Director: Lucio Fulci
Screenplay: Elisa Biganti and Dardano Sacchetti
Starring: Tisa Farrow, Ian McCulloch, Richard Johnson, Al Cliver, Auretta Gay, Stefania D'Amario, Olga Karlatos
Running Time: 88 minutes
Genre: Horror
An abandoned sailboat drifts into New York Harbor. When two harbor patrol officers board the boat they are promptly attacked by a zombie. While the police interrogate Anne Bowles (Farrow), the daughter of the ship's owner, who hasn't seen her father in months, newspaper reporter Peter West (McCulloch) investigates the story. Anne and Peter join forces, and trace the boat to a remote Caribbean island called Matul. They hitch a ride with Brian Hull (Cliver) and Susan Barrett (Gay) who are on a vacation, sailing around the Caribbean. Needless to say, when they do reach Matul, they very soon wish that they had stayed home.
This Italian film exists under a number of different titles and in a number of different versions. It was originally released in Italy as Zombi 2 in a blatant attempt to cash in on the huge success in Italy of George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead (1979), known as Zombi in Italy. While this film has no connection to Dawn of the Dead in either plot or characters, it's not too much of a leap to see it being set in Romero's world. The film has it's clunky moments, but mostly it is pretty good. It's extremely violent and very gruesome, and contains a couple of notorious scenes (one involving a splinter of wood and someone's eye, which is genuinely hard to watch). There is also some sleazy sexploitation, although not quite as much as you might expect. The zombie makeup is suitably disgusting, and the numerous gore scenes and violence are well staged. The performances are good, with Tisa Farrow (sister of Mia Farrow) making an engaging heroine, and Ian McCulloch an effective and likable hero. Most notable in the cast though is Richard Johnson as the sweatily sinister doctor on the island. The pacing flags during the middle, but it's pretty well made and is probably the best of the Italian zombie movies which followed.
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