No VHS horror celebration is complete without Lucio Fulci, and we kick off tonight’s Cursed Tapes screen with a special screening of the Italian master’s best.
This zombie shocker sees Anne arrive on the fictional Carribean island of Matul looking for her missing father, with journalist Peter in tow, who is interested in covering the mysterious goings on taking place on the island. Caught in the middle of a terrifying zombie outbreak, they are soon faced with a fight to survive.
The film’s original title of Zombi 2 was an attempt to cash in on the success of Dawn of the Dead, but this is a story of zombie terror all of its own. Going back to the Carribean origins of the zombie myth, Fulci expertly escalates the sense of dread on screen, aided by Fabio Frizzi’s iconic score, and lashings of gore, including a memorable underwater fight between a zombie and a shark, and one truly shocking moment that would make it one of the most high profile films caught up in the video nasties scandal in the early 1980s.
Effectively banned in the UK until 1999, and only released uncut in the early 2000s, this is one of the greats.