Woodoo - Die Schreckensinsel der Zombies

This was my first ever video nasty, originally viewed in the mid 80's, and for that reason it shall always have a special place in my heart. The first thing that struck me was that the budget must have been relatively high. Fulci was never a great one for narrative coherence (this is probably his most conventional film) and typically for the Italian films of the time this must have been pitched as a sequence of set-pieces (the shark battle, the fiery finale, and of course, the infamous eyeball scene). Unfortunately for the most part these are fairly flatly directed and fall short of their potential for tension. The earlier expository scenes are especially protracted, and throughout Fulci has a tendency to leave shots hanging well past their sell-by date. That said, the film is not completely artless, and whereas it lacks suspense, it does have a degree of atmosphere about it. After the political correctness of the 80's and the 'post-Modernist' knowingness of the 90's, Zombie Flesheaters, with its excessive gore and its leering nudity, its risible dubbed dialog and its a complete lack of humour, with its simplistic plotting and comic-book characterisation, is probably most interesting if viewed from the perspective that firstly, that there was ever a market for this sort of thing and secondly, that people thought that films like this needed suppressing. Yes it's true, they don't make them like this anymore!

N newspaper reported named Peter goes on an trip with a woman named Anne to try to discover what happened to her father. What they discover is an island where the natives still practice voodoo and have started to bring the dead back to life.

This was the first zombie movie I had ever seen. I was pretty young, we had watched it on laser disc. What this did was awaken a love for this particular kind of monster. It is an Italian film, so if the words not matching people's mouths bothers you, this is not for you. There was no CGI and special effects of this kind were really in their infancy back then, so some of them do not hold up against more modern offerings.

This is a great movie though, including the zombie versus the shark. I have never seen anything like it since.

A film that starts almost quietly, with low quality sequences of zombies not very suggestive and not very engaging, but which gradually improve more and more until they are terrifying towards the end. In some scenes the emotional reactions of the characters to certain events seem almost non-existent while others are very trashy (e.g. The woman who stares terrified a zombie but stays where she is and doesn't even attempt to escape, or the four people who are in a wood full of zombies but decide to split into couples). In many scenes, however, there is a lot of scary atmosphere and in others a little bit less; some shot are amazing and have a very good photography, some others not; all in all the plot is very good and the gory style of Fulci is stunning and result of a very creative mind. I think you won't regret to watch it, it's totally worth.

This has got to be one of the best Zombie films ever. It is one of Fulci's best. Great gore effects and cool zombies. Rent or buy this now if you are a fan of the Living Dead, or just a fan of gore.

A 1979 hit in Italy, "Zombie" has been imported by Jerry Gross to capitalize on the public's fancy for gory horror films. State-of-the-art makeup effects by Gianneto de Rossi are sure to please fans of the form, and far out-distance the dreams of '60s gore pioneer Herschel Gordon Lewis ("Blood Feast").

Pic was shot as an unauthorized followup to George A. Romero's hit "Dawn of the Dead", which was released in Europe under the title "Zombie". New pic is titled "Zombie 2" in Italy, but qualifies for original "Zombie" tag in the U. S. Story has Tisa Farrow traveling from New York to the tiny island of Matul, near St. Thomas, in search of her father, whose sailboat mysteriously returned to New York harbor with only zombies aboard. Accompanying her is an intrepid reporter Ian McCulloch (hinted comically to be working for the Post), and the handsome couple (Al Clliver and Annetta Gay) who charter their boat.

Island doctor Richard Johnson is coping with the zombie epidemic, blamed on local voodoo rites. Stealing implausibly from the mythos in Romero's "Dead" films, these zombies can be destroyed by a gunshot in the head. FIlm's open-ending sets up a sequel, as the zombies overrun New York City (staged cheaply by a radio news report and a single shot of the zombies shambling across the George Washington bridge).

Director Fulci adopts a leisurely pace and goes after daylight horror, playing off the grisly, cannibalistic attacks against picture postcard beauty of the island and New York harbor. Emphasis on blood reaches the ludicrous extreme of 400-year-old zombie conquistadores bleeding profusely when shot down, fresh from their graves.

Though the makeup's the star, Farrow is appealing as the vulnerable heroine, styled here as the spitting image of her sister Mia. Having made a dozen Italian films, British character actor has all the worried, bedraggled expressions down pat, while Ian McCulloch fails to make an impression. Pleasant nude turns by Gay and Karlatos fit with the self-imposed X rating, as Jerry Gross has copied Romero's successful marketing strategy for "Dawn of the Dead".

This is my original review written in July 1980 after a screening on Manhattan's Upper East Side.