The Zombi Series

A Mega Review by Nick Peron

What a complete utter shit show. I'm going to say that up front. The Zombi series has to be the most unabashed attempts on cashing in on a franchise that I have ever seen in all the film series I've ever had to endure.

For the benefit of those of you who have never heard much of the Zombi film series, allow to first of all congratulate you for taking the first baby-steps toward experiencing the outside world (at this rate you will be able to leave your computer by 2012.)

It all started when George Romero's classic zombie film Dawn of the Dead was being released into the European market. When it was released in Italy, not only was the film re-cut, it also had a new score put together by the talented Dario Argento (who also did the scores for such great Italian horror movies as Suspiria , Phenomena and the first two Demons films) They also decided to re-title the film to Zombi, I suppose Alba Dei Morti was to hard for the audience to understand.

At any rate, as you could imagine Zombi was a big hit in Italy, and so when distributor were aware that Lucio Fulci was working on a zombie film, they had him rename it to Zombi 2 in order to make it appear as a sequel, even though it had nothing in common with any of Romero's Living Dead films, except for the fact that it featured flesh eating zombies.

Now this is where the name game cluster-fuck begins, because depending on what country you lived in there were all sorts of pre-mutations of the titles and what movies were part of the series. Technically speaking, there were only three actual movies titled Zombi in Italy, however when it came to the international market, distribution companies wanted to cash in on the brand and would take other films acquired from Italy (and beyond) and tack the Zombi(e) title on it.

The films that were involved are such:

Romero's original Dawn of the Dead, Fulci's Zombi 2 and Zombi 3 (co-directed by Bruno Mattei -- I'll get into that in a minute), then unrelated films such as Claudio Fragasso's Oltre la Morte (After Death), Claudio Lattanzi's Uccelli Assassini (Killing Birds), as well as Jess Franco's Christina, Revenge in the House of Usher, José Luis Merino's La Orgia de los Muertos (Orgy of the Dead, also known as The Hanging Woman) and lastly Joe D'Amato's Absurd.

Each of the films would be renamed or re-titled for various logistical/franchising reasons and would go like this:

In Italy, you had Zombi (Dawn of the Dead), Zombi 2, and Zombi 3 . That's it. All the other mention films were never associated with the series. In the UK, the series was all renamed Zombie Flesh Eaters, with Fulci's Zombi 2 being the first film of the series, followed by Zombi 3 and lastly Oltre la Morte was renamed to Zombie Flesh Eaters 3. In Germany, they followed the Italians with the exception of spelling the films Zombie instead of Zombi, and Zombi 2 -- which was Fulci's film remember -- was titled Zombie 2: Das Letzte Kapitel (which translates to Dawn of the Dead, which is kind of funny.)

But leave it to America to keep on dipping even the most tepid franchise they can find, which although I like most of the Zombi films, you have to admit in terms of franchises we're looking at the bottom of the pale. There are two different sets of releases out there that have entirely different movies in the sequences. Depending on which one you subscribe to series (titled Zombie) features a vastly different array of sequels: One starts off with Fulci's Zombi 2 (for the longest time it was simply renamed to Zombie, but some of the more current releases keep the original numbering, because anyone buying it knows what the hell is going on), Zombi 3, then Oltre la Morte (renamed Zombie 3: After Death), and lastly Uccelli Assassini (renamed Zombie 5: Killing Birds.)

The second set of releases out there is the biggest cluster fuck of them all, because they release Fulci's Zombi 2 twice and pass the second release off as a sequel (so you're a big fucking sucker if you fell for that), La Orgia de los Muertos (renamed Zombie 3: Return of the Zombies), Christina (renamed Zombie 4: A Virgin Among the Living Dead) Revenge in the House of Usher (renamed Zombie 5: Revenge in the House of Usher) and lastly Absurd (renamed Zombie 6: Monster Hunter) This set is the oddest one because it's one that contains a mix of Italian and Spanish zombie films as Zombies 3-5 were all Spanish made films.

Even more fucked up, there are other non-related zombie films that some money grubbers looking to make an extra buck will slap the zombie name on it. Zombie Holocaust for example has been renamed and re-released as Zombie 3. Most likely since it stars Ian McCulloch, who was in Fulci's Zombi 2. Also Andrea Bianchi's film Le Notti del terrore (Burial Ground: Night of Terror) has also been renamed Zombie 3.

By an large most of the films are not that bad to watch, La Orgia de los Muertos is a very interesting film (most recently released by Troma Entertainment) However for the most part it's appeared that most distributors have decided to re-title films to make a wholly unrelated film marketable to a weary audience.

At least that's how it used to be. I find that these days most distributors of cult horror films don't fuck around so much anymore by renaming films because in most cases (mostly thanks to the internet) most people can do the research themselves. But even then I wouldn't discourage people from buying these re-titled films, as long as they're uncut and properly translated who really gives a flying fuck? I sure don't.

Anyhow, we're going to move right along into the review portion of these films, I am going to go through the American release of the films (Specifically Shriek Show entertainments releases of Zombie 2-5, we'll skip Dawn of the Dead, the internet does not need another review of it, trust me) So hold onto your hats and here we go!