Zombie AKA Zombie 2: The Dead are Among Us (1979)

An abandoned ship is found in a New York City port with two zombies and no answers. The boat owner was a scientist and his daughter goes to the Caribbean island where he worked to find out if he's still alive and why the dead are walking.

Zombie 2 is the Italian sequel to Dawn of the Dead, released as Zombie in Italy. I've heard about it as a cult classic and finally decided to give it a try. It's definitely memorable in a cheesy 70's way. The zombies featured are the product of a doctor in the Caribbean messing around with voodoo rites and trying to understand their effect on people. Of course his experiments go out of control, causing an outbreak. As with the Romero movies, these zombies are slow, eat people, and can transmit their infection to others. The makeup effects are oretty decent. The blue skintone of Dawn of the Dead is gone for a more realistic brown and gray rotted look. Some have maggots wriggling around on their faces and it's a disgusting, memorable look.

I barely remember any of the characters in the movie because they are incidental. None of them are particularly interesting, well written, or well acted. There's a reporter Peter West who sleeps with the missing scientist's daughter Anne Bowles and travels with her and their newfound friends Brian and Susan. The missing scientist is Dr. David Menard who shames, abuses, and ridicules his wife Paola, who wants to leave the godforsaken island. (I don't blame her.) Most of them die in horrific, gory ways that don't always make sense. The most memorable death is Paola's. After a ridiculous struggle  the zombie impales her eye with part of a smashed door practically in slow motion and in extreme closeup. While the scene is iconic and very well done, this type of attack is too precise for a zombie to accomplish. With that logic, it fits right in to this wacky movie.

The most memorable scene to me for many reasons is the shark scene. Susan is swimming nude in the ocean and freaks out over a shark that's nowhere near her and not bothering her at all. While "avoiding" the already disinterested shark, she is attacked by an underwater zombie. Susan escapes, leaving the shark and zombie to duke it out. The fight between them is so awkward and weird. The shark is rather small in comparison to other malicious sharks in film. The zombie manhandles the poor thing, but it escapes and rams the boat hard enough to disable it despite its size. This entire scene is so weird and really stretches the logic of this already ridiculous film.

Zombie 2 is a very strange film that earns its titles as a video nasty and a cult classic. It's enjoyable if all you care about is zombie carnage. The ending has it in spades with some surprising kills, zombies popping out of the ground, a full on zombie assault, and a gut punch when they return to civilization. There are ridiculous elements like the tiny but powerful shark, gratuitous nudity, the lapses in logic, and the awful dubbing over of voices. The positives outweigh these things and I found myself enjoying the ride and the impressive gore effects. Do yourself a favor and watch this crazy cult classic.

My rating: 3/5 fishmuffins