All language subtitles for From.Romero.to.Rome.The.Rise.and.Fall.of.the.Italian.Zombie.Movie.2012.576p.BDRip.mkv2

Anytime any of us are working on
anything,

I think it's very difficult to predict
what the outcome of that work product

will be.

Sometimes a project gets lucky. In the
case of Night of the Living Dead, I

the project and we got very lucky.

They're coming to get you, Barbara.

Usually Night of the Living Dead is
talked of in...

regards to its relation to previous
zombie movies, but it doesn't actually

the word zombie.

I mean, one of the problems with pre
-Night of the Living Dead zombie films

what to do with zombies.

And so you get movies like White Zombie
or I Walked with a Zombie or Plague of

the Zombies, which are all about the
evil people who exploit zombies rather

zombies themselves, who are walking
furniture.

Now when people say zombies, it means
something different.

I didn't see one of the most famous
zombie films. I walked with a zombie

relatively recently.

That, I'm afraid, I'm sorry to say,
doesn't stand up awfully well today

because the lead zombie is little more
than a catatonic woman, completely

harmless. She doesn't eat anyone.

Romero changed the rules and Night of
the Living Dead was a

very, very important film. There's no
doubt about it. I think it makes as much

sense to relate Night of the Living Dead
to...

Invisible Invaders or The Last Man on
Earth, which is an Italian film based on

an American novel, I Am Legend, as it
does to relate it to White Zombie or

of the Zombies or even Plague of the
Zombies.

Those are kind of a different thing.

The notion of the zombie apocalypse, the
flesh -eating ghouls, the idea of an

infection, all of those come from other
stories. They're sort of from vampire

stories. That's what Richard Matheson in
I Am Legend does with it.

And if you look at most zombie
apocalypse movies, zombies are like the

They could be an earthquake or a
hurricane or a volcano.

for all the difference that would make
to the plot.

And that distinguishes them from most
monsters who have some kind of human,

moral, relatable dimension. Maybe it's
what makes zombies the nightmare

for our time.

Okay, an admittedly hokey premise.

Recently dead people coming back to
life.

However...

If such a phenomenon could happen, how
would it play out and affect the lives

of the people around them? And that we
tried to depict as we thought people

might react.

And that strategy and that storytelling,
certainly in the case of Night of the

Living Dead, did pay off.

Romero's Night of the Living Dead was a
superlative horror film and I

can still remember distinctly seeing it
in a cinema in London's

Piccadilly in 1970.

I remember that it seemed so real that
just for a

moment when I came out of the cinema I
expected to see zombies walking down

Piccadilly. And then, of course, I
clicked back into reality, and I felt

that was the mark of a truly great
horror film.

Johnny, you're still afraid.

Stop it now, I mean it.

It was our first attempt at a narrative
feature film, and we wanted that to be

portrayed in a way that was as realistic
as possible.

Night of the living dead. The dead who
live on living

flesh.

Associated theaters were the first
theaters that played Night of the Living

Dead. And George Stern, who was one of
two cousins who operated Associated

Theaters, the night after it opened in
their theaters,

called and he said, you boys are going
to make a million dollars with this

picture because we have never seen a
first night turnout for

what actually was a drive -in movie, a
neighborhood theater movie.

And in his experience, he knew right
from the very beginning that there was

something special about this film, so
much so.

that he picked up the phone and he
called his exhibition counterparts in

Philadelphia and Cleveland and
Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus, and other

and said to his exhibition compatriots,
you have to book

this picture, we are doing, our opening
night business was phenomenal, and

ultimately that connection from the,

a man who was responsible for the
Pittsburgh exhibition, spread through

movie business like wildfire. So it did
pretty much right from the jump.

Get launched into something more than
just, oh, it's just another drive -in

movie.

It was everything that we got was from
hero worship to...

People thought that we were satanically
inspired and that we had made a

movie of absolutely no social redeeming
value and that we had no place

as movie artists, as film artists.

And everything in between.

I personally did not pay

as much attention to other films that
came in the close footprint

of Night of the Living Dead.

But I did know that Night of the Living
Dead, although we certainly could not

have planned for or predicted it to be
so groundbreaking, it was.

Night of the Living Dead essentially
creates its own

Zombie movies started to hit home, and
in between Night of the Living Dead and

before we got to, like, Romero's opus of
Dawn of the Dead, you had the Spanish

-produced movie, Living Dead at
Manchester Morgue, there was the Amanda

'Othorio's Blind Dead.

I think there's four or five of those. A
beautiful young girl is trapped by the

evil forces.

No one is safe from their curse.

They touch base with what Romero did.
They use bits and pieces of the other

film. And because they're in different
contexts and because some of them are

made by sort of interesting filmmakers,
they have stuff going on in them.

Imagine, if you will, that something has
gone terribly wrong.

Shoot it, man. Now, accept the fact that
there's no escaping the horrible

consequences.

George Romero brings back the dead.

Night of the living dead has ended.

Dawn of the dead is here.

Night of the living dead, I saw when I
think about it.

When I saw Zombie, I saw it with Dario
Argento, who was editing it,

because Dario...

When there is no more room in hell, the
dead will walk the earth.

My favorite version of...

So between the American version, the one
shot by Romero, and the Italian one,

there's a big difference.

because the girl who is pregnant in the
film of Romero is seen every nine months

of pregnancy, while here you see the two
who get married, the mention of

pregnancy, then we are already at the
end, that is, the middle part, which is

the part, let's say,

of stabilization, that is, they live in
the supermarket, armored and the zombies

are out, so for a period of time
apparently nothing happens, the living

to live within the consumerism, as soon
as they manage to consume, the dead are

out and want to enter to be able to
consume.

Then at some point the balance breaks
and the dead eventually enter.

But while Romero's film has a very high
sociological value,

And then it was more of a mass

horror, I don't know how to say it, of a
sensation.

Worldwide then the Italians did their
usual thing of slipping in into the

and doing their own sort of imitations
And you know and it brings us around to

thought she's gonna be flesh eaters or
zombie as it's known in the u .s

Zombie 2 was a rip -off, as the
Americans call it, on

Zombie, George Romero's film, directed
by Dario.

The film by

Fucci came out before Romero's, and
above all it was written a year and a

before.

The film Zombie 2 was born in 1978,

more or less in the summer, in June or
July, because a producer, who is

now dead, Gianfranco Cuglian, asked me

made me read an Italian comic, Tex
Wheeler, where there was an adventure of

in the Valley of Death where he met a
kind of living dead.

Then he asked me if it was possible to
make a film, a commission between horror

and western.

So I said no, this was not possible, but
that it would have been possible to

make a commission between adventure

and horror.

The film is shot with the original title
which is The Island of Living Deaths.

In June, when the film is finished,

they have news that Dario Argento is
shooting Zombie with Romero.

Then, Ugo Tucci makes a joke, changes
the title to

exploit the notoriety of Dario and the
film of Romero.

because they didn't accept the idea that
others would follow a film of theirs

and they sued the Rome Tribunal asking
for the change of the

title because they said that Zombie was
ours and they couldn't follow our film.

But the Tribunal rejected their request
saying that Zombie wasn't a title

invented by them but a common word.

In Italy, Dawn of the Dead was released
as Zombie, and Fulci's came out as

Zombie Due.

But if you get past the title, there's
really no comparison, because Fulci's in

the Caribbean dealing with voodoo, and
Romero's Dawn of the Dead is the

continuation of Night of the Living
Dead. I mean, what the hell's going on

Have you ever heard of voodoo?

Voodoo?

Doctor, you gotta be joking.

That's kid stuff.

I mean, voodoo is just plain
superstitious bullshit.

So that

stirs back

in something from...

So you can't say it's a sequel.

It's not a sequel.

Casme is a prequel. It's what happens
before the events narrated in Romero's

Zombie.

because Fulci decides to set his story
in the land of voodoo and black magic,

the Caribbean.

My film, which was an adventure, was
shot like a yellow.

And so I wrote this story set in the
Caribbean, where I actually did a little

bit on the island of Dr. Moreau and
other things, because there was actually

doctor who was more or less crazy, who
did experiments and so on, and therefore

has Caribbean legends.

I think the main similarity between the
two films

is the big siege.

ending.

And that's kind of a common thing in
zombie movies.

I mean, you have to find somewhere to
kind of hole up. You have to figure out

strategy. And the best strategy seems to
be find somewhere you can defend, block

yourself in.

Although it is kind of the worst
strategy because as soon as you do that,

just keep coming and they know you're in
there. They know there's food in there

and they just kind of mill around
aimlessly and they're never going to go

What both films are suggesting is that,
you know, there is no stopping the

zombie apocalypse.

There is no way to end it. Both films
are saying we can't stop this, we can't

fight it. That it is the true
apocalypse. There is no happy ending to

these stories.

which is very much linked to the end of
Romero and precisely the end, that is,

the zombies on the bridge of Brooklyn.

Because at that moment you see a mass of
zombies walking towards a city that at

that moment represented the maximum of
consumerism, of these things here, and

therefore obviously reattaches itself to
the theme of Romero.

George Romero's Dawn of the Dead was a
kind of an allegory about, you know,

the shopping generation and I think the
Italians kind of dropped all those

metaphors and went back to more like
classic ghost stories and it was all

the mood and the atmosphere and the
pacing and the music and it was very

more almost like a gothic horror, sort
of the classic horror with, you know,

smoke and fog and much more stylized, I
suppose.

What was lost in perhaps more
sophisticated narrative.

It's found stylistically.

He's very deliberate in where he places
the camera, very deliberate on what you

see. The long lingering shots of
somebody getting their eye poked out.

know, he loves watching the eyes getting
poked out. Those are very, you know, he

really pays attention.

It's very much about his style. I mean,
that lingering shot of the boat coming

into New York Harbor is amazing. I mean,
in New York is often used in horror

films. But actually people really forget
that New York is on the open ocean.

The harbor is there, but this is the
first time that it took an Italian to

in and say, no, New York, you are
connected to the ocean where some evil

come up a long way. And he takes his
time with that thought.

He understands the space that these
people are inhabiting much better than

Romero does.

But then Romero's got the advantage of a
really strong story.

Stay where you are, mister.

Put your hands on the deck there. I told
you not to move.

Romero's is more of a solid story piece
with effects pieces, whereas Fulci's

movie is, after you get to the island,
sort of halfway through, it's the

abattoirness of the effects and it's...

you know, the crunchiness of those
special effects.

The look of the zombies is interesting
in the different types of films.

I mean, the Romero ones, they have this
kind of just generic blue or green

paint, and then the closer ones, they've
got the more elaborate stuff.

And in Zombie Flash, they look like
they've been buried for a long time.

look rotten and rotting.

Their fingers are all sunken and bony,
and there's just bits missing off them.

I think that's because in the first two
Romero, it's just kind of started.

So they haven't had time to decompose as
much.

They do a bit more of that in Day of the
Dead. They've kind of been rotting for

a while. But in the Fulci ones, you get
the feeling they've been just hanging

around for hundreds of years, most of
them. Even the recent ones, it's so hot

and humid and disgusting.

They're falling to bits already and
crusty and horrible.

Even if they don't bite you, you don't
want them touching you. They're just

horrible. They're really nasty.

They do become much of a muchness in
terms of their presence.

The zombies in Romero's films, you're
kind of warm to them. I mean, I really

felt for the zombies. And whereas the
zombies in the Italian films, they were

kind of just...

They were more like monsters in a
classical way. I didn't really warm to

couldn't really see the original person,
the original human being before the

zombie. Zombie Flesh Eaters is, I
suppose, not without interest. I'll go

far as to say that it's obviously a very
stylish film, and you can tell that

from the opening scene, which has been
much commented on. I saw it when it was

first released in the cinema.

on a double bill with the toolbox
murders and both films were butchered by

british board of film censors which
annoyed me intensely i remember that the

audience loved zombie flesh eaters and
every time there was an attack by the

zombies they screamed with delight but
of course every attack had been ripped

shreds by the censors

You know what? It was better in
widescreen, in the cut version, than it

VHS, panned and scanned, and with all
the effects in it. Because it's a film

that sort of depends on its look.

I don't think those Italian zombie
movies, the horror boom

pictures of the early 80s, were
particularly well served by video as a

because they were widescreen.

Oddly enough...

George Romero wasn't shooting in
widescreen. So Dawn of the Dead really

VHS. And you can see why that really
took off through the roof during the

rental era.

Because it had a smaller frame and the
look was slightly grottier. And

so it didn't really matter that the
image was slightly degraded. But I think

those Italian films lost out a lot.

And it was only really when...

They started coming out, actually
probably on Laserdisc first, that people

realised how good they looked.

We were in the midst of the so -called
video nasty scare, and the director of

public prosecutions had decided that
Zombie Flesh Eaters, along with many

films, was obscene, and what developed
was an underground movement of

aficionados who would pass...

illegal videotapes from one to the
other. It was a very exciting thing to

course, because you could, in theory, be
prosecuted if you were found with these

obscene materials on you.

And that was when I first saw the uncut
zombie flesh eaters complete

with the scene probably it's most famous
for, where...

The woman has her eyeball skewered on a
wood splinter. That had been cut

completely from the original British
release, so that was astonishing.

We'd seen a lot of films around that
time where they do the build -up and

they cut away and then they show the
aftermath.

So we were kind of used to that
cinematic language where you cut away

the after -effects.

So we were not expecting them to show
the entire thing.

So it kind of took us by surprise that
we weren't thinking, oh, my God,

Rubberhead. So as soon as it appeared,
half the people in the audience looked

away. The rest of us were watching,
going, wow, cool effect.

I think there's a moment where it goes
from being one of the most upsetting

things you're ever going to see in a
cinema to, oh, that's Rubber.

the sensor cut actually snips out the
rubber effect so you get enough you get

the idea you get the upsetting bit but
by removing the fakey punch line it's

actually a much more yeah um seriously
disturbing moment for me i mean i

prefer the uncut version to that over
the cut version purely because

I must admit, I'm a bit of a sucker for
gore. For me, that was like, wow, how

did they do that? And it's one of those
things that I've got to put my hand up

and I think I must have watched it a
hundred times, frame by frame, just to

how that special effect was done.

Practical special effects, you cannot
beat it. And the Italians, hats off to

them. They were the best at it.

I remember the discussions between him
and the director of the autograph,

because to be able to have a fire,

to have the change of fire on the screen
that entered, they needed

a particular lens, because they had to
pass, I don't remember now, maybe it's

stupid, from a certain type to a 9, and
so we needed a transducer, I remember

this thing, the user said, you have to
use a transducer because otherwise I

don't have it on fire.

So he was a great technician.

I designed the scene,

I described it in detail, but he did it
perfectly.

I'm almost sure that I'm not sure that
any other director would have done it as

well as him.

I think only Lucio could have done it
that way.

I think he made a film, among other
things, with one of his best, in my

because it is distressing,
claustrophobic.

all the part set on the island, where
the action really takes place.

It's a kind of terrible western horror,
where the

deaths come back live, there are some
beautiful special effects by Giannetto

Rossi, there are some actors...

Another standout piece in Zombie Fleshy
has got to be the scene where Aretha

Gray is diving.

Producers of Piranha 3D think they have
cornered the market in underwater

topless ballet, but Zombie Fleshy just
got their way before this with a very

long, slightly unnecessary, gratuitous,
nearly naked woman swimming around for

no apparent reason. And then all of a
sudden a bull shark comes in as well.

It's such a clever scene because...

you think the shark is going to get her
and that's kind of presented as the

threat and there's lots of ominous shots
of the shark and you think that's going

to be the thing that gets her and then
it's a kind of a classic bait and switch

the zombie appears and now there's a
zombie and a shark

who is a Mexican specialized in shark
scenes.

And I bought 30 minutes of sharks and I
don't know what to do.

So see if you can invent something so
that I can use these

20 minutes.

The thing can only work if we turn it
around, that is, the white shark, the

fearsome white shark, goes to bite and
instead it is bitten.

It's a very clever writing trick where
you have two threats, but then one of

threats is used to combat the other
threat. So it's a very nice kind of neat

around it.

That's got to be one of the best things
I've ever seen in a zombie film. A

zombie is wrestling a shark, which is
amazing. It took Romero how many films

get his zombies underwater?

He didn't do it to Land of the Dead.

And here, already, you've got a zombie
wrestling a shark. It's a brilliant

device, just showing how outrageous it
can be. And this is not too far off the

time of Jaws as well.

are on people's minds so you know the
italians are really looking at

that's happening an american film is
saying how can we pull out something for

it's so crazy and so stupid it doesn't
really make much sense you know but i

love the idea that there's millions of
zombies under the sea attacking sharks

you know

It's done very well and I think it's one
of the highlights of the film.

Zombie 2 went very well, just like
Zombie 1,

but the Italian production noticed that
a film with zombies was sold quite well

abroad.

It was easy to make money, and it was
also easy to make money, because you

had to take ten pieces, cover them with
blood and go.

So there were a series of productions,
but much smaller, that in Italy

practically had no success, no follow
-up, because they were mainly aimed at

sales abroad, films made with very
little money.

because the zombie trick allows you to
shoot with little expense.

After that, given the success of that
scene, then Lucio

got involved, because it's a bit like
the zombie thing.

It was like saying...

Let's repeat the things that happened.

Since the audience wants zombies, since
the audience wants the eye, let's give

it to them.

And so there was some repetitiveness,
which is what, in my opinion, destroyed

our cinema.

really the floodgates opened and as the
whole slew you know uh with fucci with

the beyond and city live and dead at the
house by the cemetery

You can see the progression between

Zombie flesh eaters, then City of the
Living Dead, then The Beyond, then House

by the Cemetery.

You can see they become more abstract,
more peculiar, more pretentious and

arty in a way that I sort of respond to.

Maybe less coherent as narrative and
maybe less effective as exploitation.

I actually believe Fulci had a bit of
fun with his zombie quartet because

the pure zombie movie of zombie flesh
eaters, in City of the Living Dead you

teleporting zombies blink and they're
not there, open your eyes and if you

them, that's it, they'll bite your neck
off. There's a whole lot of stuff in

City of the Living Dead that is sort of
random, isn't there?

Even the way the characters are regarded
as utterly disposable.

Then if you go to The Beyond, which is a
masterpiece in its own right, if

you actually look at the history of that
movie, it was never going to be a

zombie movie.

It was because the German backers wanted
zombies, and zombies were so popular

that Fulci was almost forced to write
the scenes at the end of the movie in

hospital where you've got Warbeck and
Catriona running around to please the

German audience.

If that film wasn't actually co
-produced in Germany, what would that

been? A haunted house picture, maybe?

The UK marketing on House by the
Cemetery, can anyone escape the

zombies? Well, we all know there's only
one zombie in House by the Cemetery.

and he's kind of not your typical zombie
because why would he stay in the cellar

because if it was me i'd be coming up
the stairs breaking into the house and

eating the whole household not waiting
for them to come down the stairs and

me

key two important figures even if
different from each other like the

frankenstein or the doctor frankenstein
and freud obviously joining them

together because he hated us
psychoanalysis and therefore I had to do

unnecessary slander, which he also did
other times in his thrillers in his

precisely at the psychoanalysis however
freudstein is actually a living dead but

at the same time it is a creature now
supernatural because who is

He has a voice almost like a child, but
he has a repellent body composed

of pieces, practically a kind of human
mosaic with pieces of corpses that he

obviously rips off to his own victims.

It's not a zombie movie, in the purest
sense of the word, because in that

Fulci had already made

Fear in the State of Wind Deaths and The
Beyond, which are, on the other hand,

other zombie movies, more linear,
definitely more defined

within their genre.

Zombie II, on the other hand, is a film
that has remained, of all those, the

first of its kind. And it's the best, in
my opinion. Some others are beautiful,

very beautiful.

But I think they're always incomplete.

Maybe they lack a clear idea of what
they wanted to do, or they didn't let

them do everything.

The producers often intervene in these
productions and forced them to change

things. The result isn't as perfect as
Zombie 2, which is a great film and

beautiful to watch.

Certainly, when I was honored for the
Cannibal

Holocaust, I was invited to all the
festivals, I went to the conventions,

entered a world that didn't belong to
me, a world that I didn't know, because

I've never been a follower of zombie
movies or horror movies, absolutely not.

But I began to see them, I was forced to
see them at the beginning and

I understood the bravery of one and the
other director.

For example, I found the films of Fulci
extraordinarily better than many

zombie films made by...

by other directors who are
unqualifiable.

I like everything about Fulci, apart
from being a great friend, he was a

director who, wherever he put his hands,
pulled something good out, even in the

comic.

He is someone who has written films that
are in the history of Italian cinema,

so I can't say anything bad about Fulci.

I love him.

I also went to see his zombie movies,
because he has a different hand.

It's an element of elegance, of turning
it into a real job.

Elegance, that's the important thing.

Never being lazy.

Always following the path of...

films, even with little budget, but to
do it well.

Clearly after Zombie 2, which had a
notable success in Italy and abroad, as

said before, distributors and Italian
producers continue on this false line,

on this path, launched by Fulci.

This is the same thing that happened to
me.

Those who followed me in Cannibal
Holocaust, I saw someone who used

the same kind of shooting as in Cannibal
Holocaust and I liked it, but then they

used the means to make cannibal porn,
zombie cannibal

and all the rest.

I never liked it.

And they made these films that then
became a cross between the zombie genre,

cannibal genre. Even the cannibal genre
in Italy has never gone well, it has

never achieved results at the box
office, but abroad it sold very well.

There were many events and even that did
not cost much because you went to a

wild place, you took some local digens,
local people and you made the

film. and makes a series of horror
movies one after the other.

Zombie Holocaust, for example, directed
by Marino Girolami, is a

very atypical zombie, very anomalous,
very strange.

I found it very funny because it
actually unites the theme of the Mad

that of the cannibals who at that time
were very...

very popular in Italy and in general in
international genre cinema, and the

theme of zombies that had arrived
roughly in those same years.

So, combining three film situations,
three different narrative

plots, such as the Mad Doctor who
creates terrible monsters, creates the

cannibals himself and the zombies,

just zombies wasn't enough so you have
things like zombie holocaust which is a

zombie movie in a cannibal movie and a
mad science movie uh yeah it's bluntest

as the erotic knights of the living dead
which is a zombie movie in a porno

movie

So, Joy D 'Amato, on the other hand,
combined in his own way

two other film elements of that period,
two subgenres in some way,

namely the exotic Eros and the zombies,
shooting the erotic nights,

the death of the wind.

This is a film also very anchored there.

It's basically a pornography film.

The zombies have very little to do with
it. But it's the strangest pornography

film you'd ever seen. Like, if a person
just wants to watch porn, they should

not watch this film, because it's
incredibly disturbing.

It starts off at a psychiatric hospital,
where you think two inmates have just,

you know, gotten together to go at it.
Then you go back into the past, and it's

all a porn film. This man wants to buy
this island to set up as some sort of

brothel, and you see him, you know, it's
got everything a porn film wants.

Explicit shots of sex.

three ways girl on girl on this island
and then all of a sudden there's this

other woman who turns out to be a ghost
and everybody but two of them get killed

by the zombies the last 20 minutes it's
all the zombies the porn goes completely

out the window until the end and the two
people who survive go insane and start

fucking on the beach and then they do it
again later and they're the two people

we see in the psychiatric hospital it's
extremely bizarre like I don't know if

they were trying to market it to zombie
horror fans who might want to have a

little bit of porn in with their movie
as well.

It's a very strange take on that. Let's
throw some zombies into a porn film and

try to get two markets at once.

But people who are into porn but not
into horror movies would not like this

film.

A Cannibal Apocalypse, that's an
infection movie and it works kind of

zombie picture and it has zombie
elements.

in it but it's also a vietnam veteran
crazed psychopath movie put it down

it's the only cannibal movie i've ever
seen where the virus of being a cannibal

is transferred through the the action of
biting someone and i guess that you

know antonio margariti really kind of
flipped the genre there sometimes

by the time the movie comes out the

the genre lineage becomes so scrambled
that interesting things can happen in

interstices.

And so that was why it was sort of fun
at the time to catch up on these movies.

God help us all.

I'm a big fan of Nightmare City, and I
think that brought something sort of new

to the genre.

There you got zombies at the airport
running around with axes, machetes and

the rest of it.

And the zombies run out and they have
guns and they begin attacking.

They are a coordinated force.

So it's not just that the zombies are
running, but they obviously have some

level of intelligence.

So again, it's like...

Are they truly zombies?

Well, it doesn't really matter because
all we know is that they're attacking

everyone and everybody's going to die.
And they go into a television studio

where this dance show or aerobics show
is going on and somehow they manage to

get all the way into this building and
attack.

That, of course, is reminiscent of Dawn
of the Dead, the original film, which

starts off in a moody studio where a
scientist is trying to tell everybody we

have to prepare and everybody's
ignoring.

So, you know, it's sort of a...

something to that. It's saying, yes,
it's invading our media.

If you look back at it after all these
years, it actually does, you know, it's

one of the more sort of favourite and
fun zombie movies to watch.

Many have been seriously injured and
hundreds of lives have been lost.

Nightmare 50, I think, was the first
film with zombies that run.

And so, obviously, 28 days later, you
know, like 28 weeks later, they picked

on that. And now...

It's kind of like most zombies you see
now are running zombies, you know, so I

obviously just love the walking ones. In
a way, I find the walking ones more

scary.

And I'm not quite sure why zombies do
run, you know, because most people in

world can't run that fast. So I don't
understand why you turn into a zombie

you can suddenly run really fast.

I think maybe if you're a marathon
runner zombie, maybe.

What's interesting about the Romero
films is that Zombies are pretty much

the same, put in a different context as
Romero explores different social and

political situations.

What the Italian zombie films do is they
change the zombie.

Like, first, you have just the regular
zombie that we all know, slow -moving,

trying to eat your brains. But then with
each subsequent film, you know, there's

teleportation, then they have guns, they
learn how to use weapons. They change

the zombie. They change the monster.

I think, obviously, once you get into
the 80s boom, when there were so many of

these things crowding together in such a
brief time, a certain numbing rote

repetition sets in.

You need to hit their heads! I told you!
See? Like this!

Get away!

I'm not a big fan of zombie creeping
flesh, and to me that was kind of a

of all the other zombie films.

Perhaps it was getting a bit stale, a
bit bored, and maybe people realised

No! No!

Another one that jumps to the forefront
of my mind is Burial Ground,

with a rather weird Peter Bach playing a
young kid, but I think in real life he

was in his 30s.

casting a man who I assume is just
extremely small in stature as a boy.

But then I suppose that had to do with
the incestuous content of the film and

that sort of misogyny, the child
returning to the mother's breast and

devouring the mother. It was mainly shot
around one location.

Let's get a few people off the street in
to be the main actors and actresses.

And it had some, but you know, it's only
saving grace really was it had some,

you know, it had some half decent
effects by Gino De Rossi.

And of course, going forward, Romero did
Day of the Dead, which for me is, I

personally feel it's the best zombie
movie of all time.

Savini's work basically on the special
effects, I don't think it has ever been

beaten. It's just grimy and nihilistic.

Apparently he was in the military.

Return a salute and see what he does.

You want me to salute that pile of
walking pot?

Salute my ass.

And then really the whole boom really
fizzled out and unfortunately Fulci and

Bruno Mattai cobbled together, zombie
free.

Zumbi 3 is a film certainly a bit
different from the filmography of Fulci

because in reality he did not finish it,
that is, it is a film by Fulci for

sure, because most of the shots were
made by him in the Philippines.

a horror set in the Philippines.

At that time many films were made in the
Philippines, especially Vietnam movies

inspired by American success, such as
Rambo, Platoon, Apocalypse Now, etc.

So many Italian directors went there,
such as Antonio Margheriti and Bruno

Mattei, for example.

The producer of the film then decides to
entrust

additional sequences

because, in his opinion, the film did
not reach a full minute, to

Bruno Mattei and Claudio Fragasso, who
return to the Philippines to play

They are the scenes of the laboratory,
with the men in white shirts, many

shooting scenes, there are also parts of
the final scenes.

There are certainly more things, so it
is not easy to write completely Zombie 3

in Fulci, but undoubtedly there are very
strong, very violent elements, very

recognizable, the head that comes out of
the fridge and slashes the throat of a

victim. There is the imprint of the
master, you can feel it anyway.

Return of the Living Dead, which was 85,
and Zombie 3 in 88, they both show the

cause of, you know, the world being
overrun by zombies caused by a chemical

spillage. Return of the Living Dead was
a big box office hit, so the Italians on

their sort of tired and sort of almost
waning sort of zombie movies obviously

picked up on this and thought, OK, let's
chuck the chemical radioactive ash

spillage into our own sort of...

pot of madness and they came out with
you know with zombie free which has got

dive bombing seagulls flying heads um
it's just it's quite a bizarre movie

in the whole sort of canon of zombie
movies then followed Zombie 4 and Zombie

But the weird thing is I've never really
got my head around it. Zombie 5 was

actually made before Zombie 4.

So go figure.

It's all to do with the titles and
cashing in still on Zombie Due from

I think at that point it just had run
its course. But then most...

Films do, even though zombie films are
being made today, it's only maybe every

10 years you get one that's actually any
good.

Look, Sarah, look.

It wants me. I think today especially,
you know, we've invested so much of the

earlier America, not as more recent
ones, which unfortunately they've really

gone down in quality, but as early ones
we've invested them with so much.

political and social undertone, where
the Italian ones, they're just fun.

They're just fun B -movies, but they're
really well shot.

They're really cleverly staged. And
because they are much more grotesque,

more violent, a lot more blood, and in
cases of some of them, a lot more sex,

which is sex not a factor in the Romero,
any of the, you know, North American

zombie films, whereas they are in the
Italian films.

We don't take them any sort of serious
political or social way that we do with

Romero films. To us, they're just fun,
fun horror movies.

There are a little clump of movies that
exist on their own, but that's how

Italian exploitation cinema seemed to
work. One year, everybody would make

crime films.

The next year, everybody would make
cannibal films.

Then they'd make, you know, Nazi
exploitation films.

Then there'd be zombie films. Then they
went on to something else. I think it

was Mad Max movies came after. Or was it
Conan imitations? But anyway, there's

these sort of tent poles and everybody,
yeah, all the people we now think of as

Italian exploitation auteurs would go
and make one of these pictures or one or

two.

There wasn't...

that much attention being paid to them
when they came out.

I mean, in a way, one of the sad things
that happened was by the time there was

an organised fandom, by the time people
were writing about these films, the boom

had died.

There had been a whole bunch of zombie
booms. You know, we've had Shaun of the

Dead, we've had The Walking Dead, we've
had...

28 Days Later and The Door of the Dead
remake, Zombieland, and yet there are no

Italian filmmakers out there able to
revive the Italian boom.

I mean, all subsequent zombie movies, I
think they look back to these films

sometimes. You can see...

I mean, one of the things I find strange
is that Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead

is as influenced by Italian zombie
movies as by Romero's films, partly

because one of the things he does is
completely strip out any notion of

political or social context and just
kind of gets gruesome and miserable. And

think that...

Yeah, he relates maybe to demons is the
urtext of that.

Yeah, a bunch of awful people get mashed
on by monsters.

But yeah, I don't think that it was ever
going to be something that would last.

There's just something about zombies.

There's just something wrong and weird
about them.

And also like vampires.

The biggest threat from a zombie, the
thing that you don't want to happen, is

become one of them. And that's the worst
thing. It's not that they'll kill you.

They will turn you into one of them.

And that's more frightening. If you're
trapped in a building and there's 100

tigers outside, the worst that can
happen is they kill you. With the

outside, even one of them, a tiny bite
or a scratch...

and you're going to become one of them,
and you'll either become one of them

straight away, or you'll have this kind
of long, lingering, living death, where

you know you're going to turn at some
point, and everyone's kind of watching

with their fingers on their guns, ready,
and you know that they're going to have

to kill you.

Or you're going to have to kill your
best friend, or your wife, or your dad.

And I think that's the thing that keeps
them exciting and scary and interesting.

One of the things that happens in the
Italian zombie pictures that was later

taken up by the rise of zombie video
games

and then the films based on Resident
Evil, House of the Dead, that kind of

thing, is the idea that zombies become
cannon fodder. They become the

perfect modern version of what...

a certain type of matinee western used
to use apaches for and what world war ii

films use nazis for they look like
people but you're allowed to kill them

you don't have to feel bad about it i

kind of uh

got tired of zombies i have to say uh
zombies have been um in my view

overexposed since romero changed the
rules of the game and although i've

to keep up with them um and i have seen
the rest of the romero films i have to

say um They've never had the same impact
as that first film, and I suppose it's

inevitable. To me, especially now, it
seems as though people are just

desperate to try and alter the formula,
but without

much success, without that huge impact
that Night of the Living Dead had.

Forty -some years later, people are
still...

making movies about it, about zombies,
doing interviews about it, and doing

scholarly critiques of zombies.

I've kept in touch with the zombie genre
and I have to say I'm not really very

impressed with what people have been
doing.

They've been trying to introduce zombies
into other environments and it hasn't

been entirely successful. I'm talking
about films like Zombie Strippers and

Zombies of Mass Destruction.

I don't think it's just me. I think
these are films that are very unpopular

the fans.

They like the idea of the films but when
they go and see them...

They're disappointed.

And I have to say that anyone coming to
zombie flesh eaters for the first time

is probably not going to be
disappointed. I think it's a film that

goods. I think it's got its problems. I
think it's got some pretty ridiculous

dialogue and some ludicrous scenes.

But ultimately, I think it's a
satisfying zombie film. It's a stylish

Lucio Fulci. He isn't the greatest
horror director in the history of

he's one of the greats. And I think it's
very important to see one of his best

films as it was meant to be seen, a
pristine print, uncut.