2. Zombi 2 Has Nothing To Do With Dawn Of The Dead
Dawn Of The Dead is amongst the best zombie movies ever made. It's certainly not one of the best movies ever made, what with its obviously low budget and bad acting, but it has an iconic place in popular culture and horror mythology especially. As with Night Of The Living Dead, genre godfather George A Romero continued to use the walking dead as a metaphor for social ills. In this case: rampant consumerism! Oh, and lots of gore. Zombies getting their heads cut off with machetes, helicopter blades, that sort of thing. The film was edited especially for Europe to include more of that icky stuff, along with a synth-prog score by Goblin and the Italian title of Zombi. Once again, it was the Italian film industry's loose understanding/flagrant disregard for copyright law that lead to the ill-fated Zombi 2, or Dawn Of The Dead 2. Otherwise known as Zombie Flesh Eaters or Island Of The Living Dead, the title should give a clue as to the only thing the two films have in common: the zombies. Splatter legend Lucio Fulci decides to opt out of the social commentary or anything like that, instead going full gore, with even less interest in the acting or script choices. But then, who cares about plot or character when you're just biding your time until a zombie fights a shark?
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
