Zombie Flesh Eaters (1979)

By the late 1970s, Italian genre cinema had carved out a reputation for producing horror that was equal parts ambitious and outrageous, often borrowing liberally from American hits and then doing something strange and distinctly its own with the material. Nightmare City is one example of that Italian horror tradition, but few films from the period made quite the same international noise as Zombie Flesh Eaters, released in Italy in 1979 under the title Zombi 2. The film arrived in the wake of George Romero's Dawn of the Dead, which had been distributed in Italy under the title Zombi, and Variety Film Production were not exactly subtle about the marketing angle. Whether you call that opportunism or shrewd commercial instinct rather depends on your tolerance for the rougher edges of the exploitation business. Either way, the film found its audience, got itself banned in the UK as part of the "video nasty" panic of the early 1980s, and cemented its place in horror folklore long before most people had even seen it legally.

The director is Lucio Fulci, a figure who looms large over Italian horror in the same way that a persistent fog hangs over one of his own films: pervasive, atmospheric, and not always easy to see through clearly. Fulci had worked across several genres before horror claimed him, but by the time Zombie Flesh Eaters was in production he was finding his footing in the kind of visceral, effects-driven cinema that would define his legacy. His later City of the Living Dead would push the same ideas further. Here, working from a screenplay by Dardano Sacchetti, he sets the story in motion with a masterfully unnerving opening: an apparently abandoned boat drifting into New York harbour carrying something that very much does not want to stay in the hold. From there, the film shifts to a tropical island setting, which gave Fulci and his crew the opportunity to work with genuinely oppressive heat, crumbling locations, and a colour palette that looks as though it has been left out in the sun too long. The practical effects work, overseen with considerable craft given the budget constraints typical of Italian exploitation productions of the era, remains the film's most discussed technical achievement.

The cast is a polished but unremarkable ensemble assembled from the usual transatlantic pool that Italian productions liked to draw from. Tisa Farrow, sister of Mia, takes the lead as Anne Bowles, the woman searching for her missing father, and she brings a watchable if understated quality to a role that does not ask a great deal of her. Ian McCulloch plays the journalist who joins her investigation, bringing a no-nonsense British presence that suits the material well enough. Richard Johnson, a genuinely respected screen actor with considerable stage credentials, lends the film a gravity it might not otherwise have earned, playing the beleaguered scientist at the heart of the island's troubles. Olga Karlatos and Al Cliver round out the principal players, and it is Karlatos who features in the scene that, for better or worse, most people think of first when the film comes up in conversation.

Zombie Flesh Eaters (aka Zombi 2) is one of those films that hits differently as an adult. Watch it as a kid, and it’s pure nightmare fuel, a gory, atmospheric romp that feels like forbidden fruit. Watch it now, and you can’t help but notice how much of it is just… slow. Lucio Fulci delivers a few truly iconic moments. The eyeball impalement, the underwater zombie fight, and yes, that incredible finale with the zombies shuffling over the Brooklyn Bridge in fog so thick it feels like the end of the world. That scene alone is worth the price of admission: eerie, surreal, and endlessly copied (and yeah, I’m pretty sure chunks of it were ripped off by Zombie Holocaust and a dozen other knock-offs). But outside of those highlights, the film drags. The plot is barely there, the characters are paper-thin, and half the runtime is people whispering in dingy rooms or wandering through huts going nowhere. It’s got mood for days, sure, and the gore is gloriously gross in that practical-effects, no-holds-barred Italian way but as a full experience, it’s more atmosphere than story. As a kid, I loved it unironically. Now? I appreciate it more as a cult artifact than a great film. It’s influential, iconic in parts, but honestly a bit of a slog. Worth watching for the legend and the gore, but don’t expect coherence. Just sit back, enjoy the bridge, and try not to laugh at the dubbing.

I keep coming back to that Brooklyn Bridge sequence as the thing that redeems the film's patchier stretches for me, and I think that image has lodged itself in the collective memory of horror fans for good reason. There is something genuinely unsettling about the mundane and the monstrous sharing the same frame, and Fulci understood that instinctively even when the connective tissue around such moments was thin. For anyone curious about where the Italian horror tradition was heading at the turn of the decade, this remains an essential reference point, flaws and all. Just maybe keep the remote handy during the quieter stretches.

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

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Trailer

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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)