Oh zombies zombies. Personally I'm a little bored of the zombie mania that seems to never die... just like a zombie...ha ha. But watching these old zombie movies makes me understand why it is such a craze now.
The film opens when an apparently abandoned yacht drifts into the harbor. Two patrolmen investigate and one is killed by a fat and nauseating zombie man. The other patrolman fires off some shots and the zombie falls in the ocean. The police call upon a woman named Anne for questioning as it was her father's boat involved. She knows nothing but yearns to find out the truth about her missing father and what has become of him. She soon unites with a hunky newspaper reporter where they find a note tracing Anne's father to a remote island.
The island has a little epidemic. The dead come back alive and kill people turning them into zombies and so forth and so on. Nothing new to report there. Those pesky zombies can never take a hint. So Anne and the reporter plus some naked scuba diver lady and a less hunky man soon become under attack by pretty much the whole island. Will they survive? Puh-lease the zombies always win, unless of course there is a shark involved.
The scene in which I refer to may possibly be the greatest scene of all time. An underwater zombie fighting with a real live tiger shark! Crazy I know. I didn't believe it either at first but it is very true. The zombie bites a chunk out of the shark but in the end the shark wins of course. Although I wonder if the shark became a zombie after that...zombie sharks? Yikes. Now that would be a real problem.
The other great scene is the wood splinter in the eye scene. In fact all of the gore in this movie is incredibly realistic and more convincing than some horror movies today. Not to mention that no horror film today would dare create a zombie fighting with a shark scene...man I just can't get over it.
So the eye scene is pretty nuts. This movie definitely uses the slow is more painful strategy. It takes about 5 minutes for that splinter to finally puncture her eye and by the end you are just wishing it would come faster-anticipation is the worst part. The scene where the zombies are eating that very woman and one takes like a liver or something and starts eating it-whoa. Serious whoa there.
One thing that kind of irked me about this movie though is the slowness of the people's reactions to the zombies. Well-maybe it was just the women, which now that I think about it, is horribly offensive, but say a zombie was coming for the nurse woman. She would stand there and scream for 20 minutes while the zombies were still on the other side of the room. And mind you- zombies aren't exactly the fastest kids in gym class. She could have easily run away but no no she has to stand and scream. The only thing I can compare it to is in Austin Powers when the guy is screaming about steam roller coming for him and we soon see that it's incredibly far away and moving at the pace of an injured snail.
Other than that the movie definitely impressed me. The music was great the special effects were great and those pictures of all the dead people in the sheets with the gunshot wounds to the head in the mass grave? So creepy. Oh and the zombie skeletons rising from the ground and the hoard of zombies coming for them at the end. This movie really relies on the slow scare and I think it's an interesting tactic. Nothing really jumps out and no music cues us into the horror. It can drag a little but for the most part I was wildly entertained- although I'm pretty sure the shark scene just won me over entirely. And also why does that woman have to scuba dive topless? Unnecessary.
7 comments:
I think this is a fantastic movie, even the tag line "We are going to eat you" on the poster is amazing. Leave it to Bravo to make it #98 and not put it in the top 10 where it easily belongs. :/
It's true although Bravo is merely citing scariest moments and not movies I am still very disturbed by Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory topping 26 real horror movies wait 25 because the Wizard of Oz doesn't count either. Lame cakes.
Yeah, I know it's moments and not whole movies and that Bravo needs to cater towards the casual horror fan. I'm still very shocked and impressed that The Beyond made the list.
And Wizard of Oz scared me...when I was like 4.
The second countdown they did was even worse then this. Ugh.
Oh I know...Hostel number 1 puh-lease.
I'm convinced they made that countdown just to put that at number one. They should make a countdown of horror movies you need to watch and make it all obscure and cult films. But we can only hope...
Wait ... what's wrong with women scuba diving topless? heh
This was my first Fulci film so I just love it to death. Although in my opinion I think The Beyond is his best film but my love for this film knows no bounds.
I still need to see The Beyond! I have heard wonderful wonderful things.
Post a Comment