phantasm1234 Reviews

Zombie (1979)

Excellent

[18 July 2001]

Caution spoilers are ahead:

Zombie opens with a deserted Yacht drifting into New York Harbour and the sole occupant eating an investigator. The daughter of the owner of the boat and a reporter decide to find out what is going on. The yacht takes them to a terror-stricken Island, where zombies run amok, and scientist Dr. Menard is trying to find a rational explanation for the phenomenon. What happens next is a grisly series of horrifying events leading up to one of the most disturbing climaxes in Italian horror history.

The late director Lucio Fulci had done a number of horror, mystery, and even comedy films up to 1978 and even though they had been well received in the Italian community he had never truly made an impact on cinema, until Zombie. The Gory and visual style Fulci used opened the floodgates for a short but wonderful period in which cannibal and zombie films thrived. Originally intended as a sequel to Zombie (George Romero's Dawn of the Dead as it was called here) Zombie 2 (released as Zombie in the states) soon took on a life of it's own. The true, and truly unappreciated king of cinematic horror, Fulci has and will shock audiences for years after his tragic death in 1996.

Monstroid (1980)

At least worth a look for bad movie buffs

[18 July 2001]

It's sad to see former stars reduced to "acting" in films like this. Well let's see here, we've got James Mitchum, and John Carradine in a movie about a Colombian lake monster. Sounds interesting, huh, wrong, the stars play second banana to a monster clearly made for less than the budget of your average candy bar. What's worse is that the film is so dark, half of the time you can't see what little action there is. For unintentional yuks this is one of those movies that can't be beat, but if your in the mood for a surreal horror thriller look elsewhere.