The insane sto­ry of Zom­bi 2’s noto­ri­ous shark fight scene

Released at var­i­ous points as The Island of the Liv­ing Dead, Night­mare Island and Zom­bie Flesh Eaters, Lucio Fulci’s 1979 film Zom­bi 2 was orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed as an unof­fi­cial sequel to George A Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, released the year prior.

Unlike Romero’s urban ghouls – who had last been seen lurch­ing around the shop­ping mall – these zom­bies are dusty and errat­ic, ter­ror­is­ing the fic­tion­al Caribbean island of Mat­ul. Adapt­ed from an orig­i­nal screen­play by Fulci’s long­time col­lab­o­ra­tor, Dar­d­ano Sac­chet­ti, the film draws on the sort of voodoo mythol­o­gy that was much clos­er to the ori­gins of the genre than that which West­ern audi­ences were used to at the time.

Zom­bi 2 has a fan­tas­tic score, cour­tesy of anoth­er long­time Ful­ci col­lab­o­ra­tor, Fabio Frizzi – men­ac­ing elec­tron­i­ca clash­es with clum­sy appro­pri­a­tions of indige­nous sound­ing rhythms. There’s a noto­ri­ous eye goug­ing scene, sound­tracked by a shame­less melod­ic lift from the Bea­t­les ​‘A Day In The Life’, that secured the film’s Video Nasty sta­tus. Oh, and there’s a moment where a zom­bie and a shark have a fight. An actu­al shark. Underwater.

Ful­ci can’t take cred­it for the scene. Hav­ing seen the film Tin­tor­era: Killer Shark a few years pre­vi­ous, it was Zom­bi 2 pro­duc­er Ugo Tuc­ci who insist­ed on the scene’s inclu­sion, despite the director’s protests that it would be too sil­ly. Tin­tor­era, a Mex­i­can pro­duc­tion released in 1977 to cap­i­talise on the Jaws phe­nom­e­non, is essen­tial­ly soft-core porn take on the shark­sploita­tion genre. It’s based on a nov­el by the author Ramón Bra­vo and direct­ed by René Car­dona Jr, a some­time shark train­er. As well as hav­ing swam in the 1948 Olympics, he lat­er served as Jacques Cousteau’s div­ing guide.

With Ful­ci refus­ing to shoot the scene, Tuc­ci brought in a sec­ond unit. The plan was to use a real-life tiger shark – sec­ond only to the great white shark in terms of the num­ber of record­ed human fatal­i­ties. Car­dona Jr was sup­posed to play the zom­bie that would fight the shark, but come the day of the shoot he was oth­er­wise dis­posed. So Ramón Bra­vo, who as well as writ­ing books was an accom­plished under­wa­ter pho­tog­ra­ph­er (you can see his work in Licence to Kill’s under­wa­ter scenes) stepped up, chan­nelling his inner undead.

In order to keep it placid, the shark was fed before film­ing. And, just to be on the safe side, pumped a load of tran­quil­lis­ers into the crea­ture too. Shock­ing, yes, but these were very dif­fer­ent times. There’s an aston­ish­ing moment dur­ing the scene where the shark rips the zombie’s arm off, which invites visions of a zom­bie tiger shark trans­for­ma­tion that sad­ly nev­er comes to pass. Unbe­liev­ably, the cred­its for­get to cred­it Bra­vo for his ster­ling, and indeed, death-defy­ing work.

The his­to­ry of hor­ror cin­e­ma has bore more icon­ic scenes. It’s giv­en us greater scares and loud­er screams. But for the sheer insan­i­ty and reck­less­ness of its exe­cu­tion, it’s hard to top Zom­bi 2’s noto­ri­ous zom­bie ver­sus shark dust up.