Pwaters' Month of Terror Day 12: Zombie

Hello ladies, gentlemen, and creatures lurking in the shadows!  This month, October, is a favorite among horror fans, such as myself.  My goal for the next 31 days is to share with you the scariest and best of the genre.  The films will range from old school classics to modern day gorefests (they won't be in any particular order).  So scout these movies out, grab a bag of popcorn (or a blood bag) and enjoy!

Zombie (1979)
Dir. Lucio Fulci

Zombie is one of those movies that depending on where you are in the world, it has a ton of different titles (known as Zombie Flesh Eaters in the UK, Island of the Living Dead in parts of Europe, and for some reason Woodoo in Germany); in its native Italian it's called Zombi 2 to the confusion of many fans, because technically there is no "Zombi 1."  What happened is that after George Romero's Dawn of the Dead, a popular sequel to his Night of the Living Dead, was a success, Lucio Fulci wanted to cash in on it; on many of the Italian prints of Dawn of the Dead, the title was called 'Zombi' after its producer, fellow horror director Dario Argento, made some edits and added more to the soundtrack.  So basically Fulci just named his movie Zombi 2 just because it would make more money.  If you couldn't follow that paragraph, don't worry, I know it's complicated.

The acting is pretty terrible in this movie, along with the plot - but that's not what this is about, Zombie is all about the zombies, and in that regard it delivers!  The creepy dude on every poster and DVD cover is probably the most disgusting living dead corpse ever put on film.  He just has this unnatural grin and mud caked all over his face and worms coming out of his eye!  Yes, real worms...in his eye socket!  If that wasn't enough for your admission price, this movie also has one of cinema's greatest crowning achievements: the infamous zombie vs. shark scene.  How they pulled it off, I don't know, but James Cameron and his million dollar budget Avatars and Titanics can never amount to the magic that is zombie vs. shark.  And also the movie has an extremely graphic eye-gouging scene that's inspired a lot of copycats over the years, but never equaled; in the scene a zombie breaks through a door and grabs a woman by the hair, pulling her closer and closer until her eye pushes into a broken-off piece of wood pulp.  In any other movie it would have maybe shown a second or two and cut away, but Fulci shows the whole agonizing process, and it's absolutely revolting.

If that description above doesn't make you want to the see the film....well, you probably have good taste in movies, but if you're like me, it doesn't get any better.  The film came under heavy censorship when it came out and landed in the notorious "Video Nasty" list in Britain.  It's really not even as extreme as any of the Saw films, but feel free to gross out your friends, test your endurance (for both gore and terrible acting), and sit back and relax to watch a classic Italian money-grab (that happened to be decent on its own)!