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Reviews
Zombi 2 (1979)
A gore fest masterpiece
I've recently watched Romero's Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead during a self-imposed zombie movie mini-marathon. Next, I've decided to re-watch Lucio Fulci's 1979 classic entitled Zombie (or Zombi 2, or Zombie Flesh Eaters as you might find it). I first saw this one some years before, and, as it made quite a strong impression on me, I wanted to refresh my memory with it. My opinion? Well, this truly is a masterpiece.
The story is quite interesting. A sailboat is found adrift in New York Harbor. 2 police officers go to investigate, and one of them is mutilated by a fat zombie. The other one shoots the zombie, who falls into water and presumably floats to the shore. The boat is found to belong to a man whose daughter, Anne Bowles comes forward and tells everyone that his father went missing some months ago after spending some time on an obscure Caribbean Island, doing some kind of research. The girl teams up with a journalist, Peter West, and decide to go to investigate themselves what happened to her father after she found a letter in the boat letting her know that her father contacted a deadly disease on the island and he might not escape alive. Arriving in the Caribbeans, the two team up with an American couple, Brian Hull and Susan Barrett, who agree to take them onboard on their boat for a trip to the tiny mysterious island. On this island, they encounter an eccentric doctor who supposedly tries to find a cure for a mysterious disease which first kills and then resurrects the dead. From here on, hell breaks loose when the dead start to rise from their graves under the apparent spells of voodoo magic and the situation becomes quite nasty for our heroes...
Fulci deserves a lot of credit for directing one of the best zombie movies in all international repertoire. What makes this movie so special in my opinion is its ability to expand the premise from an almost claustrophobic feeling, in the setting of a tiny Caribbean island, to a truly apocalyptic proportion considering its ending. Since horror lurks everywhere, on land and even in water (yes, the zombie vs. Shark fight is epic!), the viewer is left with almost no coins of safety when surfing through the movie together with the characters, and the impending doom is felt more and more as the action goes on. The characters might not be the best ones, but, as with any serious zombie movie, humans eventually become alienated in an undead world and somehow become secondary players. I think that the viewer should eventually develop some kind of sympathy towards the characters and to understand their reasons and behaviors. Personally, I would have spared the gorgeous females from such horrifying tortures (the famous and forever haunting eyeball splinting of Dr. Menard's wife and Susan's throat ripping by the film's poster star), but I take that as a subtle metaphor for the eventual decay of even the most beautiful human body after death comes into play.
Another major point worth noting are the special effects. Here, zombies really look how they should look: decomposing piles of human flesh wandering around. The zombie make-up is extremely realistic and make zombies better looking (if you can say that) even than Romero's undead. The gore scenes are mind-boggling, and they sure will satisfy even the most hardcore gore fans. I would like to point to a particular scene, where the zombies rise from their graves, including the maggot-eyed dude who is depicted in the movie poster, accompanied by the fantastic score. This is one of the best zombie scenes ever shot and leaves the viewer with a truly unnerving impression.
Speaking about the score, the soundtrack is also incredible. In fact, after watching this one, I listened to the main score over and over again, like I've never done before with another soundtrack. The creepy and haunting quality of Fabio Frizzi's score fits perfectly with the almost eschatological tone of the film's narrative.
As a conclusion, Lucio Fulci's Zombie really reinvigorated the zombie sub-genre of horror movies and brought it to new levels of creepiness and goriness. Therefore, this is an absolute must watch for any zombie fan.
The Bay (2012)
A rather enjoyable one
This 2012 found-footage Eco-horror film pictures in an allegorical way one of the most ardent problems of our modern society : industrialization-driven ecosystem pollution and its consequences.
A Maryland town near Chesapeake Bay is plagued by a mysterious infection-like epidemic which kills hundreds of people during 4th of July 2009. Filmed in the found-footage style, we gradually learn from various recordings and eyewitnesses accounts that this mayhem is caused by a mutated isopod species whose larva infects the body and starts to consume the flesh from inside-out. It is revealed that the crustaceans got mutated due to the heavy pollution of the Chesapeake Bay by various means, including the disposal of chicken manure, saturated with steroids or radioactive spill from a near power-plant.
First, when you have an Eco-disaster, you should have politics involved too, and this one is no exception. At the end of the film, we learned that the whole stuff was covered up with the help of the government. The idea is, no matter the costs, when big money is involved, the truth should stay out of the light.
Even though it is revealed that the mutated creatures were finally killed by a massive cleaning involving chlorine, this entry definitely has an apocalyptic taste that the fans will enjoy.
And as a take-home message, next time you go to Mac or KFC, think again what you wanna eat, because you might end up feeling your internals starting to crawl.
Paura nella città dei morti viventi (1980)
A classic worth watching
With this movie, the Italian horror master Lucio Fulci gives us a pretty decent trip in the zombie genre.
The plot is simple. An unfortunate priest hangs himself and unleashes the evil into our world, somewhere in a small town in New England, presumably on an ancient Salem-like witchcraft cradle. The malevolent aether starts resurrecting the dead from graves and coffins, which unleash a festival of gore around them. A journalist, a psychiatrist and a psychic who was nearly buried alive team up to bring the supernatural mayhem to an end. Will they succeed?
This movie introduces the concept (at least to me) of ghost zombies, so literally you have zombies that appear out of nowhere, kill the unlucky ones, and then disappear into thin air as if they were never there.
The special effects are cool and, as a big fan of practical effects which I find far more realistic than even the most advanced CGI, they made a good impression on me. So, if you are a big fan of gore and decomposed bodies and stuff like that, you are really going to like it. The zombies way of killing is particularly interesting, they basically crush the skull and squeeze out the victim's brain with their hands. And you have a lot of intestines also. And again, if you are a maggot-loving freak, you're going to digest this one pretty easy.
The soundtracks produce some eerie '80 atmosphere here, so well recognized and beloved by the hardcore fans of this horror subgenre.
Of course, this film suffers, like almost all of its kind, from some well-known drawbacks, such as sloppy, underdeveloped characters who seem to lack the basic fight-or-flight survival reactions that would normally be triggered during a surreal situation such as those depicted in the movie, and cheesy dialogues, but nevertheless, this entry remains a highly enjoyable one especially for the dedicated fans who are willing to spend 90 minutes plunging themselves into 80's nostalgia.
Rabid (2019)
Interesting
I was a little bit reluctant whether to watch this remake of Cronenberg's '77 original, especially after watching the original. However, I gave it a try and that's what I make of it.
The central character, Rose Miller is a young, ambitious fashion designer working hard to impress her boss, the tough, heavily accented Gunther. One night, she unexpectedly leaves a party, where she was invited by her to-be boyfriend, outraged by the gossips of her colleagues and gets involved in a horrible car crush that almost killed her. However, the plastic surgery she got for facial reconstruction leaves her pretty much disfigured, and in an attempt to get things better, she visits a private clinic involved in cutting edge, stem cell technology, lead by the eccentric Dr. William Burroughs. The experimental skin grafts are apparently successful, she is fully recovered, allowing her to resume her social and professional life. However, after she leaves the clinic, she starts to experience bizarre hallucinations, violent episodes of tummy aches and a insatiable craving for blood. Concomitantly, a horrendous rabies epidemics starts, with people going crazy all of a sudden. She soon learns that the treatment she had got came with a very high cost and that she might be the root for all problems.
Now, I don't want to compare it with its original, surely it has its flaws, but I really liked the way this concept of immortality was portraited. After all, the ethical implications of unregulated medical research, especially in the field of stem cell technology is very well painted in the form of out-of-control human body transformations. It is not necessarily the already over represented topic of "beauty comes at a cost" that makes this entry thought-provoking in my opinion, but the challenging ideas that monsters are not only with violent tentacles and sharp teeth getting out of control and slashing others' throats, but the real ones and the most dangerous ones could be good-looking, top professionals capable of surpassing moral and ethical barriers, behind which they can see endless possibilities.