- aka “Zombi” and “Zombie 2”
- Director: Lucio Fulci
- Writer: Elisa Briganti
- Stars: Tisa Farrow, Ian McCulloch, Richard Johnson
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 31 Minutes
Synopsis
The dead man rises, and is shot in the head. “The boat can leave now,” says the man with the gun. Credits roll.
A sailboat arrives in New York City harbor, but the boat seems empty. The harbor patrol boards the ship, and one of them is attacked by a decomposing zombie. The other shoots the zombie repeatedly, and it falls overboard.
The policeman’s body is taken to the morgue for an autopsy. The policeman twitches a bit under the sheet.
Peter West, a newspaper reporter, is sent to investigate. Anne Bowles is brought in, and she identifies it as her father’s boat; she hasn’t seen him in three months. That night, she slips back onto the boat and finds West there; the two of them bluff a cop to make an easy escape. They find her father’s logbook, and he mentions that he’s contracted a strange island disease. West arranges for the two of them to fly to the island.
West and Anne head to the islands, whee they charter a boat from Brian and Susan. Meanwhile on the island of Matuu, Dr. Menard has lost contact with his radio. Mrs. Menard wants off this island right now, but without the radio, not much can be done. “They found another one, didn’t they?” She asks hysterically. “I’m going to tell everyone that you’re the one who’s crazy. Demented! Cruel!” And he slaps her.
Dr. Menard is researching the island disease, and he’s looking at his own blood in the microscope.
Brian and Susan stop the boat; she wants to do some topless scuba diving. The folks on the boat notice that they are pretty close to an island; could that be Matuu? Susan runs into a zombie underwater, and they fight. She escapes the zombie and a shark. The zombie, however, takes a big bite out of the shark before the shark removes his arm.
The native man explains the Dr. Menard that the natives are afraid and going crazy. They are talking about Voodoo. Mrs. Menard finds someone in the house; someone with rotting hands. She pinches his fingers off with the door. It breaks through the door and we get a brutal closeup of her losing an eye.
Dr. Menard’s patients keep dying, and then he shoots them in the head— afterwards. We see from the mass grave that this has been going on a while; two more are expected to die soon. Menard spots Brian’s flare gun and goes to pick up the four from the boat.
Menard explains that happened to Anne’s father. We soon see that the pre-credit sequence was Menard and her father. He can’t explain it, but he knows Voodoo is somehow involved with bringing the dead back to life; he’s seen it many times now.
Fritz, one of Menard’s friends, is bitten by a zombie right here in this village; they aren’t on the other side of the island any more. The four from the boat travel on to the doctor’s home to pick up Mrs. Menard. They find her half-eaten body as well as several people in the process of eating her.
Brian and Susan find an old conquistador cemetery. We soon learn that those super-old bodies aren’t completely decomposed yet. They start climbing up out of their graves, and one kills Susan. Soon, the island is literally crawling with the undead. They finally make it back to Menard’s hospital and barricade themselves inside.
West’s ankle is in bad shape. He hurt it running, and then got clawed by a zombie. Menard gets bitten. The nurse and the assistant get bitten. The zombies break in, and the surviving trio set them on fire. What’s worse than zombies? How about flaming zombies? The Susan zombie bites Brian.
Finally, the three make it to the boat and head back to civilization, but Brian’s been bitten, so we know what’s going to happen. They decide to lock him in the cabin as proof of what happened. They turn on the radio and hear about a huge zombie attack on New York City. We may not have seen what became of that dead policeman, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t get back up…
Commentary
The dubbing isn’t terrible, but it does detract from the film somewhat. The drumming got monotonous very quickly, and the high-pitched whine that played every time something creepy was happening literally made my ears hurt.
The eye-gouging scene was well done and super effective. The cemetery zombies with the worms and rot are some of the best rotten-zombies I’ve seen. You definitely get the impression that it’s not just the freshly-dead getting up this time around, although we never get a chance to see any bare skeletons.
It’s a little dated, and the film quality is pretty grainy and looks old, but it’s a really good film otherwise.