
will infest the cities of modernity while dining on the urban
sophisticates. Zombie is no arty
pretentious film, as breasts are exposed, flesh is munched, bodies
are torn asunder, eyes are gouged out, the dead rise, and all
hell breaks loose; it is however nuanced in some aspects that
will keep you thinking about its images as you are slowly dragged
through time to the silence of the grave. |
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| Blue
Underground's Ultimate two-disc edition of Zombie
features a brand-spanking new 2.35:1/16:9 (quote) "2K High Definition
transfer from the original uncut & uncensored camera negative".
How does it look in this reviewer's eyes? The colors are a little
more naturalistic than earlier transfers, and some details are
more apparent than they were before, like gorgeous Auretta Gay's
luscious sunburned torso when she's hauled out of the water after
battling both sharks and zombies, where you can also practically
count her goosepimples, or the liquid sheen in Olga Karlatos'
eye as she gets a peeper full of broken door splinter, or the
worms dangling and writhing from the eye of the iconic cemetery
zombie. You can tell it's an older film, but the transfer really
does Fulci's masterpiece proud. Accompanying the remastered imagery
is the viewer's choice of no less than six audio tracks
(not counting the audio commentary; see below): English
and Italian 6.1 DTS, English and Italian 5.1 Surround, plus mono
tracks in both languages. And Zombie
has never sounded better than it does here... The 6.1 and 5.1
tracks are superlative for a film of this vintage. Ten (!) different
subtitle options are offered as well, to include English, Spanish,
German, French, Japanese, Korean, and Thai. |
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Since
Blue Underground pulled out all the stops for this film, the extras
are vast and numerous, practically falling out of the DVDs like
some kind of fetid Horn of Plenty. First up is a feature-length
audio commentary (originally recorded for the old Anchor
Bay edition) by star Ian McCulloch, talking about the
film and his ironic relationship to the infamous "Video Nasties"
list in Britain with Diabolik magazine editor Jason J.
Slater. There are a few brief pauses of silence but even this
works to the advantage of fans, particularly during the eye gouge
sequence — where you hear the actor's genuine response to a grueling
set-piece he hasn't seen in many years. Disc 1 rounds things out
with the expected extras, featuring the theatrical trailer, TV/radio
spots, and a substantial poster/stills gallery. You can also play
the film with a brief introduction by celebrated filmmaker/longtime
Zombie fan Guillermo Del Toro. |
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After
you've listened to Ian and Jason's commentary on Disc 1, you may
proceed to Pass Go... On to Disc 2! First up is Zombie Wasteland
(22 min.), a documentary filmed at Ohio's Cinema Wasteland convention
featuring appearances by four different Zombie
luminaries. Ian McClulloch appears (who mentions here that Fulci
reminded him of comedian Benny Hill, and that he was sadly too
square at the time to join in on the party atmosphere of the shoot),
as does mad doctor Richard Johnson (whose voice is still resonant
and commanding, enjoying meeting with fans), intrepid adventurer
Al Cliver (an intelligent man of quiet dignity who only speaks
in a whisper) and iconic worm-eye zombie stuntman Ottaviano Dell'Acqua
(who enjoys the fans and attention quite a bit, seeming at home
in a convention format). There's footage of their autograph table
as well as their speaking to a roomful of eager fans, interspersed
with professional individual interviews with each man. Flesh
Eaters on Film (10 min.) features a subtitled interview with
producer Fabrizio De Angelis who mentions he likes to make horror
films but doesn't like watching them, and he thought that Fulci
was a fun director and that Fabrizio was able to make more films
with him than any other producer because he "got" Fulci. Deadtime
Stories (14 min.) features a subtitled interview with co-writers
Elisa Briganti and Dardano Sacchetti, where among other revelations
Dardando reveals that the producers originally wanted a zombie
western like had appeared in the Italian comic book Tex Willer,
but that he convinced them that a zombie/adventure genre mix would
work better. World of the Dead (16 min.) is a subtitled
interview with cinematographer Sergio Salvati and production/costume
designer Walter Patriarca, where we learn how the production fought
to make everything uglier and more decrepit, and how Patriarca
took a bulldozer to the newly-built chapel set to make it the
perfect off-kilter design. Zombi Italiano (17 min.) interviews
make-up artists Gianettl De Rossi and Maurizo Tarani and special
effects artist Gino De Rossi, recounting the travails of attaching
live maggots to zombie masks, keeping the little critters from
crawling into the nostrils of hapless stuntmen, and why the famous
eye gouge scene almost didn't happen. Note on a Headstone
(6 min.) is a brief chat with music composer Fabio Frizzi, who
interestingly enough talks most about Fulci's mastery of scenes
that didn't require musical accompaniment, such as the largely
music-less opening scenes. All in the Family (6 min.) features
Fulci's lovely daughter Antonella talking about the legendary
director. Throughout the rest of the interviews, there is much
made about Fulci's cruel streak in the way he treated people on
set, but Antonella sets the record straight for her late father
by explaining that he had the best intentions for what he did,
reserving his cruelty for those whom he liked in an effort to
coax the best performance possible from them. |
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Finally,
Zombie Lover (10 min.) brings up the rear with maestro
Guillermo Del Toro discussing his fondness for Fulci's masterwork,
including his musing on cinema's first major fat zombie (did he
eat the whole crew on the boat?) and the gratefulness of Mexican
audiences for bodacious nudity in horror films. The only thing
missing from a fan standpoint is the participation of the lovely
female leads (Farrow, Gay, and Karlatos). 12/16/11 |
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