Reception
- Europe
Zombi 2's incredible success in Europe reignited Fulci's sagging career and reinvented the director as a horror icon. Fulci would go on to direct several more horror films, and Zombi 2 introduced several of his trademarks: hordes of shambling putrefied zombies, hyper-realistic gore and blood and the infamous "eyeball gag" (a character is impaled or otherwise stabbed through the eyeball). There is some controversy about when the Zombi 2 screenplay was written, and if it lifted dialogue from Dawn of the Dead.
Despite the massive popularity of the film, Zombi 2 was banned in several countries, including Great Britain, due to its massive gore content. It was released by Vipco but with a lot of violence edited out. It was finally released uncut in 2005. Lead actor Ian McCulloch, who is British, never actually had the opportunity to watch the full film until he recorded a commentary for the Roan Group's laserdisc release of Zombi 2 in 1998, and was shocked at the gore level.
Zombi 2's massive European box office take also paved the way for four more sequels, which, like their predecessor, have no relation to any of the other films in the series – they all have self-contained plots. While the Zombi series proved to be incredibly lucrative, Zombi 2 is by far the most recognizable of the European zombie films.
The film was released in Italy, as an action adventure thriller with no link to George A. Romero's films. The opening and closing scenes (which take place in New York) were added to the script later when the producers wanted to cash-in on the success of Dawn of the Dead.
The infamous shark vs. zombie scene was filmed in a large salt water tank and the shark was fed horse meat and sedatives before filming.
- United States
Zombi 2 was released merely as Zombie in America and was considered a stand-alone film with no connection to Romero's zombie canon. The theatrical trailers for Zombie provided the memorable tagline of "We Are Going to Eat You!" and showcased some of the make-up effects, but did nothing to indicate the plot of the picture (although the audience was indeed warned about the graphic content of the film: a humorous crawl at the end of the preview promises "barf bags" to whoever requested them upon viewing the film).
Released theatrically to U. S. theaters and drive-in theaters in the summer of 1980 from distributor The Jerry Gross Organization (no longer in existence today), its tagline was: "When the earth spits out the dead... they will return to tear the flesh of the living..."
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