Zombi 2 [Zombie] (1979)

(In French, On Cable TV, April 2020) While Zombi 2 earns a certain place in horror film history due to a convoluted naming origin (originally intended by director Lucio Fulci to be a sequel to a Romero film, then produced as a standalone) and by being among the first wave of grindhouse zombie movies, it doesn’t have much to offer to casual viewers nowadays—yes, of course, there’s the ultra-gory violence of this and the Italian zombie film subgenre it helped inspire, but that’s more of interest to the gore-hound contingent. The rest… not so much. The story takes us to the Caribbean for a face-off with classic voodoo zombies, but Shark versus zombie? Eh, whatever. That it inspired Zombie Holocaust is not something to be proud of. While I’ll acknowledge that Zombi 2 is not as awful as many of the later films in its corner of the movie universe and that the practical effects are not bad for 1979, that’s very faint and reluctant praise.