Has the heat of the summer got you feeling like the undead? Well, this edition of Philm Phreaks might be just what you need. The focus is on some of your fellow undead. I’m going to be talking about the double blu-ray special edition release of “Zombie.” 

“Zombie” is the title of this 1979 movie from Lucio Fulci. The movie has had a couple other titles at times, including “Zombie 2” and “Zombie Flesh Eaters.” In Italy it was considered an unofficial sequel to “Dawn of the Dead.”

There are certain things you know are going to be true when you start watching a Fulci film. For one thing there is going to be a certain quality to the acting performances. I’m not sure that I would say a flatness exactly because the frantic screamed parts are anything but flat, but there is something that feels almost restrained about the acting in his movies. It’s universal. so I think it has to be a directorial style. 

You also know that the movie is going to be pretty extreme. This one is no exception. We get a lot of gore, and we also get some gratuitous skin, including full frontal female nudity.

Sometimes the stories in Fulci’s films are hard to follow, giving an almost fever dream quality to them. That’s not true of this one. It’s a fairly straightforward story, and that serves it well. The movie also brings a couple interesting things to zombie lore. For one, this establishes a link between the Romero type of zombie and the voodoo zombie. That’s something that I’ve never seen in another zombie film, and it really is a great thing. 

The other thing we get is a fight between a zombie and a shark. The movie gets huge recommendations for that alone. “Zombie” meets “Jaws.” What’s not to love about that?

Beyond that, this is a little slow at times, but the whole story works well enough that it doesn’t really matter. I think this might actually be my favorite Fulci film. It has a real legendary status in a lot of circles, and I would say it deserves it. As zombie movies go, this one is special. 

Now, when you start to watch the movie, there are two options. You can watch the film by itself, or you can watch it with the introduction from Guillermo Del Toro. Del Toro is a huge fan of the film, so he has some interesting things to say about it, 

That first disc also includes interviews, featurettes and audio commentary options. We also get an entire disc of bonus features including more interviews. This thing is packed with bonuses, but the main movie is really the main draw here, and it’s well worth having. I’ve not seen earlier releases, so I can’t comment on the qualify difference here, but I can say that this does look quite good for an Italian film of that era.