Zombie

Zombie

a.k.a. Zombie Flesh Eaters

Italy - 1980

Director - Lucio Fulci

Anchor Bay, 2002, DVD

As an unabashed 15+ year fan (short for fanatic) of zombie movies I must admit that one of my favorites, in fact my absolute favorite zombie film is Lucio Fulci's Zombi 2 (known to most US viewers of course as simply Zombie).

There are several reasons for this effusive gushing affection (I choose my adjectives with care).

• The spiritually and emotionally uplifting poster art, see right.
• The effusive gushing gore brought to you by Gianetto DeRossi (more recently he did Haute Tension, a gory (duh) French slasher film from the directors of the decent remake of The Hills Have Eyes.
• The low budget plot which is taken up primarily by zombies eating people, zombies shuffling, zombies rising slowly from improbably shallow graves, and people shrieking as they flee the shuffling hungry zombies. Of course there's some dramatic tension and character development in there too, oh and some nudity, but who's counting when the impromptu tracheotomies-via-zombie-mandible are taking place?
• Tisa Farrow, and more importantly Ian McCullough, two steadfastly mediocre actors who put every ounce of passion into every zombie induced shriek.
• Ummm, it's fucking Italian, and frankly you cannot get much better than an Italian exploitation film. The Wops did it best and they did it best, period. There is something in the Italian cultural mentality that allows for envelope pushing extremes, just ask Benito.
• The soundtrack which just adds a level of low budget menace which cannot be equaled I think by anything American, and few things Italian. Piercing, unnerving, almost nauseating, it is the perfect compliment to the film. When Phill and I at Kung Fu Grindhouse showed this movie, one of the things we were most excited about was getting to hear the soundtrack over a full PA system. It was a thing of beauty.

This last point is a big one, and it is what inspired me to write this blog entry. I've long wanted to have myself a copy of the soundtrack in order to assail my ears with images of undead mastication whenever it so pleased myself to do so. Alas, the one semi-bootleg copy available retail was ridiculously overpriced and had to be shipped from the land of really bad movies (see also the United Kingdom), not to mention being out of print.
Enter The Manchester Morgue, a blog which I found because it was kind enough to post a link here. I wasn't sure for a while what Manchester Morgue was trying to do besides being exploitation movie nerds (which is fine in and of itself) but hey, on closer inspection I got it. If you want to find the music from an old exploitation movie, Manchester Morgue is the place to look. Once I figured that one out (which took all of 3 or 4 minutes of actual attention paying) guess what I began searching frantically for?

Oh sweet wienie roast. Now I can think of flesh eating all day long with a smile on my face.

Visit my new friends over at The Manchester Morgue for good things and look HERE for more Zombi 2 coverage from LVA, and HERE for zombies in general.

The Last Hunter

The Last Hunter

Italy - 1980

Director – Antonio Margheriti (as Anthony M. Dawson)

Vestron Video, 1985, VHS

Run time - 1 hour, 37 min.

Sometime near the end of the American Vietnam War, in a Saigon strip club a bunch of burnout ‘Nam rats lounge about while local girls wearing next to nothing gyrate lazily. David Warbeck, crustiest of those present, swings in his hammock, smoking and staring into space. When a drunk tries to intimidate him into a confrontation, Warbecks ethereal bitterness and detatchment prove unable to target, and the drunk moves on to the other stereotype, Steve. High strung and high as a kite Steve is more than willing to fulfill the batshit crazy role, and blasts the drunk guy in the face with a pistol before giving himself the same treatment.


During the credits, Warbeck boards a Huey and heads to a hot drop zone where he leaps solo from the chopper armed only with a rifle and a rucksack.Landing in a river he is soon picked up by a small liason team of boonie-rats including Tisa Farrow (fresh from Zombi 2), as a foreign correspondent. Trekking toward Warbecks first rendezvous point the tiny team stumbles repeatedly into multiple ‘Nam movie cliché’s from booby traps to the ubiquitous child-with-grenade trick in a village which the team subsequently reduces to splinters with small arms fire along with said inhabitants. Later that night, much to Warbeck’s disintrest Tisa squeezes out some back-story. He on the other hand can merely fever-dream flashback his motivations –both military and moral (i.e. the plot we've been waiting for) - in a cold sweat, ensuring that the bleeding-heart mothering Tisa will “ironically” fall for the distant wounded warrior.


Arriving at their destination the team discovers another bitter recalcitrant commander and a bunch of stoned demoralized and disheveled loony-tunes GI’s. Warbeck justifies their near-raping of Tisa with the old it’s OK, the war made ‘em do it, it’s not their fault excuse. Just then, the cave is infiltrated by VC and Warbeck easily flips the off the cuff mass-killing switch back on again. He and his surviving team members escape and leap onto a passing boat loaded with other stoned GI’s and shoot them all. Only Warbeck escapes unwounded and returns to the jungle where he is captured and complains bitterly when he ends up being the recipient of strangely familiar mistreatment.

Since director Margheriti made Cannibal Apocalypse the same year, it’s a bit disappointing that Last Hunter is merely typical Italian knockoff trash. Warbeck and Farrow give it some credibility but the plot itself is a lifted and degraded mix of The Deer Hunter and Apocalypse Now. The addition of some effective gore and the subtraction of some logical continuity and all moral message from its influences merely reinforces its base, reactionary, um… ‘Namsploitation.