Some believe the current zombie trend is just about ready to peak, but there’s still plenty of related movies, magazines, graphics novels, TV shows, even a theme park in the works.
I caught the zombie bug pretty early in life myself with the original Dawn of the Dead, one of my favorite movies growing up, and its ultra-gory bastard cousin, Zombie.
I can still recall when Zombie first reached the States, with the famous tag-line, “We Are Going to Eat You!,” and like Dawn of the Dead, it had a self-imposed X rating, which meant neither film was taken to the ratings board, and had to be verboten for anyone under 17 to see.
Of course, this didn’t stop me from watching it when I was young on video, and while it’s much more raw and crude than Romero’s work, it totally delivered in terms of the gore and violence, which is still pretty disturbing, even by today’s standards.
Today, the film’s director, Lucio Fulci, has an enormous cult following for Zombie, The Beyond, and many other gore soaked classics, and although Zombie hit theaters on the heels of Dawn of the Dead, Fulci drew more from the original undead flicks like I Walked With a Zombie, which took place on a Caribbean island.
In fact, Zombie was launched again for another successful theatrical run from Grindhouse Releasing, and it was also painstakingly restored for DVD and Blu-ray from Blue Underground.
Not to mention, the infamous scene where a zombie fights a shark made its way into a Windows 7 commercial, and Guillermo del Toro also raved about the film for the site, Trailers From Hell. So for the Zombieland and Walking Dead crowd, if you haven’t seen Zombie yet, it’s absolutely highly recommended, but you better be prepared for some pretty extreme gore and violence, and a pretty grim vibe that permeates the film.
Years ago, I saw it at a run down theater on Hollywood Boulevard at a midnight show, and it absolutely brought down the house, so if you can catch it in a theater, it’s also highly recommended. But again, this is not zombie-lite, it’s zombies at their most hardcore, so be prepared, and as del Toro said, “I believe no other movie matches it for shock value and sheer madness.”
