Zombie Flesh Eaters (1979)

There's something genuinely strange about revisiting a film that terrified you as a kid and finding it both better and worse than you remembered. Zombie Flesh Eaters is exactly that kind of experience. The nightmares it gave me were real. The slow stretches that caused them? Also real, it turns out.

Lucio Fulci's film, known in some territories as Zombi 2, has a reputation that precedes it by about forty years, and some of that reputation is absolutely earned. The eyeball impalement is as horrible as advertised. The underwater zombie fight is genuinely one of the most inspired set pieces in horror history, weird and dreamlike and utterly committed to its own absurd logic. And then there's that finale, zombies shuffling across the Brooklyn Bridge, fog so thick it swallows everything, the city reduced to a ghost of itself. That scene is eerie in a way most horror films never manage. It feels less like a cheap shock and more like an actual vision of the end, surreal and weirdly beautiful. You can see why it's been lifted, riffed on and imitated in the decades since.

But here's the honest truth: outside of those highlights, the film drags badly. The plot is barely a plot. The characters are thin enough to see through. Great stretches of the runtime are given over to people whispering in dim rooms or wandering through locations while the atmosphere does the heavy lifting. And the atmosphere does work, I'll give it that. Fulci understood mood. He understood dread. He knew how to make a location feel cursed. The problem is that mood alone can't carry a film for ninety-odd minutes, and when the pacing falters, there's nothing in the script or the performances to pick up the slack.

The gore is exactly as gloriously grim as its reputation suggests, practical and tactile in that unashamed Italian genre tradition. No CGI shortcuts, no cutaways to spare your stomach. If you're here for that, you'll get your money's worth. I've always had a soft spot for the era's willingness to go there without apology, and Fulci is nothing if not committed. It's the same world that gave us City of the Living Dead, another Fulci picture that prioritises atmosphere and visceral horror over anything so pedestrian as narrative logic.

As a kid watching this on a dodgy VHS, I had no critical distance whatsoever. It was pure forbidden-fruit terror. The kind of film that felt dangerous to watch, which is half the appeal when you're young. Watching it now, I can see the seams. I can see the padding. I can hear the dubbing in a way that tips from charming into distracting. I can appreciate what Fulci was going for without being fully transported by it.

That's a strange place to land with a film, and I want to be honest about it rather than pretend nostalgia into a higher rating. Zombie Flesh Eaters is iconic in parts. It's influential, no question. It landed at the right cultural moment and it burned certain images into the collective memory of horror fans worldwide. But as a complete film, watched cold in 2024? It's a slog with brilliant interruptions. The highlights are genuine highlights. Everything around them is a test of patience.

Two stars. Worth watching once for the legend, for those set pieces, and for the bridge. Just don't expect it to hold together as a story, don't expect the characters to give you a reason to care, and absolutely don't expect the dubbing to be anything other than magnificently daft. Sit back, find the good bits, and let the fog do its work.

Rating: ★★  | Year: 1979  | Watched: 2025-09-09

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Where to watch

Watch in the UK
Stream: Shudder · Arrow Video Amazon Channel · ARROW
Rent: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video
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Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi

Watch in the US
Stream: Philo · AMC+ Amazon Channel · Shudder · Fandor Amazon Channel
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Physical: Amazon US

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Related on Movies With Macca

More from Lucio Fulci: City of the Living Dead (1980)
More from Italy: Nightmare City (1980) · Cemetery Man (1994) · One Way or Another (1975) · Chicken for Linda! (2023)
More from the 1970s: Fantastic Planet (1973) · Here and Elsewhere (1976) · Italianamerican (1974) · Punishment Park (1971)
More horror: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) · Viy (1967) · Nightmare City (1980) · Angst (1983)