Zombie Flesh Eaters
Under the bright sun, the Morning Lady drifts into New York harbour, apparently unmanned and causing a hazard on the busy waterway, a patrol boat despatched to board it and investigate and one of the officers attacked belowdecks by a bloated, decaying figure who takes several bullets before falling overboard, reporter Peter West attempting to ascertain the details of the incident and death by “a huge laceration of the juggler” when he encounters Anne Bowles.
The timid and concerned daughter of the missing owner, she has not heard from him since his last later saying he had fallen ill, so the two head to his last known destination, the Caribbean island of Matool, couriered by vacationing couple Brian Hull and Susan Barrett on their boat, there finding the equally distraught and dishevelled Doctor David Menard, fighting an outbreak of a disease he cannot isolate which causes the dead to rise, the locals blaming a voodoo curse.
Directed by Lucio Fulci, soon to be notorious for City of the Living Dead and The House by the Cemetery, released in his native Italy in August 1979 as Zombi 2, positioning itself as an unlikely, unauthorised and unnecessary sequel to George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead which had been released there as Zombi, it was not until 1980 that it received international distribution as Zombie Flesh Eaters, released cut on VHS in 1981 and then uncut the following year and just as swiftly withdrawn as a “video nasty.”
Starring Survivors‘ Ian McCulloch and Blazing Magnum‘s Tisa Farrow as Peter and Anne alongside Al Cliver and Auretta Gray as Brian and Susan with The Haunting‘s Richard Johnson and Olga Karlatos as Doctor Menard and his wife Paola, he a drunkard and she bordering on hysteria soon found to be justified, despite the immediate influence of Romero it is apparent the film is more tied to the “traditional” older works such as White Zombie and I Walked with a Zombie.
The question of whether it is a disease vector or a witch doctor responsible the walking dead asked but never answered, the local superstition driving much of Menard’s sceptical frustration, they are slow, shambling and dumb, surfacing from ridiculously shallow graves across the island and through the jungle to startle the travellers who are little better, fixed in place as they stare when confronted with cannibalism and making little attempt to escape as they are assaulted and bitten, infected themselves and swiftly succumbing.
Any menace or threat difficult to take seriously when the ensemble are so disinclined to defend themselves, hampered by the awkward dialogue of Elisa Briganti’s translated script their indifference to the situation and lack of survival instinct or wit makes Zombie Flesh Eaters tedious and unbelievable, the only standout scene the early underwater sequence featuring a shark attack, mesmerising but insanely misguided and actually directed by effects artist Giannetto De Rossi without Fulci’s knowledge at the behest of the producer.
Zombie Flesh Eaters will be streaming on the Arrow platform from Monday 28th July
