Zombie (aka Zombi 2)

1979 ***1/2

I checked this out on the suggestion of Johnny Sweatpants. Some drowsy failures to get through the first twenty minutes had me initially thinking this was stone cold turkey flesh (plus I think I wanted to get back at Johnny for trashing Killer Klowns). But when it got going it was some two-fisted zombie action fun.

The film starts off in the East River off Manhattan, as a private sailboat drifts aimlessly around. I watched this in the original language, and it was a riot watching these Italian actors in actual New York acting like New York cops. When I was grabbing screenshots I listened to the dubbing a bit, and the New Yawk accents are shlocky genius. At one point someone even says "the captain of that boat must be a real turkey!" Yay, seventies!

After some early excitement with a zombie hidden on board, the movie goes into sag mode for a little while. The boat's owner's daughter teams up with an intrepid reporter guy and they head out in search of the tropical island where her father was last reported seen. I had at least one abandoned night of viewing during this part, my eyes snapping open to reailze I'd just missed the conversation with his boss at the paper, or their chat in the airport, or the part where they pay a taxi driver to find them a boat. Eventually they hook up with another couple on vacation who agree to take them to the island on the condition they watch the girl in the couple strip down to her thong and go scuba diving.

If you're thinking "Ah, boobs, I guess this movie goes somewhere!" you're right, but it's only the tip of the iceberg. As thong girl cavorts in the reefs the gang on the boat spot the island they're looking for. Meanwhile, beneath the waves it's suddenly Girl vs. Shark.

In a rather surprising twist it suddenly turns into Girl vs. Zombie, as a submarine member of the undead turns out to be lurking in the seaweed. Happily this original idea got even better moments later when the battle became...

Yes. You guessed it. Zombie vs. Shark. Whatever goofy shit this movie had to throw at me, I knew right then that we'd always have Zombie vs. Shark.

Meanwhile on Zombie Island things are deteriorating with hilarious speed. In fact, the entire population seems to be a doctor, his wife, three employees, and a ramshackle hospital's worth of soon-to-be-undead sick people. We hear talk of the "villagers" going crazy and bolting from the island, but for budget reasons we never see them. As the day progresses and the news gets worse, we get the occasional evocative shot like the one above. There are dead folks walking, but they're still scattered around. They have yet to organize.

The zombies in Zombie are for the most part rather basic and abstract, but deliver an admirable shamble. They do, of course, get organized and a classic undead standoff ensues. There's headshots and molotov cocktails and blunt instruments and people repeatedly forgetting that zombie bites result in new zombies. All the lovable moments you expect.

There were two funny details to this movie that I realized later (upon viewing a Bava flick) could be called staples of Italian horror. One was the liberal use of smoke to create atmosphere. Bava uses it on a sound stage to glorious effect, but when it's deployed in Zombie for the exterior shots of the island, a constant stiff wind whips the smoke around and it's just kind of silly.

The other detail was a variation on the slow burn that we keep admiring Asian cinema for; the Italian version usually involves a slow pan across a room. Once again the Bava movie uses the creepy slow buildup with a satisfying result. In Zombie, our heroes come upon the scene above and stand there for several closeups of the individual flesh wounds, the individual zombies, and the individual reactions of each of the four characters. By the time the whole scene of gore is revealed, they've been standing there for almost a full minute when they should be hauling ass.

These are minor quibbles and easily folded into the stock supply of ridiculousness you can expect from any perfectly enjoyable horror movie. Zombie is certainly a knockoff: Romero's original Dawn of the Dead was released as Zombi in Italy, and this flick was called Zombi 2 in a bizarre attempt to capitalize off Dawn. (Well, the whole movie is an attempt to capitalize off Dawn, but this goes a step further.) As zombie retreads go, however, this one earns its chops. Fun, gory stuff.