{"id":2527,"date":"2012-12-04T14:53:31","date_gmt":"2012-12-04T13:53:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.electricsheepmagazine.co.uk\/reviews\/?p=2527"},"modified":"2012-12-04T14:58:30","modified_gmt":"2012-12-04T13:58:30","slug":"zombieflesheaters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.electricsheepmagazine.co.uk\/reviews\/2012\/12\/04\/zombieflesheaters\/","title":{"rendered":"Zombie Flesh Eaters"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Zombie Flesh Eaters<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n

\nFormat:<\/B> Blu-ray\/DVD\/Limited edition steelbook

\nRelease date:<\/B> 3 December 2012

\nWith live piano duet accompaniment by Robin Harris and Laura Anstee <\/A>

\nDistributor:<\/B> Arrow Video

\nDirector:<\/B> Lucio Fulci

\nWriters:<\/B> Elisa Briganti, Dardano Sacchetti

\nOriginal title:<\/B> Zombi 2<\/I>

\nCast:<\/B> Tisa Farrow, Ian McCulloch, Richard Johnson, Al Cliver, Auretta Gay

\nItaly 1979

\n91 mins\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Zombie Flesh Eaters<\/I>, or ‘the one with the eyeball splinter\u2019, as it was referred to at school. My family having arrived late to the VHS revolution, my main exposure to the video nasty boom of the early 80s was the playground descriptions of various unwholesome sequences relayed to me with relish by various classmates. By the time a VCR actually arrived in our house the hammer had come down and all those exotic goodies had disappeared from the shelves. It was the James Ferman era at the BBFC, and so it took me until well into my twenties to catch up with, say, \u2018the one where the girl throws up all her guts\u2019 (City of the Living Dead<\/i><\/A>) and put it together that a good deal of the more outrageous moments of playground lore emerged from the oeuvre of one director, Lucio Fulci. Oddly enough, given the usual reliability of schoolyard chatter, the films that I finally saw were every bit as horrible as described, and a whole lot stranger.<\/p>\n

Zombie Flesh Eaters<\/i> is one of his more straightforward, pacier efforts. An unmanned ship drifts into New York harbour, bringing with it unpleasant surprises for the harbour patrol, and a mystery for Tisa Farrow. The boat belongs to her father, and the search for him leads her, a journalist (Ian McCulloch) and a couple of wary locals to a Caribbean island where Richard Johnson is the doctor understandably turning to the bottle as the night is filled with jungle drums and the dead are feeling restless. Much mayhem ensues. <\/p>\n

ZFE<\/i> was released in 1979 a couple of months after Dawn of the Dead<\/i> (aka Zombi<\/i>) as Zombi 2<\/i> and, while clearly indebted to the Romero film, it also harks back to the likes of White Zombie<\/i> and I Walked with a Zombie<\/i>, in its island setting and its use of a voodoo curse as an undead motivator rather than any cod scientific explanations. Romero rules still apply, however, in the \u2018shoot \u2019em in the head\u2019 policy and the infectious nature of zombie bites. Anyone wondering if this makes much sense clearly hasn\u2019t been exposed to enough Italian cinema.<\/p>\n

Indeed, Fulci\u2019s best horror films gain greatly from a feeling that they don\u2019t quite make sense, that nobody on screen is acting like a human being would. As with City of the Living Dead<\/i>, The Beyond<\/i><\/A>, and House by the Cemetery<\/i>, his people just seem to hang around waiting for the worst to happen, blind to the mounting evidence that they should flee. He has a tendency towards stately pacing, a contemptuous disregard for narrative cohesion and an eye for weird images. The net result of this is to give his films an authentic nightmare undertow, but at the cost of any human character or motivation. It remains an enigma to me how much of this oneiric freakiness is deliberate, and how much a result of the filmmaker\u2019s shortcomings. Fulci in his pomp is several rungs above hacks like Umberto Lenzi or Astride\/Aristide Massaccesi (aka Joe D\u2019Amato): he can frame an arresting shot, create a memorable sequence and has a definite style, but seems to be indifferent to the pleasures of dialogue and performance, and often mixes effective set pieces with moments of alarming judgement, letting his camera linger endlessly over shoddy effects that any sane director would cut away from.*<\/B> Zombi 2<\/I> was also known around my school as \u2018the one where a zombie fights a shark\u2019 and, indeed, that\u2019s what happens here, witnessed by a topless Auretta Gay wearing a scuba tank. It\u2019s a scene that seems to exemplify Fulci: it\u2019s slow, exploitative, absolutely ridiculous and genuinely surreal. It\u2019s also typical in that the ramifications of the moment are left murkily unexplored as the plot trundles on.**<\/B><\/p>\n

Viewed from the 21st century, Zombie Flesh Eaters<\/i> seems to come from an age before irony: there is no self-conscious playfulness here, and very little humour. Fabio Frizzi and Giorgio Tucci\u2018s score is perfect in its epic, cheesy, doom-laden portentousness. This is the 1970s. Nobody is \u2018empowered\u2019 by violence here, and it\u2019s all going to end rather badly. I think I love this terrible film.<\/p>\n

The soundtrack of Zombie Flesh Eaters<\/I> is available on limited red vinyl with artwork by Graham Humphreys from Death Waltz Records<\/A>.<\/div>\n

Mark Stafford<\/B><\/I><\/p>\n

*<\/B>The rubber spiders in the library in The Beyond<\/i>, I\u2019m looking at you.
\n**<\/B>Are the oceans of the world now crawling with waterlogged ghouls and infected sealife? Buggered if I know, and Lucio\u2019s not telling.<\/p>\n

Watch the trailer:<\/B><\/p>\n