The confusion of zombie film titles.

How many zombie film DVDs have you on your shelves?

20?

30?

50?

If the answer is 50 or more then chances are that at some point you've mistakenly bought a film you already had in your collection.

Let's look at one of the cornerstones of zombie film - Dawn Of The Dead. In some foreign markets it's known as Zombie. Okay, that's fine and not likely to cause much in the way of confusion. But ... along comes Lucio Fulci with his enjoyable film Zombie Flesh Eaters. Now, again not much of a problem on it's own but ... since Zombie is a hard word to copyright, it was titled Zombie 2 in some territories in a bid to pass it off as a sequel to DOTD. However ... in the US, where DOTD was DOTD, the Fulci flick was known as Zombie ...... It also has a variety of other titles, most of which don't matter too much (unless you see Woodoo on the shelf of your local charity shop and think you've discovered a new zombie movie) - Zombie Island, Woodoo & Island Of The Living Dead. The last title matters a bit because later Bruno Mattei would direct a quasi sequel/remake called Island Of The Living Dead 2006. Why not Zombie Flesh Eaters 2 or Zombie 3, you ask? Well .....

Fulci was slated to direct a sequel to Zombie Flesh Eaters. Depending on who you listen to he either directed over 50% of the finished film or very little and he left due to ill health or production differences. Anyway Bruno Mattei took over the helming of the film and the resultant mess was titled either Zombie Flesh Eaters 2 or Zombie 3 depending on which territory you were in. However ...

Andrea Bianchi's Burial Ground : The Nights Of Terror is also known in some parts as Zombie 3 (it's also called The Zombie Dead & plain of Nights Of Terror just to confuse zombie fans that bit more).

Guess what? We're not finished. Zombie Holocaust (aka Doctor Butcher M.D.) also goes under the alias of Zombie 3.

And .... Nightmare City (or City Of The Walking Dead) has also claimed to be the real Zombie 3.

Not ... finished .... yet. The Living Dead At Manchester Morgue (which I double bought under the title of Let Sleeping Corpses Lie .... dammit) is ... go on, guess .... yep, also known as Zombie 3. The Living Dead At Manchester Morgue is a solid entry in the zombie genre and didn't need fake ties to Romero's work to stand out.

And onto Zombie 4 : After Death, also known as Zombie Flesh Eaters 3. Starring gay porn actor Jeff Stryker, this entry (no pun intended) is painfully bad (no pun intended) and surely should have killed any idea that a 4th pretend sequel to DOTD would have any mileage in it.

Killing Birds managed to get stuck with the tag Zombie 5 and it stunk. Surely there couldn't be a Zombie 6?

There really wasn't but ... Zombie 6 : Monster Hunter tried to pretend there was. This film is really Absurd (the title, not a judgement) and is more of a sequel to Anthropophagus than DOTD (it's also known as Anthropophagus 2, Horrible, Grim Reaper 2 etc.). George Eastman doesn't even play a zombie in it. There are no zombies in it. Thankfully you'll rarely find this film under that title.


Just to confuse things a little more let's go onto one of the most retitled films in the zombie world. Zombie Creeping Flesh (this was it's title when I first discovered the film so it's the one I'm sticking to) is also known as Hell Of The Living Dead, Night Of The Zombies, Virus, Cannibal Virus, Zombie Inferno, Zombies Of The Savanna and ... drum roll .... Zombie 2 .... or Zombie 4 .... Zombie 5.


So ... much confusion caused by unofficial sequels to Dawn Of The Dead. How about the actual sequel, Day Of The Dead? Well, in Germany it has been known as  .... yes .... Zombie 2.