Zombie Flesh Eaters (1980)

Simply Perfect

It is a performances centric movie

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

This has been on my list for a while. I was happy I was finally able to check it out when I started my Shudder subscription. This movie is amazing. The opening scene, the city shots in New York, the shark vs zombie fight scene and the chaos when you get down to the Caribbean. The practical effects are incredible and the suspense /terror during the Zombie scenes are excellent. I can't believe this is a horror movie. It honestly feels like a big budget uncut James Bond movie. The island/Caribbean feel reminds of Dr. No. It's not until a zombie pushes a woman's head through a broken wooden shard that you remember you are watching a Horror movie again.

I've recently been on a bit of a kick to catch up on watching films that I've been putting off for years, and Zombie (or Zombie Flesh Eaters) was high at the top of the list. Initially, I found that the New York scenes and the scenes in the confines of the boat really didn't really grab my attention. The scene where Anne and Peter pretend to be lovers to avoid the wrath of the policeman didn't seem to make much sense at all, but there we go.Things definitely get better towards the second half of the movie, helped in spades by topless scenes of Olga Karlatos as Mrs. Menard and of course, a zombie fighting a shark. As the action ramps up towards the end, the zombies seem to become more and more disgusting. Absolutely fowl creatures! Fulci most definitely created the ultimate zombie; some of them are absolutely disgusting. Brilliant! Bit of a daft ending too, but I really enjoyed this film. The graininess of the footage really lent itself to the content. Classic!

In 1979 "The Grandfather of Gore" Lucio Fulci hit it out of the park (with a bullet) on this film. Zombi 2 has been one of my favorite zombie films for quite a few years now, and every time I watch it I like it more. Fulci oozes style in this one, displaying that, although he's known mostly as a gore-meister, he really knew how to ramp up the tension when he wanted to. The scene with the door and the broken wood (you know which one I mean), is not only exceptionally well paced and satisfying when that climax is reached, but it was also quite artistically photographed. One of the many highlights in this film, and a high watermark of Fulci's career as a whole. Hell, it's now an icon of Italian Horror in general...it's that good.Apart from Fulci's now iconic sequences (Zombie vs shark!), this film just wouldn't be the same without Fabio Frizzi's brilliant score! Frizzi does not get the praise he deserves for some of the incredible scores he provided in his day, and the work he did on this film is no exception. If you like Italian horror, watch it...immediately. If you like Zombie films--understand that you're in for a different flavor of entertainment, but definitely give it a shot. It's a film that has earned at least one viewing. Watch it!

Finally able to track her missing father, a woman joins up with a reporter to search for him on a small Caribbean island where they find an accomplice under siege by voodoo-raised zombies unleashed by irate locals and must help the remaining survivors get away from the creatures.This was not only the best Italian zombie film ever made but also one of the best horror films ever made. One of the film's better aspect here is the actual atmosphere of the island which is accomplished through the cinematography in this one which has to be some of the best in the genre. This is a thoroughly underrated feature and really helps to sell this one here as countless scenes get their power that way, coming from singular shots like the scene where it shows them traveling through the countryside flanked in between a rolling forest and a small lake on either side or the shot of the crab scuttling down the village street while a zombie slowly shuffling towards the front seem like simple throwaway shots yet there's a real attempt to do a meaningful shot with almost nothing. When the terror starts, it's right there amongst the action, letting us get to see the upcoming dread along with the characters. This lets the film get on with plenty of striking, utterly beautiful scenes of carnage just as much as the throwaway scenes, from the masterful stalking of the wife in her house where the fingers scraping the windows during the shower lets us know there's someone out there and that leads into the stalking and barricading to keep it out followed up by the legendary gore-gag where she's lead right into a large wooden spike broken off from the door, it pierces her eye and goes all the way in, then is broken off inside. The set- up to it is just as important, as there is an unbelievable amount of suspense that is included to get the viewer on edge before the big blow, while the further payoff of them coming upon a corpse-feasting sequence that has to be the single most brutal example of this type seen as the amount of carnage done to the corpse before we get to see it is simply astounding, then it continues on in ever more graphic close-ups from there. It's really helped along by the seeming comfortableness of the camera to be there, never flinching from each succulent-sounding rip or the casual devouring of the flesh and it captures it as if this was a documentary. The rest of the film is great as well: it moves so fast that you don't realize it is only a complete hour and a half. You are caught up in what was going on so much that you lose all comprehension of time, letting the action of the zombie resurrection in the cemetery as the Earth heaves and groans, dirt falls away and a body sits up in the grave, followed by several others in the surrounding graves, the nearly infamous zombie-vs-shark scene partway through which is such a remarkable and original idea and then comes the final conflagration in the church which is such a big action sequence there's plenty of high-energy work on display. Another wonderful surprise here is the simply grotesque zombies seen in the movie where they look decayed and rotten. It really was like the zombies were dead for several hundred years as the dark-brown coloring made them look dirty and earth-like along with the blood-like coloring making it come together so well. There are almost no flaws with this one.Rated NC-17: Extreme Graphic Violence, Full Nudity, and Language.