Oh, the evils that have been committed in the name of the Italian zombie movie. Vile and disgusting are many of them, completely devoid of social and cinematic value, totally disrespectful to the boundaries of good taste and good sense, utterly oblivious to the concepts of logic and cohesive narrative. These are, naturally, their good points. Among film fanatics, and especially among those who tend to dwell within the ranks of the less respectable end of the cinematic society, the worth of Italian horror films is a hotly contested debate. Italians do gory horror like no one else in the world. Coherence, quality acting, any semblance of a story, and even the slightest shred of logic or quality are less valuable than sheer spectacle, which I suppose is not an altogether rare attitude these days even outside the realm of what professionals in the film studies world refer to as Italian "gut munchers."

The Italian zombie films came largely in response to George Romero's knock-down drag-out zombie adventure epic Dawn of the Dead, itself partially financed by two of the best-known names in Italian horror cinema, director Dario Argento and his producer brother, Claudio. Though undoubtedly inspired by Romero's films, and while generally adhering to the laws of the living dead as set down in Romero's Night of the Living Dead (you must shoot them in the head to kill them, being bitten by a zombie turns you into a zombie, a group of strangers must band together to battle the zombies, et cetera), many of the Italian productions end their similarities there. Romero's films were equal parts horror and heavy handed social commentary, with society in general and the industrial-military complex in particular being the target of the filmmaker's disdain. In Italy, any social commentary that may be derived from such genre staples as the leaky radiation plant or a biological weapons experiment gone awry being responsible for the plague of zombies is purely window dressing, and the Italians are generally as likely to attribute the rising of the dead to voodoo and the supernatural as anything else. It doesn't matter really, so long as it gets the corpses out of the ground and shambling about in search of flesh and blood.

At the forefront of the zombie movie explosion was another of the best-known name in Italian horror cinema: Lucio Fulci. Along with Argento, those two have undoubtedly sparked more vehement arguments about the merits of their work than any other directors in horror film history, with fans celebrating each man as a visionary genius or dismissing him as a talentless hack. The truth, obviously, lies somewhere in between, as it always does. Both men have had their flashes of brilliance and idiocy. And when it comes to Italian movies, one fan's idiocy is often another fan's work of art. What one mind poo-poos as slapdash nonsense another mind regards as surrealistic brilliance, and both sides of the argument are equally adept at shielding themselves from the criticisms of the other. It's best then, in my opinion, not to examine these films as being "good" or "bad," whatever that may mean, while pretending to attain some level of objectivity as if such malleable concepts could be scientifically measured and proven, but rather instead to surrender entirely to the subjectivity that governs all assessment of art, accept it as an integral lens through which we regard everything, and state simply whether or not we as individuals with individual biases and tastes, enjoyed the film. And while I may balk at pronouncing Lucio Fulci's films to be works of genius or buffoonery, and while what I consider to be good or bad in a film is tenuous at best, I can say without hesitation that, regardless of my feelings in any of these debates, I enjoy Italian zombie films.

Like Romero, Lucio Fulci has what is often referred to as his zombie trilogy, consisting of Zombie, City of the Living Dead, and The Beyond. On a different road, however, we can see an Italian zombie film trilogy that consists of Zombie, Zombie 3, and Zombie 4: After Death with Bruno Mattei's Hell of the Living Dead trailing things as a possible addendum. This Italian zombie trilogy (plus one, if you want to be gracious to Mattei), while not being directly linked from film to film, encompasses a general narrative arc that focuses on the trouble with the living dead down in the tropics. All three films take place on tropical islands and feature vacationers and scientists versus the zombies. There is also a steady decline in quality from one movie to the next, though that doesn't necessarily equate to a decline in the enjoyment one can mine from them, depending on your particular state of mind.

The fun begins with Zombie, probably the best known of Fulci's horror/splatter films and definitely his most coherent. In Italy, Dawn of the Dead was released as Zombi, and thus Zombie is also known as Zombi 2, which is why the trilogy skips from Zombie directly to Zombie 3. For our purposes here, we'll call this film Zombie, and you can just deal with the lapse in numerics. Although it suffers an attempt to unofficially link itself to Dawn of the Dead, comparing this film to that is ridiculous. Aside from having the living dead running amok, the films are completely different. Dawn of the Dead is as much a political and social film as it is a horror film, with as much scathing political and social criticism as gushing blood. Zombie is a film about zombies, and they want to eat people. And that's pretty much it. The trouble begins when a deserted boat floats into New York City's harbor area. Cops go to look around and are soon set upon by a morbidly obese zombie who then falls into the water. For some reason, the cops make no attempt to apprehend him after this point even though he should just be floating there like a cork in the Hudson River. Despite the fact that he is a cop killer, they are content to just let bygones be bygones and forget the whole affair.

The boat belongs to the father of a young woman named Anne, played by Mia Farrow's less famous but seemingly more fun sister, Tisa. Anne happens to live in New York and had been wondering what happened to her dad ever since he mysteriously disappeared while doing some sort of research down in the tropics. It being a horror film, she decided to investigate the matter on her own. She's joined by the nosy and annoying reporter who seems to be a permanent fixture in all Fulci films, played here by British actor and Italian horror film stalwart Ian McCulloch. I hope that when the day comes that the world must be saved from the forces of hell, we can muster up better champions than an uppity woman and some boring reporter guy. Surely there are crusading knights and mystic types who are better equipped to handle this sort of thing.

Small bump in the road to death is that they forgot to find out where the island, called Matoul, actually is. So they just sort of blindly strike out, and lucky for them they run into a couple down in the tropics who know where Matoul is, more or less. Actually, they don't, but searching for a lost island seems like a fun way to pass the time on a vacation. Lucky for us the female of the couple enjoys nude scuba diving. You can always count on Fulci for plenty of gratuitous sex and gore, and gratuitous is the way those things ought to be. They are only slightly phased by an underwater battle between a zombie and a shark. This is probably one of the most famous scenes in the movie (but the most famous is yet to come). It's also one of the silliest. I can accept the underwater zombie. Sure. But how the hell can human teeth bite giant chunks out of a shark? Especially rotten zombie teeth. Have you ever felt a shark? Their skin, much like Run DMC, is tougher than leather. Somehow, this zombie is able to kick shark ass, bite it, and who knows what else. A zombie outmaneuvering a shark underwater. Okay. And what happens to a shark when it gets bitten by a zombie? Does it become a zombie shark? Does that mean it stops eating other things and only attacks its own kind? If so, then I would think zombie sharks are actually pretty safe. Questions about inter-species zombism will have to be shelved, however, at least until Zombie 3.

Upon arriving on the island where everyone is sweaty, they soon discover the place is just brimming over with the living dead, and one of the doctors, a man named Menard, is doing his darndest to kill them all, but just isn't having much luck. You get almost as many sweaty close-ups of this guy as you get of Eli Wallach in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. The locals insist that it's all some sort of voodoo vengeance. The doctor insists that there is a logical explanation for it all. That old chesnut. Some of the dead people are ancient Conquistadors who are remarkably well held-together for being dead and buried in the moist tropics for so long. Whatever the case, there's nothing logical about it, Doc. So just accept the voodoo thing, pound some more booze, and get to killin'.

Despite the fact that the island is under attack by scores of the living dead, the doctor leaves his wife home alone and then asks our heroes to go check on her. In turn, the wife decides that zombies are scary and all, but this is a Lucio Fulci movie, so she better strip down and take a shower. Shockingly enough, the zombies attack her in the shower, bursting through the window and delivering the most famous scene in the movie, and one of the most famous scenes in horror history: the gouging of the eye. It's a great effect, as the zombie squishes the woman's eye into a splinter of wood and lots of oozy stuff gushes out. It's a tad silly in the set-up, as the zombie seems to take his own sweet time in lining the eye up and everything. But whatever. The end results is a great gore effect, and you can't fault the zombie for wanting to turn his attacks into a sort of art.

Having succeeded in their mission to see how the doctor's wife is doing (they discovered she was dead), the cast indulges in the official "mad running about" people always do in zombie films. They decide going back to their boat may be a pretty good idea at this point, but there are just too many corpses shambling about to make it easy. Thus begins the wild orgy of blood spurting, head shooting, pus dripping, worm squirming, and flesh chomping that makes us all love Lucio Fulci so dearly. He certainly doesn't hold back on the gore here. Every effect is dwelled upon in bloody glee, and for the most part, they are top notch even under scrutiny. One of the guys falls for that old thing where you see a loved one who has now become a zombie and you mutter their name and stare, hoping that they will remember you or something. And then they kill you. We'll discuss that in a bit, because that old trick has always irked me.

Zombie is not a perfect film, not by any stretch of the imagination. The characters are wooden beyond belief, yet are among Fulci's most human creations, which isn't really saying a whole lot. But in what is a definite rarity in Italian horror, none of the main characters are assholes or particularly irritating. You may not care all that much about them, but this is one of the few films that at least attempts to portray them in a positive and sympathetic light. Later and lesser films would simply rely on everyone being obnoxious, hateful, and loud as a means of establishing a character. At least the script here doesn't fall back on that tried and true method of making sure you cheer for the special effects, and instead tries to engage you on some emotional level so that you might be mor einterested in what happens to the people you're watching. The story is more or less coherent but still full of the stupid behavior and decisions that plague all horror films. The acting is surprisingly good from most members of the cast. McCulloch and Richard Johnson as Menard are top notch, and Italian genre film staple Al Cliver as one half of the put-upon vacationing couple is his usual sort of dumb self. Tisa Farrow is the real weak link in the cast, and she often looks more dazed and confused than terrified or determined. Luckily, McCulloch and Menard get to carry the bulk of the dramatics, and they're up to the task. In the end, however, such things are of secondary consideration. The Italian horror film is all about the image and atmosphere, about creating a smothering, nightmarish landscape where logic and reason takes a back seat if it's even invited along for the ride at all.

And when it comes to atmosphere, Fulci succeeds in spades. Though less surreal and poetic than his later zombie films, Zombie possesses a gritty, exhausting sense of desperation and decay. Once we get to the island, there's not a scene that doesn't overflow with death. Buildings are ramshackle and crumbling, streets are dusty and deserted. Everything is cluttered and broken and hopeless. You can feel the humidity. One of the most evocative shots is of a deserted village street, windswept and dusty, with a lone corpse shuffling along in the background. Other shots, such as ones of Menard's filthy hospital filled with corpses wrapped in white sheets, continue to prove that at least in a film like this, the individual parts are worth more than their sum total.

In many films, viewers are frustrated by the characters' inability to outrun the much slower living dead. With Zombie, Fulci lets us feel frustration, but it is a more satisfying sense, as it comes from the fact that it's not so much that characters can't outrun the zombies as it is generated from the fact that there's nowhere to run to even if they could. The island is a prison, a tomb, and even though the film may lack the trappings of more traditional stories, it is an ace at communicating feeling.

All of this is thanks in part to Fulci's commitment to the image, but nothing smaller than a great sum of the credit should be ascribed to cinematographer Sergio Salvati. Salvati is a master of composition and one of the most accomplished eyes in all of cinema. With a resume that reaches as far back as being an assistant cameraman on films like Hercules Unchained and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Salvati became the cinematographer of choice for Fulci and a host of other Italian thriller directors. It's arguable that much of the genius attributed to certain directors can, in fact, be traced back primarily to their decision to employ Salvati, who has the an unparalleled talent for making even the worst films look interesting.

The zombies, which are the real attraction here, are great. I may like Romero's movies more, but no one does zombie make-up like Fulci and his crew, headed by special effects wizard Gianetto de Rossi. De Rossi, like Salvati, would become a Fulci film regular, and he only got better with each subsequent outing into the land of the living dead.

After a shaky set-up in New York and a little too much steel drum music down in the Caribbean, the movie sets a quick pace, building to a pretty exciting climax. I always thought Fulci had a problem with pacing. His movies have lots of long, boring stretches in which nothing happens. Zombie manages to avoid that for the most part and moves along at a breathtaking little pace that doesn't see any reason to relent once it kicks things into high gear. Although the final showdown may not exactly be scary, it's certainly a white-knuckle example of "survival horror" at its finest.

And speaking of the finest, that concept should be dropped entirely when discussing Fulci's half-baked, half-finished follow-up, Zombie 3.

Labels: Director: Lucio Fulci, Horror: Zombies, Italian Zombie Saga