A late-‘70s splatter fave spoken of with hushed reverence wherever Fango fanboys dare to tread, Lucio Fulci’s Zombie (or Zombi 2, as it is known elsewhere) has amassed a considerable cult following over the years, since initially appearing on the wings of, and as an unofficial Italian sequel to, Romero’s Dawn of the Dead. Zombie was the type of flick that always seemed to be on my ‘80s video store shelves in an oversized, tattered VHS case smack between I Spit on Your Grave and Xtro in the ever-popular ‘Never Going to Convince Mom to Let Me Rent This Shit’ section (it was a very popular section.) Zombie was always reputed to be the ultimate in gory zombie effects and it was also reputed to be quite awful by mainstream critics (love the BOMB rating in the Maltin book), but scanning over the revisionist reviews by fans on movie message boards, one would now go into Zombie expecting a classic, on par with the brilliant Romero films that inspired it.

Neither fans nor detractors can really prepare you, however, for what is basically a sluggish Caribbean travelogue punctuated, only occasionally, by zombie action… zombie action in which exploding heads and body parts spray what looks to be Ragu spaghetti sauce. The film begins with a seemingly abandoned boat floating towards awesomed-out 1979 Manhattan. Instead of sending in Stallone-as-Deke DaSilva in an awesome ATAC hat, the shore patrol steps onboard to investigate and are attacked by a lone zombie. Here we get one of the film’s trademark images, as the bloated zombie waddles towards its prey in a super-cool, distorted close-up with all of Manhattan in the background. Five minutes in, and we’re raring to go. We’ve got zombies, ‘70s New York, synth music, bad dubbing… this is gonna rule! Right? Right?

Er, no. By this point, the budget to shoot in New York is essentially blown, and we join the finest, sexual chemistry-mismatched amateur detective duo since Tom Atkins and Stacey Nelkin in Halloween III. Sleazy middle-aged reporter Peter (Ian McCulloch), sent to investigate the zombie boat attack, and Anne (Tisa Farrow, Mia’s nobody sister), the daughter of a missing scientist whose abandoned boat it was that carried the attacking creature, join forces and decide to travel to the mysterious Caribbean island where her old man had been conducting experiments on the locals. Could her old man have the answer to why the living dead are walking? Could Tisa Farrow be the 1979 version of Don Swayze? Could McCulloch’s comb-over be any worse? Yes, yes, and absolutely not.

The dopey duo flies to the Caribbean (I forget which island; I was drunk), and hooks up with some swingin’ ‘70s couple who just wanted to do a little drinkin’ and skinny-dippin’, and instead get roped into sailing these city slickers out to a cursed island where voodoo reigns and the vaguely sinister Dr. Menard (Richard Johnson) is studying an outbreak of zombiedom. The doctor also has an unusually sexy wife (Olga Karlatos) who just wants a little bedroom action from the old man; but nooo, he’d rather hang around bloody dying bodies all day, waiting for them to return to life so he can pop a cap in their potato-sacked heads. As you can probably tell, none of this makes much sense. The voodoo angle is totally vague and occurs mostly offscreen, and all of this exposition is just biding time until the occasional (very occasional) action scenes -- the most memorable of which are a surreal moment where a zombie fights a shark(!) underwater, and a ghastly eye-gouging that’s guaranteed the please the kind of gore freaks who stopwatch their Friday the 13th DVDs to see how many frames have been shaved from the Japanese laserdisc versions.

All of the leads eventually hook up for a Grand Guignol finale in which they barricade themselves into the local hospital (or what passes for one in the rinky-dink production), and fight off the zombies in true, siege-movie fashion. It’s worth noting that in a movie that runs 92 minutes, this extended round of gunfire and exploding zombie heads lasts about 10 of those minutes. Imagine if Dawn of the Dead took four-fifths of its running time to get to the shopping mall, but the characters spent the first part playing checkers on a cruise ship, and you’ll have a pretty good idea of the structure here. When Fulci returns to NYC for the, admittedly effective, final shots, you’ll wish he’d stayed there all along instead of dicking around in the Caribbean.

To give credit where it’s due, Fulci’s compositions are interesting, making nice use of the wide 2.35:1 frame and having an eerie white, clean look. The dirge of a synth score by Fabio Frizzi and Girogio Tucci has a gloriously dated Giorgio Moroder vibe. Again, Ian McColloch’s hair is one of the great wonders of the world; and if nothing else, this is THE definitive Ashlee-- I mean, Tisa-- Farrow screen vehicle.

This review applies to the Blue Underground release, which was apparently “remastered from the original camera negative.” It looks terrific; The audio is, of course, tinny and dubbed as should be expected. Options include 5.1 as well as the original mono, or an Italian track with English subtitles. None of these options improve Frank Stallone Farrow’s performance, however.

This release is relatively free of extras, unlike the simultaneously released Media Blasters version, which is titled Zombi 2 on the case and contains a bounty of extras. I suppose if you’re a Zombie superfan, that one might be the way to go as it includes a 98-minute featurette and a commentary by Ian McCulloch’s hair. Personally, with a movie this bad, I’d pay extra money not to have to sit through any extras. 92 minutes of the movie was enough for me. Anyway, the Blue Underground release does contain some trailers and TV Spots, and a moderately interesting text extra about Fulci’s career.

If you want to see a zombie fighting a shark, some exploding heads, a horny wife with a punctured eyeball, and a leading man with a comb-over worthy of Bill Murray in Kingpin, this is the zombie movie for you! Everyone else, beware.. though I DID get a hearty chuckle picturing big sis Mia Farrow and her eventual beau Woody Allen catching this on cable one night and giving it a hearty “What the fuck?????”

An affectionate 3/5 for the synth, the eyeball, the 70s chicks, and especially the insane shark vs. zombie scene.