Oct 28 2008
Zombie (1, 2, 3, 4, 5): Clearing the Title Confusion
Confusion can be felt on every forum, message board and e-mail group when it comes to European zombie movie titles. Questions pop up like “isn’t Zombi 3 the one where that guy goes digging for artifacts and those zombies overrun a mansion?”…..or…..”Zombie 4 - isn’t that the Jess Franco movie that makes no sense?”
Over the years with a bit of research and collecting one would find out (since collecting these movies has become such a harrowing task):
Theatrical Releases:
A) Zombie: Dawn of the Dead - Argento’s version of the movie Dawn of the Dead; part of the original distribution deal, Argento edited and released George Romero’s gut muncher for the majority of the non-English speaking world.
B) Zombi 2 - Lucio Fulci’s Zombie; many times mistaken as an unofficial sequel to Romero’s film.
C) Zombi 3 - Fulci’s semi-sequel to his original Zombi 2; aside from the presence of zombies, there is no connection with Fulci’s first film; Fulci started the film, Bruno Mattei (Hell of the Living Dead) finished it after Fulci suffered health problems.
D) Zombie 3 - this is actually Nights of Terror aka Burial Ground. Promoted as a sequel to Fulci’s Zombie in Japan.
Video Releases:
A) Wizard Video released Fulci’s Zombie in 1981 and again in 1985 in a big display box; the 1985 release copy bears the onscreen title “Zombies 2″ (white titles/credits).
B) Magnum Entertainment released Fulci’s Zombie in 1989, with the onscreen title “Zombie;” this was the print used by the Jerry Gross distribution company and bears Jerry Gross’ name in the credits (orange titles/credits).
C) A company named EDDE Entertainment re-released some Wizard Video titles in the early 90’s and tacked the word “Zombie” to the beginning of them:
D) EDDE Entertainment also released Fulci’s Zombie under its Zombie title, under the T-Z Video label (they used 2 label names, T-Z and Ace Video).
DVD:
The DVD packaging for After Death and Killing Birds were titled Zombie 4 and 5 by Media Blasters because these movies were commonly known as Zombie titles (and were packaged in order to appear as if the films were part of a series which included Fulci’s films). These films do not bear any “Zombie” onscreen title in their Media Blasters DVD releases.
This reviewer hopes that a lot of confusion has been cleared up, and that discussing (and even finding and purchasing) a particular Euro zombie film will be far easier than in the past.
