Italian director Lucio Fulci gets a lot of love amongst gore fans, but I must admit I don’t get it. 

The only movie of his I have managed to sit through is his pseudo Dawn Of The Dead sequel Zombie aka Zombi 2 aka Zombie Flesh Eaters etc. Years ago, this one got banned in the UK as a ‘video nasty’. So I eventually checked it out on YouTube. I found it very nasty and very crap in equal proportions.

There are several very bloody sequences (most notably a scene where a woman gets her eyeball impaled on a spike), a bizarre underwater scene where a zombie fights a shark (yes, really) and a lot of boring, badly scripted filler scenes in between.  Bizarrely, the movie features slumming British Shakespearean actors Richard Johnson and Ian McCulloch (who I once saw onstage as the lead in Anthony and Cleopatra) alongside various Italian actors. 

I also have a French grande for his later movie The Beyond, which I have never seen. It is a supernatural thriller set in New Orleans and – judging by the highlights reel on YouTube – just as nasty as Zombie!

The Zombie poster sold recently to a Fulci fan in Australia. The Beyond has also just sold quickly to another horror fan here in France. Each to his own!