A seemingly deserted sail boat floats into harbour where it turns out to contain the a hungry reanimated corpse. The boat belongs to the father of Anne Bowles, but her father is nowhere to be found. She teams up with a newspaper reporter seeking a hot story and they travel to the remote island where her father was last known to have been.
They find a young couple who happen to be about to set sail in that direction, and hitch a ride. Once there they meet the slightly racist and seemingly unsuccessful scientist Dr. Menard who is, when not bemoaning "the natives", seeking a cure for a strange virus that is bringing the dead back to life. Soon the lot of them are beset by hordes of the undead.
Zombie (aka Zombie 2, Zombie Flesh Eaters) is a solid zombie flick which delivers in every way that one would hope a zombie film would. It's got plenty of gore, particularly the eyeball scene and some of the zombie killings. The zombies themselves look great. The special effects and make up are very good for a zombie film produced in 1979. The acting, while originally performed in Italian, doesn't seem too bad. The real shocker about that one is that the dubbing is actually very good, which is a true rarity. There's the predictable occasional goof up, like when they are chucking Molotov cocktails and every time one lands, there is no pre-existing fire from the previous one's. And how are 400 year old conquistadores still in such (relatively) good condition? But this sort of slip adds charm when part of a good movie.
That Zombie is an excellent horror film should come as no surprise since it was brought to us by Italian horror master Lucio Fulci who also produced such films as City of the Living Dead and The Beyond. Great zombies, reasonable plot, decent acting, and did I mentioned an underwater battle between a shark and a zombie? Check it out.
4 zombie/shark battles out of 5
Rated R for horror violence/gore and nudity
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