Italian cinema has had a huge impact on the horror genre, taking it into strange, often avant-garde territory. Gory, unpredictable, and dreamlike in quality, these movies would influence future directors both in and out of horror.
Once George Romero gave fresh life (ironically) to the zombie subgenre, Italian movie makers were quick to jump on the bandwagon, fusing elements of Romero’s Dawn of the Dead with their own iconic style. These Italian zombie movies were deliberate cash-ins, of course, in some cases passing themselves off as unofficial sequels to Western properties. However, the originality and quality of these movies has made them valid in their own right.
10 City Of The Living Dead
The first movie in Fulci's 'Gates of Hell' loose trilogy, City of the Living Dead unleashes a horde of zombies straight from Hell and onto the streets of New York City. It's then up to a psychic and a news reporter to save the day.
Gory scenes, strange plotting, and questionable acting choices are all present and correct, and there are some suitably creepy moments that are beautifully shot by Fulci. It was a taste of things to come, as the director was honing his skills ready for The Beyond.
9 The Beyond
Unlike their Western cousins, which featured more plausible iterations of the apocalypse, Italian zombie movies often had a supernatural bent. Lucio Fulci’s The Beyond is no exception, dealing with a woman who finds a gateway to Hell.
A gory, disorienting movie, The Beyond is part of a loose trilogy and throws a shocking array of memorable set pieces at the audience. From violent hospital shoot-outs to bizarre dream sequences, this is one of the more memorable Italian zombie movies ever made.
8 The House By The Cemetery
The House by the Cemetery gives the zombie genre a mummy-esque spin, involving a member of the undead who feasts on mere mortals in order to stay alive. It's a little odd, but arguably one of the best Italian zombie movies of all time.
Written as an ode to HP Lovecraft, House by the Cemetery isn’t quite as surreal as The Beyond, but Lucio Fulci makes sure it’s a disturbing ride all the same. More restrained, with references to Frankenstein (perhaps the very first zombie novel), it’s an atmospheric journey with some suitably gory moments.
7 Burial Ground
Largely plotless, Burial Ground is a relentless, fast-paced zombie movie in which the undead are awakened by an evil curse. This movie's imagination exceeded its production values, with some particularly nasty death scenes marred by poor special effects.
Notable for starring 25-year old Peter Bark as a young boy, Burial Ground is a somber grindhouse gorefest. It divided critics upon its release but is now remembered as something of a flawed gem by zombie movie aficionados.
6 Cemetery Man
One of the wittiest Italian zombie movies, Cemetery Man stars A-lister Rupert Everett as a graveyard caretaker who has to defend his town from the rising dead, despite being shunned by the locals. It was released in 1994, years after the zombie movie craze had died away.
Mixing horror, humor, and romance, Cemetery Man is fiercely original and brings a fresh perspective to the zombie subgenre. Director Martin Scorsese claimed it to be one of the best Italian movies of the 1990s, which is very high praise indeed.
5 The Living Dead At Manchester Morgue
Set in and around Manchester (largely because director Jorge Grau thought it sounded exotic), The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue is a fantastic Spanish-Italian zombie movie that simply oozes atmosphere. That, and an awful lot of blood.
Set mostly in the beautiful countryside of the British Lake District, the movie has a different look and feel from most of its contemporaries. Dealing with themes of class, it's a bleak dirge of a movie with some genuinely gory moments. None of it actually takes place in a Manchester morgue, however.
4 Demons
Demons was directed by Lamberto Bava and produced by the legendary Dario Argento. It is a brutal, chaotic romp with plenty of crowd-pleasing gore sequences and more than its fair share of genuinely horrific moments.
Once again, the zombies that feature in this movie are of a supernatural bent, not too dissimilar from the Deadites of the Evil Dead franchise. What it lacks in plot, it certainly makes up for in thrills. A sequel followed, which many agree to be superior.
3 Zombie Holocaust
Branded an “incoherent mess” by critics at the time of its release, the brilliantly-titled Zombie Holocaust is Italian exploitation cinema at its worst. Even so, it's still a pretty decent zombie movie with plenty of violent scenes.
A mad doctor is conducting experiments on both the living and the dead on an island in Indonesia, and the scientists who are out to stop him face multiple problems. Not only are there hordes of the decomposing undead to contend with, but there's also a tribe of flesh-hungry cannibals. It's no classic, but definitely one for gorehounds.
2 Nightmare City
Nightmare City is notable for featuring zombies considerably more agile than their lumbering cousins. Like some of the more recent zombie flicks, the movie's zombies are faster and much less docile than audiences were accustomed to at the time of its release.
Nightmare City deals with the threat of nuclear war, and its zombies are the result of science gone wrong as opposed to something supernatural. As a result, it feels a lot closer to the works of Romero than Fulci. It also boasts plenty of gore, as well as some questionable dancing.
1 Zombi 2
Another Fulci classic, Zombi 2 was deliberately intended to act as a sequel to George A Romero's seminal Dawn of the Dead (hence the '2' in the title). It's far less subtle than the movie it is paying homage to (and ripping off) but is absolutely a classic in its own right.
Tying the zombie genre back to its voodoo roots, Zombi 2 is once again grounded in the supernatural. Thanks to some extremely uncomfortable moments (including a splinter going through the eye of a young woman), it earned its place on the UK's video nasties list. It also features a scene in which a zombie fights a shark underwater.