ZOMBI 2 - Lucio Fulci - "Let's Eat Out Tonight" (1979)

I'm switching nights with Tabonga on this part of the Halloween Countdown to wish Reverend Tom Frost a Happy Freakin' Bloody Birthday, and I can't think of a better way to do it than with Director Lucio Fulci's monsterpiece of blood and guts from 1979, "Zombi 2" or "Zombie" or "Zombie Flesh Eaters," whatever the Hell you want to call it!! Now Reverend Tom Frost is about the most Halloweenish guy I know, and one of the few people in modern society that knows how to make a black cat moan, so here's to him, Cheers mon ami and Bon Appétit!!!

Lucio Fulci's ""ZOMBI 2" is a story unto itself! Today the most popular show on television is "The Walking Dead," but in 1979 it was quite a different story! Although made in 1979, Fulci's bloody banquet wasn't released until 1980, but only as long as it had one minute and 46 seconds cut out of it and was given an X rating! In 1984 the movie was actually banned and was put on the 'video nasty' list! It was cut and re-cut, rated and re-rated over the years, and finally the full version was released in 2005! I'm honestly not a big gore fan, but this film didn't seem THAT bad compared to tons of stuff made in the last 20 years! It just came out in the wrong place at the wrong time!!

Not all thoughts are original!  George Romero's "Dawn Of The Dead" was released in Italy as "Zombi" so Fulci changed the name of this film to "Zombi 2" to cash in on the zombie craze!

As the film opens, the viewer is faced with a loaded gun! In an uncensored scene, you see a body bound and wrapped in a shroud, get shot in the skullbone!

A boat drifts into New York harbor, everything's a mess and there's nobody on board! So it seems until a big zombie jumps out of a closet, and runs amok and then he gets shot and falls in the ocean!

Tisa (Anthropophagus) Farrow is the daughter of the guy who owns the yacht! She and a journalist played by Ian (Contamination) McColloch are thrown together by fate, and must search out the reasons for this big mess! They get a lead and head out to the tropical island known as Matul!

Here's where I get just a little unhinged! The kindly Doctor on the island refuses to accept the reality that voodoo might just really exist, and spends all his time in denial! He only believes in science despite what he sees happening in front of his eyes for the last couple of months! The Doctor is played by Richard (The Haunting) Johnson! Richard has had a long and varied career and is still working today!

The Doctor is so removed from the reality around him that he leaves his wife alone in their house while he's miles away, even though she is scared to death about what is happening all around her! She wants off the island, but instead is one of the first victims of the new mass zombie attack! Olga (Purple Rain) Karlatos has the role of the wife!

Olga is one of the first large scale all you can eat zombie buffets that the locals imbibe in! This scene was edited out of the earlier versions!

After that, it's time for the zombies to go after the Doctor and all the new arrivals in a no holds barred bloody freak fest!!  This zombie's mug was used on a lot of the posters!

Here's a couple of great shots of the zombies shuffling in for the big "Zombie Jamboree!" Really, these zombies would be quite easy to outrun, actually you could skip, and still get away from them!

The zombie's awesome make-up was done by Giannetto(Cannibal Apocalypse)(When Men Carried Clubs and Women Played Ding-Dong) De Rossi. Not necessarily these three, but a lot of the zombies in the movie look alike because there were four brothers, the Dell'Acqua clan, Alberto, Arnaldo, Ottaviano, and Roberto playing members of the zombie community!

They can't think, so the zombies move around like they are in some slow motion mosh pit, taking turns at banging into the door with their sides, which eventually breaks the door down! They just know they're hungry!

In the end, Tisa and Ian somehow manage to escape the island and get back to New York. They're going to be surprised that's it's not going to be as difficult as they thought to convince people they just got off an island full of zombies! Fulci didn't have a big enough budget to stop traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge, so despite the zombie takeover, there's still a bunch of cars driving around!

These days you can see the whole reviled uncut version on Creepster TV for a pittance! Anybody up for a cheeseburger and a beer?