ZOMBIE FLESH EATERS 2 – I've reviewed this before, but it seems I can't stay away from late period Fulci for very long. Despite being a bit dismissive of ZFE2 when I first saw it a few years ago, it's grown on me ever since, to the point where it stands as a primo trash classic in my eyes. I prefer it to the original ZFE... that's not me trying to be controversial, it's more a testament to my lack of patience with a movie I consider to be plodding and overrated. ZFE is atmospheric, eventually, and contains a few iconic moments of groundbreaking gore, but whenever I see it I feel as if I'm having to wade through a lot of drag to get to the goods. ZFE2 is just pretty bonkers from the outset. It's a film packed with incident, messed up images, bizarre overacting and scrambled 'plot lines' . ZFE is a 'proper' film, with a narrative, a direction and a resolution. ZFE2 is a load of scenes strung together that just about make sense as a whole, but only just, and even then, maybe not really. It's well known that the reason for this messiness was that Fulci was ill, and couldn't complete it – the reins went over to Bruno Mattei for a few scenes. Looking at it now, the whole film seems way more Mattei than Fulci. It lacks any gothic aspiration, or aspiration to being anything beyond a mad scramble. It throws a bunch of stuff at the viewer and hopes for the best. A severed head flies out of a fridge and bites someone's throat out. A really fast, hard looking zombie flails around scarily with a machete. Some really slow zombies just do their usual thing. There's a bird attack on a bus. There's more dead birds on a road, prompting one character to bleat “that's the saddest thing I've ever seen”. A man wrestles a chicken only to be shot by mean guys in hazmat outfits. A zombie pregnancy culminates in a show stopping moment when an adult sized arm shoots out and rips someone's face off, prompting cries of “huh?” from me at least. The list goes on. Highly recommended for lovers of environmentally fixated low brow cine-scum.
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