"We Are Going to Eat You!" ZOMBI 2 DVD Commentary from B-Sol & Capt. Cruella!

For those of you living in the Outer Rim territories, the outstanding horror site Brutal as Hell just unleashed Zombie Jesus Weekend in recognition of Easter, and it sure was a lot of unwholesome, sacrilegious fun. And Captain Cruella and I were tickled pink when BAH impresario Marc Patterson invited us to be a part of it! Marc gave us carte blanche, and so we came up with the delightful idea of providing our very own "DVD commentary" for one of the most heinous grindhouse zombie movies of all time, Lucio Fulci's Zombi 2.

This ran on Brutal as Hell over the weekend, but I couldn't resist reposting it here for all you Vault dwellers, and so with Mr. Patterson's blessing--here it is! For those unfamiliar, the way it works is simple: sync up the audio of our commentary with your DVD of Zombi 2, starting both simultaneously so that our track plays over the movie. And just like that, it's like you're watching it with us... This was tremendously enjoyable to record, and I hope you get even half the kick out of it that we did.

Listen on the embedded player below, or download it for later use!


And while you're listening, take the experience to the next level (courtesy of Cruella's Concoctions) by enjoying a Caipirinha, a fine cocktail that fits right in with the tropical theme of Fulci's flick!

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"Take This, All of You, and Eat It": The Subversion of Catholicism in Italian Zombie Cinema

"I envy athiests, they don't have all these difficulties."
-Lucio Fulci

Although Ireland gives it a run for the money, there is probably no more devoutly Roman Catholic nation on Earth than Italy. Indeed, the religion is called Roman Catholicism because its heart is in the Italian capital of Rome itself--it is within that the Vatican City is to be found, and it has been so ever since Roman emperor Constantine converted to the then-upstart faith some 17 centuries ago.

Yet fast forward those 17 centuries, and one finds a specific cultural phenomenon, admittedly most keenly observed by film fanatics, happening in the same country. For Italy, specifically the Italy of the late 20th century, is known for having produced some of the most unspeakably ghastly, gut-churning horror films to be found anywhere in the history of the genre. Specifically, some of the most heinous stuff to be found in the Italian horror milieu seems to have been reserved for the zombie sub-genre.

So why is it that one of the most religious nations on the planet would also give rise to some of the most Satanic visions of the world ever put to celluloid? Is it ironic? Or rather, is it perfectly understandable? I submit that the latter is true. The rise and popularity of zombie cinema in Italy can be directly attributed to the faith of the nation--it is a direct reaction to it, and against it.

The Nature of Italian Zombie Horror

It has sometimes been remarked that it is the people most acutely susceptible to fear who tend to be the most fascinated by horror. This can be observed in the phenomenon of the horror fan who watches raptly, his eyes darting between clasped fingers at the images on the screen. We love to be scared, or rather we are drawn to it, and this is why very often it is the very people most immune to the power of horror who have little interest in it as a genre.

Very often, what we find most frightening, or most morbidly fascinating, is that which flouts or perverts our deeply held values, that which forces us to confront possibilities we dare not, and mocks what we hold dear. In the case of Italian zombie cinema, this refers directly to the manner in which it stands as a direct defiance to the Catholic beliefs and doctrines embodied by the very nation in which it was made.

There has been a fascination with zombie movies in Italy, and in particular a need to make them as despicably nasty as possible, as a way of subverting the primary tenets of the Roman Catholic faith. To a people raised to fear God in the truest sense of the phrase, this is an irresistible forbidden fruit, the contemplation of which is an act of subversion in and of itself.

In order to better illustrate, let's break down some of the specific beliefs flouted by the Italian zombie cycle...

The Resurrection of Christ

Perhaps the most obvious of all perversions of Catholicism is this one. The physical resurrection of Jesus Christ, on the third day after his execution, celebrated by all Christians as the feast day of Easter, is the central belief of Roman Catholicism; it is the one ultimate truth one must accept on faith in order to be considered Roman Catholic. The idea is that Jesus defeated death, and in so doing saved the world from sin. It is the greatest triumph of good over evil.

And yet, it's no coincidence that horror fans have recently taken to sardonically referring to Easter as "Zombie Jesus Day." There's an easily perceived parallel there, and this was not lost on the Italians some 30 years ago, either. For anyone raised with Catholic beliefs ingrained in them, very time a zombie is seen to return to life in an Italian zombie film, it is an obscene joke, a direct parody of Christ's own return to life as recounted in the New Testament. It is taking what Catholics believe to be the Son of God's greatest and most noble victory, and twisting it into a thing of utter revulsion and emptiness.

The Resurrection of the Body

This ties directly into what is inferred, and indeed promised, by Jesus rising from the dead. According to Roman Catholic belief, because Jesus defeated death, he assured everlasting life for all who believe in Him. To clarify, Catholics believe that the human body is merely a temporary holding place for the soul, and that after death they are promised eternal life in the presence of God, and that later at the end of days, they will be physically resurrected, much like Christ Himself, in a new body, one beyond the mortal flesh, transcendent and pure. As Stephen Thrower writes in Beyond Terror: The Films of Lucio Fulci, "for Christians, the body is a mere waste product, excreted by the passage of the soul into heaven."

Extending that analogy, one can then imagine what a blasphemous perversion the concept of the walking dead represents in Italian horror. Instead of being cast off upon death, this physical body, this excrement of the soul, continues to walk about, with no trace of that soul evident. Just as it represents a perversion of Christ's resurrection, so too does the zombie represent a complete perversion of that promise given to humanity by the Resurrection; rather than returning to life as a transcendent being, these people are mindless, stinking, rotting corpses--beings solely of physicality, and not of spirituality.

The Soul and the Afterlife

Drawing on this concept, Italian zombie films completely refute the existence of the divine spark in any sense. If we learn anything from these movies, it's that we have no souls at all, but are instead merely bodies and nothing more. The existence of zombies flies in the face of any notion of the sanctity of human consciousness, for it demonstrates that the body can "live" on, even without conscious animation--and most importantly, no reference to a soul or anything beyond the fleshly shell is ever made.

All we get instead is a fixation on the natural decomposition of the physical body, with no transcendent meaning whatsoever--the ultimate nihilism. "These films," writes Jamie Russell in Book of the Dead, "ask us to confront the unspoken truth of our existence: that we are, in material terms, nothing more than a collection of organs, blood and messy slop." There is no hope for anything resembling a life after death, other than that of the unthinking zombie, which seeks only to consume life.

Judgment Day

As portrayed here, the body is nothing more than an object, explicitly shown to be merely meat, without any presence of the Divine whatsoever. In fact, that's pretty much the ultimate conclusion to be drawn here, if we follow the line of thinking to its end: there is no God, and therefore nothing waiting for us either after death or at the end of time.

This is particularly illustrated in Lucio Fulci films such as City of the Living Dead and The Beyond, which deal directly with the apocalypse itself, but not a holy day of judgment as promised; rather, it is an Armageddon of desolation and total annihilation. In the former film, the world is faced with an end that would consist of the living dead flooding the earth for all eternity, casting out the living entirely. And in the latter film, our protagonists come face to face in the end with a complete emptiness, and as the closing narration declares, they "will face the Sea of Darkness, and all therein that may be explored."

This is a far cry from the Judgment Day anticipated, and indeed wished for, within the teachings of Roman Catholicism, an era of absolution, spiritual evolution, and everlasting peace.

Transubstantiation

One of Roman Catholicism's most controversial religious doctrines is that of transubstantiation--the belief that during the Eucharistic portion of the Mass ceremony, bread and wine are transformed into the body and blood of Christ. This is no expression of symbolism or allegory; rather, the literal belief in the transformation of bread and wine into flesh and blood is expected of all devout Catholics. In order to partake of the Lord's grace and be saved, they must ingest this flesh and blood into their bodies; this is Christ as sacrificial lamb, offering up his body to be consumed by his followers.

For those of the faith, this is the ultimate act of oneness with the Savior, hence the sacrament's very name, communion. How obvious then, to a nation of Roman Catholics, the outright mockery present in the zombie's act of consuming the flesh of the living. Just as Christians yearn to take in the power of Christ, and eat his flesh to do so, so does the zombie yearn to absorb the living, physically ingesting their flesh in order to do so. Except instead of an act of sublime grace and sacrifice, it is one of amoral murder, chaotically severing all family and social bonds in the process.

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To a country whose very existence is tied up intimately with the Roman Catholic Church, the oldest and most direct religious establishment of Christianity on Earth, the zombie is anathema. To those drawn to the horrific and the unspeakable within that country, fans and filmmakers alike, the cinema of the zombie is a sweet sacrilege. It is an unrelentingly grim and pessimistic refutation of the beliefs they were raised to hold dear, titillating with the rush of the forbidden--the contemplation of the possibility that those beliefs are fraudulent.

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Retro Review: City of the Living Dead (1980)

Allow me to make something perfectly clear: I have a soft spot in my heart a mile wide for the work of Lucio Fulci. Especially Zombi 2 and his unofficial "Gates of Hell trilogy". So when Stacie Ponder of Final Girl announced that the next edition of her ever-popular Final Girl Film Club would be setting its sights on Fulci's City of the Living Dead, there was no way I wasn't going to be a part of it. Hell, I'll take any excuse to immerse myself in the bizarre, bleak, gauche and gore-drenched ouvre of Fulci.

This particular one, I have a long history with. Well, this one and Zombi 2, actually. See folks, I'm a child of the video store era, and I came to love horror movies thanks to browsing the racks at the local mom-and-pop rental store. For years, Fulci was the forbidden fruit for me. There were certain horror movies I was allowed to rent, and his most certainly were not among them.

But there were those massive VHS boxes, beckoning to me. The Zombi 2 box with the infamous tagline "We Are Going to Eat You!" and that worm-filled, buck-toothed face of the conquistador zombie. And then, of course there was City of the Living Dead--or as I knew it back then, The Gates of Hell. I will never forget the ghastly image of that green, one-eyed zombie face hovering above that city skyline. Add to that the ostentatious warning on the front about the film's extreme content, and the sordid plot synopsis on the back about suicidal priests and roving undead, and it was pretty much a total package that a 12-year-old video store browser is not likely to forget.

It would be years before I finally had the opportunity to actually get my hands on the thing and watch it. City of the Living Dead would be the last of the pseudo-trilogy that I would get to see, having already seen The Beyond and House by the Cemetery, both of which actually came out after CLD. And even though House by the Cemetery is my favorite, CLD is one hell of a horrific experience as well, and was worth those years of waiting to come of age.

The Lovecraftian plot is a bit pedestrian, maybe even hackneyed: A priest commits suicide, opening the doorway to Hell in the process and unleashing an undead uprising in the New England town of Dunwich (yes, Dunwich). A newspaper reporter (Christopher George) and a woman somehow psychically linked to the events (Catriona MacColl) must find a way to close the opening to Hell before the living dead take over the earth. As flimsy as the plot may be, I give credit to Fulci and his collaborator Dardano Sacchetti for diving into Lovecraft with such relish. Who knew Italian filmmakers would take such passionate interest in the works of everyone's favorite morbid Rhode Islander?

It's always tough to judge the acting in Fulci's films due to the Italian practice of dubbing everyone's lines in later--some actors are speaking English, others Italian, and some are even dubbed with other voices. MacColl is terrific as always, bringing an air of classic horror class to the seedy proceedings. The rest of the gang is spotty at best--although I have to give props to the one and only Giovanni Radice as the town scapegoat. The dude has presence, although unlike in House by the Edge of the Park, in which he shows off his dancing skills, here he mainly shows off his ability to take a drill to the brain, in what still may be the most disturbingly explicit and realistic murder ever staged for film.

As for the rest of the cast, we can't really blame them with the lines they're given to recite. I've only seen it dubbed in English, but I can't imagine the original Italian is much better. I particularly can't help but chuckle at the adorable attempt to reproduce "tough New Yorker dialect"--when's the last time you heard an NYC cop ask, "What the dickens is this??"

Nevertheless, Fulci's films work for me for other reasons, and City of the Living Dead is a shining example of what I'm talking about. I'm far from the first to say it, but Fulci at his best draws us into a surreal world that's best described as a fever dream--linear plot and character development are far less important than atmosphere and tension. If you don't ask too many logical questions--and really, why the hell would you?--then you'll better be able to appreciate the film for the visceral nightmare that it is.

Sergio Salvati's gritty cinematography is the veritable distillation of all that I love about 1970s grindhouse horror, with its murky lighting, prodigious use of fog and gratuitous zoom shots. The master of funky Italian horror synth scores, Fabio Frizzi does the honors here with a typically off-beat and unsettling score that complements Fulci's work even better than it does in The Beyond, though not quite as well as in Zombi 2. I'm always amazed by how Frizzi's material works despite the fact that on the surface, the style of music would seem to incongruous with the subject matter. Yet somehow, the score melds inextricably with the rest of the film, to the point that the Fulci style and the Frizzi sound are virtually inseparable in the minds of so many horror fans.

Of course, it wouldn't be a Fulci flick without copious amounts of nasty, grim, depression-inducing grue, now would it? In addition to the aforementioned Radice braining, we get maggot-ridden corpses, skulls crushed by hand, and in what may be the most notorious Fulci moment of them all, poor Daniela Doria literally vomiting her guts out. This was the scene that everybody always talked about, and was a main selling point in getting people interested to see it (we horror fans are an unusual lot, aren't we?) And the way it's played out is classic Fulci, and a prime example of the nightmarish quality of this film. Everything about it feels very much like some kind of awful, terrifying dream.

So ignore the minutiae of the story, and for God's sake, don't try to make too much sense of it. Don't ask why, in the late 20th century, a woman would be buried without being embalmed. Don't ask why there would appear to be bodies buried for decades under about three inches of dead leaves in the Dunwich cemetery. And most of all, don't ever dare ask what the hell the ending means--I'm not even sure Fulci would've been able to say. This film is all about setting a mood, and what a bleak one it is!

There's a purity to Fulci's brand of horror that I find irresistible. It's all about delivering a harrowing emotional experience, weaving a tapestry of relentless dread and foreboding, and overwhelming the senses with truly shocking imagery. It would be hard to call City of the Living Dead a great film in the conventional sense. But a great horror movie? Hell yes.

I'm glad I discovered City of the Living Dead on the video shelf all those years ago, and that it stuck with me long enough for me to seek it out when I got old enough to see it. And I'm glad it was selected for the Final Girl Film Club--always a pleasure to share the love of a movie with others. Keep an eye on the blogosphere in the weeks to come for other participating blog posts on Lucio Fulci's gory gem...

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TRAILER TRASH: Lucio Fulci Edition!

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Retro Review: The House by the Cemetery

"Anne? Mommy says you're not dead... Is that true?"

Let me make this perfectly clear. I LOVE Lucio Fulci. Not everyone does. This is an argument that can never be won one way or another. Some love him, some hate him. Over the years, he's become one of my all-time favorite horror directors. It's been said that his films resemble nothing so much as "fever dreams" or nightmares, and I find this to be very true. Especially in a film like this, which may very well be my favorite of his.

Only Zombi 2 equals The House by the Cemetery among Fulci's body of work, in my opinion, and it is my personal favorite amongst his revered "Lovecraftian" trilogy. It may be because it's the most conventional, linear and plot-oriented of the three, I don't know. I just get a major kick out of seeing Fulci take on the tried-and-true haunted house subgenre, and adding his gore-soaked fingerprint to it. As I've written before, this is his take-off on The Shining.

First off, the thing that grabs me is what may be the finest of all the scores for Fulci's films, and that's saying quite a bit. This one comes not from Fabio Frizzi, Fulci's usual collaborator, but rather Walter Rizzati.

The lovely Catriona MacColl returns yet again in this final installment of the trilogy, playing Lucy Boyle, wife of Dr. Norman Boyle, and mother of young Bob (odd name for a little boy, no?) Just as in the other two films (City of the Living Dead and The Beyond), MacColl is something of an anchor for the film, with her excellent performance conveying so much of the horror.

And what a monster we have in Dr. Freudstein (great name!!), the bizarre, ghoulish undead denizen of the Boyle's creepy-as-hell basement. A deranged scientist who has somehow managed to prolong his life indefinitely by consuming the blood of the living, he is a truly dread-inspiring creation. We experience all the terror and slowly building panic of the Boyle family, and little Bob in particular, as we learn the truth of what evil resides in this new home they are trying to settle into.

Despite this being supposedly the most linear of the trilogy, it certainly has its fair share of surreal Fulci-ness. There's the prolonged scene in the kitchen with the vampire bat. The freaky housekeeper mopping up blood, and not even being questioned by her employer as to how the blood got there. And that ending, which makes about as much sense as any of the other endings to Fulci's films. But I think what most people misunderstand about Fulci is that these are not signs of poor filmmaking--rather, this was Fulci's exact intention, to throw you off your guard and create this not-quite-right version of reality.

As with any Fulci flick, the gore is here on full display. Few brought the grue like Senior Fulci, and this movie is no exception: necks spouting blood, maggot-filled wounds, throats ripped out, and the usual eye trauma is all here for you weirdos to enjoy. And for some reason, I care more about the victims this time around than in most of Fulci's other movies, which makes it all the more difficult to sit through.

I'm always a sucker for a horror flick that puts children in peril--this will always elicit a visceral terror response from me. And in this respect, The House by the Cemetery pushes all the right buttons. Although reviled by some Fulci fans, little Giovanni Frezza in the role of Bob is the perfect cherubic target for the demonic horrors of Freudstein, and he does well portraying a child for whom the irrational fears of nearly every child are actually real.

I will say this with regards to Bob, and this goes for the entire movie--at least the American print. Unfortunately, to my knowledge, there is no American version in Italian with English subtitles, which would've been my preference. And so, the only version I've seen is the one dubbed in English. More specifically, dubbed very badly into English. So bad, that it does occasionally take something away from the film, particularly in the case of the grown woman they chose to record Frezza's lines. I really wish this wasn't the way I experienced the film, but even through the bad dubbing, the movie's excellence shines through. I urge you to be patient with this one major flaw.

One of the most underrated of the films of Lucio Fulci, The House by the Cemetery is well worth discovering for any fan of haunted house films, gore flicks, or Italian horror.

* Thanks once again to the lovely Marilyn Merlot for this week's Retro Review suggestion!

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Retro Review: Zombi 2

For my first installment of Retro Review, I've selected a movie that is now one of my absolute favorites, but which I put off watching for years: Lucio Fulci's exploitation epic, Zombi 2 (a.k.a. Zombie).

Let me explain a bit. I had been hooked on zombie flicks ever since age 15, when I watched Dawn of the Dead in my best friend's girlfriend's house while said best friend was busy georging said girlfriend's romero in the other room. You could probably go back a couple years earlier, when The Return of the Living Dead first tore through my pre-teen psyche. But the one movie I kept avoiding was Zombi 2.

I think it was that horrifying box cover I had seen glaring at me for years in the video store. Or all the heinous things I had heard about it, how it made Day of the Dead look like Fried Green Tomatoes and such. Back in those days, I really did have the benefit of a much more visceral reaction to horror movies than my more cynical, world-weary self can muster up these days. And zombie movies in particular drew me in with all the power of a five-car pileup on I-95 that you can't help but stare at, despite the fact that it would really mess you up. In short, I absolutely loved them at the same time that they filled me with legit dread.

I knew Zombi 2 would be the ultimate adventure. And when I finally crossed paths with it, I turned out to be right.

It happened about ten years ago, when this cheesy, third-string pay-per-view provider I used to have presented a Halloween double-bill of Zombi 2 and I Spit on Your Grave (trick or treat, kids!!). Having the movie all but dropped in my lap, I knew I simply had to tape it. The time had finally come to confront Fulci.

I don't think I can understate the sense of raw terror that filled my gut as I sat there watching it for the first time, completely alone in my newlywed apartment. From the second that astounding Fabio Frizzi score kicks in, I was off to the races. Easily one of the most powerful horror scores of its era.

Yes, it was filled with all the cheesiness we've come to expect from exploitation flicks of this ilk. A plot that often bordered on the irrelevant. A pace that might pose a challenge to the more attention-span-deprived viewer. But, truth be told, I was drawn in by the "fever dream" quality of Fulci's work, the effortless way that the man created atmosphere, zealously throwing all his efforts into grabbing hold of your emotions in that very Italian way--logic and continuity be damned!

Richard Johnson delivered pure, bleak desperation in his performance as Dr. Maynard--and this was years before I would come to love him as another doctor authority figure in The Haunting. And Tisa Farrow--boy did it screw with my mind trying to process the fact that the sister of Woody Allen's leading lady was the girl fleeing from cannibal corpses in a Euro-trash grindhouse flick!

There are so many aspects that have been discussed ad nauseum, but which were all new to me. The breathtaking zombie vs. shark scene, which to this day impresses me for the sheer ballsiness of it. The nearly impossible-to-watch eye impalement scene, a prime example of Fulci's innate ability to locate the core of what revolts the average viewer and poke at it relentlessly with all the ardor of a little boy pouring salt on a slug.

And then there was that moment I had seen bits and pieces of, and dreaded most of all--the conquistador graveyard scene, in which one of our heroines has her voicebox torn out in lovingly graphic detail by a worm-eyed zombie who--despite his extreme groadiness--had actually held up quite well for being dead and buried for 400 years. Maybe I'm just a big detail person, but I can never get over the way that Fulci's makeup genius Giannetto de Rossi went to the trouble of simulating mucus spewing forth from Auretta Gay's severed trachea. Blood is one thing, but that, my friends, is what you call going the extra mile.

God bless the Italians and their twisted Roman Catholic fixation on the perverse horrors of the undead. Because the gore is really what it's all about when you sit down to watch a Lucio Fulci picture, isn't it? And Zombi 2 delivered beyond my wildest dreams. Stripped of all the pesky social commentary and humor that Romero peppered throughout his films, Zombi 2 is instead a veritable orgy of mercilessly graphic and unspeakable violence. I always hear about the small budget they had to work with, and the corners they cut, but I'll be damned if this still isn't some of the most terrifyingly realistic looking stuff I've ever seen in a horror movie, period.

Fulci is definitely an acquired taste, and he isn't for everybody, no question about that. But I'm here today to declare whole-heartedly that he is for me--and it all goes back to my discovery of this 1979 classic. Now, there are those who will point to his later "trilogy" of City of the Living Dead, The House by the Cemetery and The Beyond as being all superior, but I disagree. While I enjoy those films very much, particularly House by the Cemetery, Zombi 2 will always be my favorite Fulci. It could very well be, plain and simple, the purest zombie film ever made.

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Icons of Italian Horror to Invade New Jersey

My apologies for two posts in a row on spaghetti horror, but this is a big one. And as a long-time Chiller Theatre patron, I personally couldn't be more excited.

Long-running northeastern genre expo Chiller Theatre, in association with Paura Productions, has announced that this April's Chiller convention will feature the largest collection of Italian horror luminaries ever assembled, including a 30th anniversary reunion of the cast and crew of Lucio Fulci's Zombie (a.k.a. Zombi 2).

"It will be a historic occasion," says Paura founder Mike Baronas, the evil mastermind behind the whole shebang. "It will be a surreal experience to stand in one place surrounded by all these folks I grew up adoring, and I'm certain I won't be alone in that respect."

Scheduled to appear are:

From ZOMBIE…

• Ian McCulloch (Dr. Butcher M.D., Contamination)
• Richard Johnson (The Haunting, Beyond the Door, Screamers)
• Al Cliver (The Beyond, Cannibals, Endgame, Demonia, Devil Hunter)
• Ottaviano Dell’Acqua (Rats: Night of Terror, Cut & Run, Zombi 3)
• Giannetto De Rossi (SPFX maestro of High Tension, Dune, The Beyond)
• Mirella De Rossi (Hair Stylist of Dragonheart, Conan the Destroyer)

The Children from THE HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY…

• Giovanni Frezza (Demons, Manhattan Baby, A Blade In The Dark)
• Silvia Collatina (Murderock, Big Alligator River)

Also Featuring…

• Luigi Cozzi (Director of Contamination, Starcrash, The Killer Must Kill Again)
• Zora Kerova (Cannibal Ferox, Anthropophagus, The New York Ripper)
• Malisa Longo (A Cat in the Brain, Fraulein Kitty, Miranda, Way of the Dragon)
• Beatrice Ring (Zombi 3, Graveyard Disturbance, Interzone)
• Michael Sopkiw (2019: After the Fall of New York, Devil Fish, Blastfighter)

Quite a bunch. I'm particularly psyched about 82-year-old Richard Johnson, a true horror legend going all the way back to The Haunting in 1963. And the creepy kids from The House by the Cemetery--need I say more?

Chiller Theatre happens in scenic Parsippany, New Jersey the weekend of April 17-19.

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Stephen King, By Way of Lucio Fulci

I confess that up until recently, the only Lucio Fulci film of which I was closely familiar was the infamous Zombi 2, undoubtedly the closest thing to a mainstream horror movie the Italian splatter maestro ever produced. I had yet to really delve into his even more greatly revered trilogy of terrors: The Gates of Hell, The Beyond and House by the Cemetery. 

Well, I did something about that several weeks ago when I received House by the Cemetery in the mail from the fine folks at Netflix--whom I still love, even if this is the only one of the trilogy they currently offer. Now, there's nothing I love more than a good, down-and-dirty 1970s exploitation horror flick, and House by the Cemetery delivered the goods. I was mucho impressed, and pleased as I always am at discovering a horror gem for the first time. That happens less and less these days.

But there was something about the movie I immediately noticed, and after viewing it, I jumped on the internet, only to find that nearly no one else seems to have made much of it at all. But it hit me like a water-logged boxing glove, so I thought I'd share it and see who among you shares my opinion. Simply put, it seems very obvious to me that, as enjoyable as House by the Cemetery is, it's basically Lucio Fulci's attempt to ride on the coattails of The Shining.

Just as he had done in 1979 when he put out the misleadingly titled Zombi 2 to capitalize on the success of George Romero's Dawn of the Dead the previous year, so too, it appears to me, did he crank out HBTC in 1981, a year after Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of Stephen King's novel, as a direct reaction to it.

Let's take a look at this, shall we? Both films focus on families moving into houses that are in the possession of some kind of malevolent force. In both cases, the man is moving in for professional reasons, and has a very young son who is contacted/befriended by an otherworldy spirit. The parents are aware of this, but believe it only to be their sons' imaginary friend. Both stories focus on the father of the family, and his journey of discovery as to the nature of the house and its evil presence. Both also showcase a distraught, put-upon wife who grows more and more terrified as she witnesses bizarre events unfold in the house. The Shining ends with a time-paradox twist involving the father and the earlier period in which the disturbance originated. At the end of HBTC, the son finds himself transported somehow back to an earlier time as well.

Where King/Kubrick and Fulci deviate is that in The Shining the force is far less tangible, and eventually imposes an evil influence on the father, turning him into a killer, while in House by the Cemetery, the entity is much more corporeal in nature, dispatching of its hapless victims directly.

Essentially, HBTC is a haunted house story, with a decidedly Fulcian twist. That twist has to do with Fulci's fascination with the physical, and the horrors of the flesh. Whereas most ghost stories are atmospheric in nature, frightening viewers on a psychological level, Fulci's aesthetic requires that the antagonist be much more of a physical being, able to perpetrate acts of graphic violence to showcase his beloved gore effects for the purpose of causing revulsion. This makes the movie a rare hybrid of the haunted house story and splatter flick.

My observation of Fulci's aping of The Shining may be fairly obvious to some of you, but the fact remains that I've been able to find hardly any mention online of any observed connection between the two movies. Yet for me, it was one of the first things I noticed. The film marks such a departure for Fulci, content-wise, that one cannot help but conclude that he had beheld the enormous success of Kubrick's pic and felt that maybe the writing was on the wall, that horror was returning to its more gothic roots. And so he attempted to get on board the bandwagon, albeit not without leaving his own bloody handprints so no one forgot whose movie it was.

The result makes for a surprisingly entertaining movie, particularly for those with a good old-fashioned attention span, who appreciate having their patience rewarded with properly paced and placed payoffs. Despite the hack editing and flaws of logic inherent in any Fulci picture, it works on several levels, producing more purely atmospheric terror than Fulci was customarily known for, while also punctuating the proceedings with a healthy dose of gut-wrenching grue. Despite its derivative nature, Fulci somehow manages to make it into a fairly unique movie--a paradox if ever there was one.

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Watch Joe the Plumber's Gruesome Demise on DVD

No, I'm not talking about John McCain's infamous campaign gimmick--but rather the unlucky horror film character who happens to very amusingly bear the exact same moniker. You see, Joe features prominently in the Lucio Fulci masterwork The Beyond, which returns to DVD today in its most deluxe edition yet.

Its been six years since the movie generally regarded as the gore-meister's best last surfaced on disc as part of Anchor Bay's Lucio Fulci Collection. But now, thanks to Sage Stallone's Grindhouse Releasing--the same company that brought you the recent deluxe edition of Cannibal Holocaust--the surreal picture is getting quite the nifty little re-release.

For one thing, it's got a brand-new digital anamorphic transfer of the print and a surround-sound remix which were not available on previous editions, as well as a rare on-set interview with the director, and interviews with the stars and crew. Although it features the same commentary from Catriona MacColl and David Warbeck included on the film's initial 2000 DVD release, it does have an exclusive introduction by Ms. MacColl as well. Plus, it has a subtitled Italian language option, which I don't believe has ever been offered before.

I spotted the DVD over the weekend being offered for early sale at Catriona MacColl's table at Chiller Theatre, and cheaped out on picking it up--which I now regret. This looks like a terrific release for a movie that defines cult classic. And how awesome is it that it actually has a guy named Joe the Plumber in it? Fulci was a visionary, man! By the way, here's poor Joe's big scene:

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No More Room in Hell: 40 Years of the Modern Zombie Movie, Part 2

George Romero's 1968 masterpiece Night of the Living Dead is rightfully credited with inventing the modern zombie genre. Yet it was the sequel to that film--released a full decade later--that effectively branded that genre into the collective consciousness of popular culture, ensuring that it was no fly-by-night niche but a category that was here to stay, much like vampires, werewolves and mummies before it.

Dawn of the Dead led to a veritable explosion of zombie movies, thanks to the ways in which it took the elements introduced in Night to a level virtually unseen in horror up to that point. In the 1970s, horror was all about the explicit, rather than the implied. And Dawn delivered explicit in buckets--audiences witnessed the flesh of victims being bitten; the heads of ghouls blown apart by shotgun fire; bodies being torn to pieces by hordes of the undead. And all in brightly lit full-color.

The picture was also a major evolutionary step forward both stylistically and thematically. Romero was able to create an overwhelming sense of impending dread and realism--this was a vision of the entire world literally falling apart. At the same time, he was able to deal with issues of race, gender and consumerism in bolder, more direct ways. Add a dose of black humor, and you have the ultimate horror epic.

Although released without the all-important MPAA rating, Dawn of the Dead managed to become a cult underground sensation. And its success opened the floodgates for a seemingly limitless flow of horror movies that dealt with the walking dead.

The craze first took hold in Italy, and the result was the infamous "Italian cycle" of zombie films. As had been seen with the earlier cannibal subgenre in Italian horror cinema, Italian filmmakers were not exactly squeamish when it came to delivering the bloody goods. And they took to the new subgenre almost as ravenously as the creatures that would populate their films.

Among the first was Lucio Fulci, whose dubiously titled Zombi 2 (1979) was unofficially marketed as a sequel to Dawn of the Dead (known in Europe as Zombi). Set on a Carribean island, the film harkens back in some respects to the more traditional voodoo-style of much earlier zombie films. Yet it is also decidedly a product of the Romero renaissance, focusing as it does on graphic depictions of rotting corpses and their flesh-eating frenzies. Yet there is something even more sinister at work in Fulci's flick--with no trace of humor in sight, it's a straight-ahead gorefest of unprecedented proportions. Unrelenting in its horror, the film seems to seek mainly to revolt the viewer as much as possible.

Fulci's later zombie trilogy continued his explorations into the utter bleakness of zombie horror. Hailed by some for being stylistically and technically superior to Zombi 2, City of the Living Dead (1980), The Beyond (1981) and House by the Cemetery (1981) were also less directly influenced by Romero. Here, Fulci struck out on more of an original path, tieing the zombie mythos to that of H.P. Lovecraft, and intertwining the zombie apocalypse with the apocalypse presented in the New Testament Book of Revelations.

Outside Fulci, the Italian zombie subgenre contained a relentless multitude of other entries--some good, some bad, all uncompromisingly brutal. For example, films like Nightmare City, The Nights of Terror, Zombie Creeping Flesh, and Zombie Holocaust were all released in 1980 alone.

The violence depicted in these movies was of a type never before seen in the history of cinema. Many have pointed to Italy's pervasive Roman Catholicism as the source for this zombie obsession. Specifically, in the Italian mindset, the living dead represent the ultimate horror, the most unspeakable blasphemy, because their existence refutes the sanctity of the human soul and is a perversion of the fundamental Christian belief in the resurrection of the body.

But Italy wasn't the only place where cinematic ghouls were flourishing. Some of George Romero's American compatriots were paying attention, as well. This was evidenced by films like John Carpenter's The Fog, released a year after Dawn of the Dead. Building on Romero's notions of social commentary, The Fog reinforced the idea that these movies could contain messages beyond the depiction of gore.

Unfortunately, however, Carpenter's work was an exception to the rule in America, where most zombie flicks could be included in the growing morass of junk that threatened to envelope the entire horror genre as a reaction to the voracious demand of the new home video market. Highlights include admitted cult favorite Night of the Creeps (1986) and Redneck Zombies (1987). If nothing else, the zombie deluge in America succeeded in cementing the subgenre in the annals of popular culture, a fact that can be attested to by Michael Jackson's classic Thriller video of 1983. The undead had arrived.

One of the ways in which zombie films managed to survive the 1980s despite the oversaturation was by adding healthy doses of what helped the entire horror genre survive the decade as well: comedy. Perhaps in no other era was the horror comedy so prevalent, and within this particular niche it earned an especially memorable name: splatstick.

Going in the complete opposite direction as the Italian cycle, splatstick flicks reveled in the absurdity of the zombie premise, serving up heaping helpings of irony and ridiculously over-the-top cartoon gore. Films like Bad Taste (1987), by newcomer Peter Jackson, were able to provoke both laughter and revulsion simultaneously. Despite being more about demonic possession than zombies, Sam Raimi's Evil Dead and Evil Dead II often get lumped into this category as well, particularly the sequel. The two most revered splatstick entries would have to be Stuart Gordon's Re-Animator and Dan O'Bannon's The Return of the Living Dead, which came out within weeks of each other in 1985.

Almost an instant classic, Re-Animator was based on the work of Lovecraft, and the satirical manner in which it dealt with the subject matter of bringing life to corpses made it the "anti-Frankenstein". Although its undead were not of the flesh-eating variety, Re-Animator was a more than worthy addition to the genre.

Return of the Living Dead's zombies were not of the flesh-eating variety either--no, they preferred brains. In fact, it was this film which directly led to the inextricable link between zombies and brain-eating that continues to persist in pop culture to this day. Originally envisioned as an unofficial sequel to Night of the Living Dead, O'Bannon chose instead, out of deference to the master, to take the proceedings in a more humorous direction. The result was a film which is regarded as one of the finest horror comedies ever made.

Ironically, ROTLD would go head-to-head with the long-awaited third chapter in Romero's series, 1985's Day of the Dead. Panned at the time by critics and rejected by fans, the film failed at the box office, its serious tone and depressing social message no match for the frivolity and punk rock mentality of O'Bannon's film. Also, budgetary constraints and creative disputes had caused the film to be significantly less than what Romero had originally intended it to be.

Nevertheless, Day of the Dead featured perhaps the most astonishing make-up work yet seen in a zombie picture (courtesy of Romero's right-hand man Tom Savini), and the most shocking violence this side of the Atlantic. It also gave us the sympathetic zombie Bub, one of the all-time great horror characters and another conceptual evolution in the subgenre. Over time, Day of the Dead would be reconsidered by fans and critics alike, and rightfully take its place alongside its two predecessors.

Once again, Romero had managed to reinvent the cinematic category he invented. But after Day of the Dead, several issues would cause the director to walk away from the world of the living dead. The genre would be forced to go on without him--and during a time when horror films in general would be suffering their lowest nadir in decades.

To Be Continued...

Part 1: They're Coming to Get You

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