Much to the chagrin of many a Lucio Fulci nay-sayer, the script for Zombie–the Italian director’s first zombie feature–was penned prior to the European release of George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, thereby posing a dilemma for anyone attempting to claim that the work is plagiaristically derivative of the American master’s tour de force. (In regard to the various filmmakers’ plotlines–from a purely technical standpoint–Zombie could be viewed as a prequel to Night of the Living Dead.) Granted, the numeric designation following the film’s European title would suggest that it is the successor to a previous production, however, such is not the case. Romero’s feature was released overseas under the title of “Zombi,” thus Fulci’s feature, once completed, could not bear its original heading. Still yet, in an attempt to capitalize upon Dawn of the Dead’s success, the film’s financiers not only demanded the Italian production follow the American work by label only: they insisted that arbitrary bookends, depicting the siege of New York, be included in order to further exploit the success of Romero’s feature.
Obviously, none of the aforementioned trivia does justice to the often-maligned reputation of the Italian auteur and visionary, Lucio Fulci. Such readily overshadows the ingenious pacing, characterization, background, presentation, and depiction of raw terror that Fulci provides with Zombie. Not only does the Italian master recourse back to the pre-Romero origins of zombism, but he does so while creating a visually invigorating, unconventional, and harrowingly authentic portrayal of the apocalypse. He accomplishes this, in part, by cunningly integrating comedic interludes and seemingly arbitrary scenes as he unrepentantly carries his audience into the pits of Hell, all the while forbidding us to divert our eyes from the terrors enclosed within.
What is presumed to be a ghost ship enters a New York City harbor. However, once examined, an anomaly–a living corpse (Captain Haggerty)–attacks an officer named Marty (uncredited) before the creature is subdued. The owner of the boat (Ugo Bologna) is subsequently reported missing. When the owner’s daughter, Anne Bowles (Tisa Farrow), is interrogated, she informs the police of her father’s status–he was last known to have been traveling to the uncharted island of Matool. After discovering a distressing letter from her father aboard the abandoned vessel, Ann and a curious journalist named Peter West (Ian McCulloch) hire two vacationers, Brian Hull (Al Cliver) and Susan Barrett (Auretta Gay), to transport them to the remote region. Once ashore, they find Doctor David Menard (Richard Johnson), a friend of the recently deceased Mister Bowles, desperately attempting to discover a cure for a disease which is causing the dead rise from the grave amid turning the corpses into flesh eating ghouls.
Perhaps anyone attempting to create a tale of zombie horror during the late 1970s would have succumbed to being labeled a Romero imitator by default, for the American master’s influence with Night of the Living Dead had had over a decade to saturate, and subsequently dominate, the cultural mindset. As such, regardless of how original and convincing, only time would permit a zombie director to free him or herself of the bonds of Romero’s influence. This is exactly what is ever-so-gradually occurring with Lucio Fulci’s four masterworks of terror involving the cannibalistic undead. As time has lapsed, many have noted Zombie’s similarity, not to Romero’s second chapter in his zombie narrative, but rather to John Gilling’s The Plague of the Zombies. Fulci’s reanimated corpses are not the result of Romerian radiation, but rather of undisclosed origin and, to exacerbate matters, not confined to being solely comprised of the recently departed in that we watch as Spanish conquistadors, as well as those who died moments before, rise from the grave.
As noted by zombie scholar Peter Dendle (yes, there exists such a title and persons which freely and proudly align themselves with such a phrase, including David Chalmers of Australian National University; Selmer Bringsjord of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Larry Hauser of Alma College; Kim Paffenroth and Jamie Russell, authors of Gospel of the Living Dead: George Romero’s Visions of Hell on Earth and Book of the Dead: The Complete History of Zombie Cinema respectively; and genre artists Max Brooks and Brian Keene; among others), aside from redirecting his antagonist’s origins, Fulci wisely permits his narrative to naturalistically unfold as plot supercedes character development. However, instead of being a defect, in the stead of character, the event at hand–global apocalypse–takes center stage, thus lending to the overbearing sense of foreboding doom for, during such mayhem, few would have the chance to avail themselves to the opportunity of introducing themselves to one another as any and all Puritanical conceits are abandoned in order to concisely illustrate unrelenting death, replete in its undiscriminating, amoral nature and, especially, its subsequent gore (Fulci even flippantly grants us two characters who engage in a premarital kiss who manage, by pure chance, to escape with their lives). As a consequence, the hectic, seemingly haphazard presentation of his characters parallel the breakneck pace at which the world is collapsing around them as everyone, once on the island, vainly, and perhaps egoistically (verses pragmatically plotting escape), attempt to discover the cause of the epidemic (though it is implied that maybe, just maybe, mad science–verses two other suspects: Voodoo and disease–is the culprit in that Menard hastily, almost as if he were fueled by guilt, attempts to find a cure).
Yet, Fulci masterfully bypasses positing any genuinely plausible genesis of the outbreak for, ultimately, the cause is of no consequence when little could be done even if humanity were able to determine the origin to the contagion. Instead, the Italian director pauses to focus upon the undeads’ irksome economy of movement (and stunningly original appearance, the product of make-up artist Giannetto De Rossi’s award-winning hand) as they animalistically exert the minimum of effort in order to conserve energy for later attacks. It is during such instances that Fulci refuses to divert the camera when an inevitable death commences for we, as well as his characters, are literally forbidden escape or refuge from the Hell that has descended upon Earth, epitomized in an infamous scene which involves Hitchcockian vulnerability via nudity as death nonetheless presents itself by way of a massive sliver of wood through the brain using the character’s eye as its point of entry. Unfortunately, many such scenes are erroneously cited as being largely gratuitous, foremost of which includes a sequence involving the seemingly absurd pairing of a shark and a zombie (Ramon Bravo). However, considering that no definite suggestion, no less answer, is granted as to the plague’s source, such accounts for how the undead epidemic gains access to foreign shores after being introduced as having originated on an remote island.
What might be surprising to a Fulci novice is that, contrary to much of the negative criticism directed at the film, Zombie contains numerous instances of poignantly placed comedy atop several instances of seafaring symbolism (the island of Matool acts as a Melvillian doubloon: The island serves as the locale of a potential story for Peter while Ann is seeking the isle in hopes of retrieving her father, all of which is occurring amid a quartet of characters whose surnames reference parts of a ship), both of which assist the director in molding his work into a cohesive whole. Cleverly, Peter prompts Ann to fake a make-out session once they have given their location away aboard the Bowles’ ship, which has been placed under temporary police custody. Wryly, both Farrow and McCulloch convincingly present an improv exchange in the presence of the officer on duty in order to avoid being arrested. Later, a taxi driver coincidentally remembers that he has two friends who sorely desire to take two Americans sightseeing after being unable to disclose any information in the wake of an empty palm. Yet neither instance of humor is arbitrarily inserted into the work, though the hardened critic might be tempted to cite Fulci’s extensive background in the genre for the scenes’ inclusions. However, once examined, we quickly become cognizant of the fact that the director is granting us our last reprieve, our last gasp of untainted air so to speak, prior to pulling us into the quagmire of terror (as opposed to continuing to gradually increase the tension that began at the film’s commencement, Fulci opts to release his hold, only to return with twice as much pressure).
Unjustly ridiculed due to George Romero’s seemingly omnipresent and omnipotent influence over the genre upon its release, Lucio Fulci’s Zombie deserves to stand as a landmark, not only within Italian horror, but as a masterwork of undead cinema. Due largely to the passage of time, the film’s unremitting vision of the apocalypse, skillfully balanced and masterfully presented, is ever-so-gradually granting audiences their much-needed objectivity in order to experience the devastation of absolute terror again for the first time, in a manner not dissimilar (and however ironical) to the tone, pitch, and constancy of Romero’s zombie canon, signaled, perhaps, by the film housing one of two figurehead zombie for the genre (Romero’s lovable Bud being counter to what Fulci affectionately referred to as his “flower pots,” due to the amount of caking and layering De Rossi utilized in order to creature his reanimated fiends).
Trivia tidbit: Zombie, if for no other reason, warrants greatness for it prompted Rupert Murdoch, Head of Fox Entertainment, to expel members of the film crew upon their impromptu entrance into a meeting which he was chairing. Apparently, Mr. Murdoch intuitively felt that he was in the presence of yet another infamous Video Nasty.
-Egregious Gurnow
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
