Fulci

 

ZOMBI-2-1979-A mysterious boat is discovered in the NYC harbor. It seems abandoned but 2 coast guard members discover a rotting flesh eating zombie on board which kills one of the guards. It turns out the boat belongs to a missing scientist. His daughter Anne Bowles (Tisa Farrow) teams ups with a NYC based British reporter Peter West (Ian McCulloch) to find his whereabouts. They hitch a ride with another couple (Al Cliver and Auretta Gay) on their boat to reach the island of Mantool where it turns out Dr. Menard (Richard Johnson) is trying to stave off a zombie invasion. After an underwater zombie fights a shark, the quartet meet up with Menard. Meanwhile the doc's mistreated wife (Olga Karlatos) is killed and eaten (a splinter going through her eye is an infamous scene). Eventually zombies start turning up everywhere and the four take refuge in Menard's church/hospital.

 It's very gory and fast moving but director Lucio Fulci ran into a lot of problems with the producers (their original choice for director was Enzo Casarelli) and he wasn't that happy with the results. The ending is kind of laughable. Still it was a big hit. Called ZOMBIE in the US, it's original title was ZOMBI 2 since George Romero's DAWN OF THE DEAD was called ZOMBI in Europe.

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Italian Cannibal

ANTHROPOPHAGUS-1980-In a long opening scene a couple go to a beach. She's killed underwater and he gets a meat cleaver in the head. An American woman named Julie (Tisa Farrow with a dubbed voice) joins some tourists for a vacation on a secluded Mediterranean island. After fooling around with tarot cards they do some exploring and find the town there mostly deserted except for a young blind girl (Julie's friends' daughter). Of course it turns out that there is a mad cannibal (George Eastman) on the loose who used to be a guy named Niklos. Through a flashback we learn Niklos and his wife and young son were stranded in a raft. Niklos accidentally stabbed his wife when they argued over eating their dead son's body. Niklos wound up eating both and going mad. Niklos stabs several victims, decapitates another and rips the baby from a pregent woman and eats it. Before he dies he even attempts to eat his own guts.

The gore effects are typical for the time in an Italian horror film and the Niklos zombie is effective but much of it is way too dark.

Eastman (real name: Luigi Montefiori)  co-wrote the screenplay with director Joe D'Amati (real name: Aristide Massaccesi) who'd already made things like SEXY NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and EMANUELLE AND THE LAST CANNIBALS. D'Amati would go on to make many more horror films in Italy (many in collaboration with Eastman) featuring bloody SFX and low budgets. Tisa Farrow (younger sister of Mia) co-starred in Fulci's ZOMBIE the year before. She'd make one more horror film in Italy HUNTER OF THE APOCALYPSE directed by Antonio Margheriti before retiring.

This played in US theaters as THE GRIM REAPER and was also known as ZOMBIE 7!

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