Eight Reasons Why Italian Zombies Do it Better

One of the staples of Italian genre cinema in the late 1970s and early 1980s was the zombie film. Lucio Fulci’s Zombi–a film inspired by Romero’s classic Dawn of the Dead–helped usher in a golden age of morti viventi flicks that took the ideas of Romero’s films and filtered them through a distinctly European worldview. Some of these films were great (The Beyond) others not so much (Night of the Zombies), but one thing that cannot be denied is the Italian zombie’s influence on modern living dead cinema. Many of the things we love about the current batch of zombie flicks shambling into theaters and onto DVD owe back to that magical time when Italy was ground zero for the zombie apocalypse. Here, then, are eight reasons why Italian zombies do it better.

1. Jive Talkin’

Umberto Lenzi’s City of the Waking Dead featured fast or running zombies years before films like 28 Days Later. They also wore polyester, had Freddy Krueger face before Freddy did, brandished weapons and killed foxy Solid Gold Dancers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4vq1beb9oE

2. Gut-Munchers

Zombie Holocaust was one of the only zombie flicks to feature zombies and cannibals—a serious double threat! If the zombies don’t kill you, the cannibals will. Even better, Ian McCulloch stars as Dr. Peter Chandler who leads the exhibition team on the Moluccas islands and rips a zombie’s head open with a boat outboard motor while remaining poised and very British.

3. “What’s wrong? I’m your son!”

Italian zombie flicks never shied away from taboo subjects. Two words for you: zombie incest. You won’t find a more entertaining character than Peter Bark in Burial Ground, who was a dwarf playing the role of a young boy named Michael. The creepy “kid” lusts after his mommy and who can blame him? Mariangela Giordano is a total babe. Too bad she loses a nipple.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRhjls6ap5o

4. They Eat Brains to the Tune of Better Music.

Most people associate Italian horror cinema with musicians like Goblin (they are amazing!), but Stelvio Cipriani’s score for Nightmare City and Fabio Frizzi’s work on Zombi 2 and The Beyond are among the best horror scores out there. Some of the best Italian zombie film music didn’t actually start as that at all. Take Goblin’s score for George Romero’s seminal Dawn of the Dead–classic music that was later lifted wholesale and reused in Bruno Mattei’s mediocre Night of the Zombies. Goblin insists this was done without their permission, but there’s no denying that the score is one of the only things that makes Mattei’s film watchable.

5. Who’s Your Daddy?

Zombie 3 boasts one of the earliest appearances of the now seemingly mandatory zombie fetus. There’s also a distinctly Italian discrepancy over who directed the film and how much of it they directed. Lucio Fulci’s name is credited as director but second unit director Bruno Mattei and writer Claudio Fragasso may have actually been the ones to shoot most of the film once Fulci fell ill during production. This is something that hardcore Italian zombie freaks have argued since the film was released and to this day there have been no final conclusions.

6. Name Droppers.

Italian zombies are so important, they have 20 bazillion different titles for each movie they star in. There’s not only the Italian language title, but also a handful of English language titles and a dozen or so international versions as well. You can pick and choose which ones are your favorite and argue with fellow Italo zombie nerds about the pretentiousness of using L’aldilà vs. The Beyond.

7. Anna Falchi!

Since February is Women in Horror Month, I couldn’t leave the loveliest zombie lady in the history of Italian zombie flicks (and perhaps American ones too) off my list. Anna Falchi stars in my favorite zombie film, Cemetery Man, directed by Michele Soavi. She plays the sexy widow who Francesco Dellamorte falls in love with, but eventually has to kill after she turns into a zombie. There are many beautiful things about this movie, and even though she becomes one of the undead, Falchi is no exception.

8. Hardcore

The marriage of zombies and sex started well before websites like Zombie Pinups or films like Dead Girl ever existed. In 1981 the always charming Joe D’Amato directed Erotic Nights of the Living Dead, where he where he merged zombie horror and hardcore porn. D’Amato continued the porntastical goodness with Porno Holocaust, which revolved around group of castaways who contend with a zombie that attacks and rapes women—killing them with his radioactive sperm. Yes please.