Zombi 3
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
- Release Date: July 29, 1988
- Directed by: Lucio Fulci, Bruno Mattei and Claudio Fragasso
- Written by: Claudio Fragasso, Rossella Drudi and Lucio Fulci
- Runtime: 1 hour 34 minutes
- Series: Zombie
After nearly a decade, Lucio Fulci followed up his classic zombie film, Zombi 2, with Zombi 3. It's impossible to write my thoughts about this movie without first explaining its production history. From what I've read, after filming for several weeks, Fulci left the set. Some reports say he was suffering from several illnesses, while Fulci himself claimed that he left due to hating the script and fighting with producers. Regardless of what the reason was, direction duties were then handed over to assistant director Bruno Mattei and screenwriter Claudio Fragasso. If you've ever seen a Mattei or Fragasso film (such as Hell of the Living Dead), then you will know that their campy, cheesy style is a pretty far cry from Fulci's grimy and often-times surreal horror films. As you can probably imagine, this resulted in a film that is a very messy combination of multiple directors' visions being mixed together in one pot.
Zombi 3 doesn't follow up on any of the plot threads of Zombi 2, instead focusing on an experimental substance that is unleashed into the air when an infected body is burned by the military. If you watch this movie right after Zombi 2, you will immediately be able to notice its all-over-the-place tone. The first twenty minutes that show the initial outbreak were added on by Mattei and Fragasso, and feature very bright colors and static, wide-shot camera work. Despite giving Fulci full directing credit, they didn't even try to match his style at all, and it feels unlike any other horror film he had made at that point. When the movie finally gets to its main protagonists, Fulci's handheld camera movements and usage of shadows starts to appear, and you start to get a feel for the type of movie that he was originally trying to make. It's not scary, but it at least feels like he was trying to give the movie the same level of mood that he typically gave his horror films. If you recognize these different directors' styles, then you will be able to see the differences every time it cuts from the protagonists to the military scenes. These cutaway scenes really add nothing to the film, and part of me wants to just cut them out of the movie to get a closer look at what was originally intended here.
The zombies in this film are completely unlike the textured, rotting fiends of Zombi 2. Their makeup looks like simple effects you would see in any low-budget zombie movie, and on top of that, they can't keep consistent when it comes to movement. In certain scenes, they move slow and awkward like in Zombi 2 or Dawn of the Dead, while in others they smash through walls or jump down from ceiling rafters. Zombies sometimes use weapons, and a few of them speak in a couple of scenes. There are also zombie birds that attack our heroes at one point, and a severed head comes to life to fly through the air and attack someone. When I first read about the production of this movie, I originally thought that all of the fast zombies were additions by Mattei and Fragasso, but even some of the supposed Fulci scenes feature them. I have no idea if their approach to the zombies just changed from day to day when they were filming, but it at least makes them unpredictable in a way, since you're never really sure what crazy thing they may do in a scene.
One final thing that really sticks out about this movie is its action. It's almost completely devoid of Fulci's trademark usage of slow, graphic violence. Most of the zombies in this die from quick body shots, and I think I counted only one shot that featured a head being blown open with any amount of excessive detail. Instead of normal gun violence, Zombi 3 takes a lot of time out to have its characters get into fistfights with the undead. There are numerous scenes of characters punching and kicking zombies away, or doing jumps and flips to fight them. It's so cheesy, and is about one step removed from becoming a kung-fu zombie movie. These fight scenes, along with the weapon-wielding fast zombies and incredibly corny dubbing, really make Zombi 3 feel more in line with a Troma film or Nightmare City than any other horror film in Fulci's filmography.
Zombi 3 may be a mess, but it's an incredibly entertaining one. If you don't think about the fact that it's supposed to follow up one of the greatest Italian zombie films ever made, it's a fun romp that makes for great fodder to laugh at with friends. It's a shame that the production happened the way it did, and I would love to see what Fulci's original intentions for this movie were. With his health becoming worse and worse, every film he would make after this one would suffer from very low budgets and be relegated to direct-to-video/TV markets. It's sad that his era of theatrical horror films had to come to such a messy end, but I'm glad the movie still got finished and released instead of being abandoned altogether. It's certainly not the best zombie movie ever made, but with this one, the fun factor does outweigh the lack of quality.