Strangers searching for a young woman’s missing father arrive at a tropical island where a doctor desperately searches for the cause and cure of a recent epidemic of the undead.
When Italian filmmaker Lucio Fulci released his movie “Zombie” in Europe, more specifically, in his homeland of Italy in 1979, it was released as “Zombi 2.” The reason is quite ingenious. A year earlier, when George A. Romero released his “Dawn of the Dead,” it became a huge hit worldwide, but especially in Italy. Back then, in Italy, it was simply released as “Zombi.” A year later, Lucio Fulci and his producers decided to release their new zombie film as “Zombi 2” and at the time, people thought they were going to see the follow-up to “Dawn of the Dead” but in reality, it was a standalone movie. Confusing, I know. To add even more complexity to the mix, the film was also released in certain parts of the world, under the banners “The Island of the Living Dead,” “Zombie The Dead Walk Among Us, and “Zombie Flesh Eaters,” to name but a few. It was also banned in England and parts of Europe in the early 1980s when it was included along with a long list of other horror movies known as “Video Nasties,” a term the U.K. referred to these particular titles as “obscene” and for many years, they never saw the light of day.
By today’s standards, however, the movie still holds up well and almost 40 years later, “Zombie” continues to have a visceral effect that most other horror films from that decade have lost. This particular re-issue, by Blue Underground, has been restored from the original negative in a brand new 4K restoration and it has truly never looked better. I was never really a fan of this title back in the day because, at the time, for me, it was just another zombie movie, one amongst the many other hundreds that were released at the time but looking at it recently for the first time in years, it was very apparent that Fulci wasn’t just out to make a quick buck, but actually tried to tell an interesting and somewhat intriguing tale about the origins of a zombie outbreak, instead of just throwing us into the middle of a zombie apocalypse, with very little or no story exposition, like most other titles in this genre, including Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead” and “Dawn of the Dead.”
As the story opens, a seemingly abandoned sailboat drifts into New York Harbor. When two harbor patrol officers board the vessel and one is attacked and killed by a zombie, the other officer opens fire on him and he falls into the water. A short time later, Peter West (Ian McCulloch), an investigative reporter, is assigned the task of going down to the harbor to try and figure out why a patrol officer was attacked and killed. When he arrives, he meets the mysterious Anne Bowles (Tisa Farrow), the daughter of the man who the abandoned sailboat belongs to. Having not heard from him in months, she tells West that her father lives and works on the Caribbean island of Matul. West decides that there’s a good story to be had and he and Anne fly to the Bahamas. There, they meet an American couple, Brian Hull (Al Cliver) and Susan Barrett (Auretta Gay) who are traveling around the world in their yacht and agree to take Peter and Anne to the island on the next leg of their journey.
When they finally reach the island, however, they discover that a strange illness is killing the island’s population but what’s even more strange, is that it is resurrecting them from the dead. If someone is bitten by any of the re-animated corpses, they too will succumb to the illness and so the cycle goes. They meet Dr. Menard (Richard Johnson), who informs Anne that her father was a close friend of his and that he recently passed away having fallen victim to the mystery disease. Soon, the entire island is overrun by zombies and the group makes their way to Menard’s small hospital, where they barricade themselves inside, loading up on ammunition and supplies, but will it be enough to get them through the night safely?
“Zombie” veered away from the conventional narrative offered by previous titles within this genre that offered no real explanation as to the virus’ outbreak but here, director Lucio Fulci tries to incorporate the voodoo rituals employed by the local islanders as the culprit for the epidemic. Many zombie films of this era were rushed through production so that they could be released quickly and although “Zombie” was shot in under a month by cinematographer Sergio Salvati, and released three months later, technically, it far surpassed every other movie in its classification. Blue Underground, an independent distributor that restores and releases Blu-ray and DVD cult classics, has released a phenomenal 3-Disc Limited Edition Blu-ray package that includes a 4K restoration of the movie, which looks better than it did upon its original release, a second disc filled with behind-the-scenes extras, including interviews with cast and crew members, and a third disc, the movie’s complete soundtrack by composer Giorgio Cascio. For fans of this cult classic, don’t bother with any previous iterations, instead, go out and buy this version instead, it puts all previous editions to shame!
Available on a special 40th Anniversary Limited Edition Blu-ray with New 4K Restoration November 27th
Soundtrack by composer Fabio Frizzi, thx