Zombie Flesh-Eaters (1979) - Lucio Fulci

[ravenus]

ZOMBIE FLESH-EATERS - Lucio Fulci

Italian gore-meister Fulci's immediate rip-off of Dawn of the Dead has some moments of interest and intensity but suffers from significant levels of dull proceedings.

The film makes a strong ominous beginning with a scene straight out of the pages of Dracula, when a deserted sailing ship lands on the shores of New York. The coast guard goes in to investigate and comes up against a flesh-frenzied zombie who lays the fatal chomp on one of its number before getting the bullet. Further investigation reveals a mysterious letter written by the missing owner of the ship.

A reporter and the daughter of the ship-owner head out to find the Caribbean island where the ship had come from and root out the whole mystery. They hire a boat alongwith a conveniently ready vacationing couple and, after the odd underwater mishap, land on the island. There they meet a wholly incongruous doctor (played by a Saddam Hussein lookalike) who is trying, by all too arcane means, to find the cause of the Zombie epidemic that's spreading across the island. Vague references are made to the Viruses, Spanish Conquistadors and Voodoo (??)

The Zombies then decide that they've had just about enough and rise en masse for a final showdown.

This could have been a really good film but lets you down on several counts. Fulci's script pre-dates some of the ideas that Romero used in Day of the Dead, like studying the zombie disease, but treats it in a pointless half-assed fashion. The main problem of the film is that all the parts between the zombie attacks are very tepid. The characters are rubbish and the dialog is atrocious, but we're subjected to large helpings of them. If Fulci had but a mere fraction of Romero's genius for writing good characters, this would have been an awesome movie, but no. The other way would have been to raise the camp value and run the film at a faster pace, but Fulci plays out the drama dead serious and deathly dull. The acting and dubbing, even with moments of unintentional hilarity, are about as enticing as jamming a screwdriver in your ear. The music is all out of place and totally annoying...IMO even a better music score with other things as they are would have seriously raised the entertainment value of this film.

But the film has its good points...the Zombies. Fulci may be clueless about drama but he certainly knows how to set up the action. The Zombie make-up looks awesome, leagues ahead of what Romero depicted in 'Dawn...'. There are some really good set-pieces in the film like...
1. The opening scene with the deserted ship
2. An audaciously conceived and pretty well-shot underwater scene where a zombie squares off against a shark.
3. When the adventurers come up against a group of zombies busily feeding on the doctor's wife.

The climax is an intense Wild-West style showdown with the actors holding fort against the zombies with shotguns and Molotov ****tails. Burn, baby.


**SPOILER**






The fairly predictable 'twist' ending is quite nice in the 'Planet of the Apes' mold.