“Zombi 2” from 1979 is about, you guessed it, zombies. Its franchise lineage is slightly complicated, however. In Italy, George Romero’s 1978 “Dawn of the Dead” was re-edited by famed Giallo filmmaker Dario Argento (“Suspiria”) and re-scored by the prog-rock band Goblin, who had previously worked with Argento. The re-edited version of “Dawn of the Dead” was then renamed “Zombi.”
When the re-edited “Zombi” became a hit in Italy, a sequel called “Zombi 2” was released, which — while technically using “Dawn of the Dead” as the first film in the series — no longer used any footage directed by Romero, and officially became its own thing. It even spawned a direct sequel, “Zombi 3,” in 1988. It’s actually fairly common for Italian producers to exploit American copyright like that, such as mashing together unrelated films like “Evil Dead” and “House” into the “La Casa” franchise.
What “Zombi 2” is most famous for, however, is the scene where one of the zombies fights a shark. Unfortunately, since this is a low-budget film in the ’70s, the filmmakers couldn’t just use computers for this kind of thing; it really is just a stunt guy in zombie make-up, underwater, slowly messing around with a shark. Now, that sounds really cool in concept, but it’s a lot less entertaining than you’d expect in execution. This is a shame since a zombie fighting off a shark has no right to be this boring.
