My dad took me to see this at the drive-in theater back in 1980 when I was 6 years old. Yes, it was called Zombie here in the United States. It was called Zombie when we rented it on video 3 years later. Netflix gave us the international movie treatment when I saw it again in 2010 as Zombi 2.
Holy cow, Batman. You were 6 when you got to see this one? I was 16 (just barely under the age of for NC-17, but we knew the people who owned the theatre. My mom took my cousin and I, and my mom had never seen anything like it before, and she was so nervus she ripped thru an entire bag of Reese's Peanut Butter cups! My cousin and I, at the time, were somewhat experienced in gore from the advent of Fangoria magazine and Romero's
Dawn Of The Dead and we were like, 'Cool!'
The The film quality is superb, especially the zombie vs. shark scene. I've read that they had to make sure that the shark was full and slightly tranquilized before the shoot, and that the zombie was actually the shark's real-life trainer!
Well, Jackie Chan was too busy falling off of buildings and getting banged up in so many other ways that they had to get someone else to do it. I admit too that the film quality is superb, when you consider seeing Olga Karlatos nude and a topless Auretta Gay
I too, thought that the make-up for the zombies in this movie were superior to the ones in
Dawn of the Dead (1978), and even in the 2004 remake. They looked like actual decomposed corpses brought back to life, as opposed to just some goofy bit actors in blue make-up. The female head prop for the wood-splinter-in-the-eye scene did look rather fake though, but what was left to the imagination was still pretty grotesque. And althought the movie had many slow moments, the overall pace of the film was adequate, especially the "first contact" scene on the boat in the New York City harbor where we got a ripped jugular death within the first five minutes of the movie. Not bad!
Fulci's makeup man, Gianetto Di Rossi, had a way of making Italian zombies really look dead. There's something quite disturbing about them, as if they were twisted puppets held up by some unknown plane of force. The 25th Anniv. Shriek Show DVD explains the eye-splinter scene in full detail, and does so in English as well.
The original
Dawn Of The Dead was a better story while
Zombi 2 was more a masterpiece of gore and a lesson about how to make truly gruesome effects w\o a budget. and like you, I too recommend this one for anyone's collection. Good review!