Right around then, the shelves of video libraries were literally heaving under the weight of unclassified movies. Although even then I knew that Romero was the chief of the living dead, I couldn't help but fall hopelessly, head-over-heels in love with this nasty little beauty. I caught it upon its initial videotape run in its infamous “Strong, Uncut Version” from Vipco – I still have the copy – at the tender age of 11. They tried to emulate as recently as 28 Weeks Later, but nothing has the lasting impact of this image of complete Armageddon. It remains one of the greatest pieces of horror artwork that I've ever seen. I remember seeing the incredible quad poster for this at our local flicks, The Phoenix, with the classic hand coming out of the earth in the foreground as legions of dishevelled undead herd towards the cityscape of Manhattan in the background, all beneath a very sick looking sun. Yet, for someone who claimed to be disinterested with the genre, he was an extremely proficient and, indeed, prolific exponent of it.
After his little “rip-off” of Romero went stratospheric (easily fending off protests from Dario Argento and his father Claudio that the title of “Zombie”, however it was to be spelled, was copyrighted) he would be offered nothing other than gruelling horror projects for the rest of his very troubled life. Getting itself banned in Britain and gaining cult status around the globe, Fulci's skin-shredding nightmare is sitting right there at the top of every genre buff's bloody bucket of guts.Īlthough Fulci had worked in every genre conceivable – most notably with Peplum, Westerns and thrillers – he would ironically seal his own fate with the success of Zombie.
Known as Zombi, Zombi 2 (in order to capitalise, rather cheekily, on Romero's shopping-mall killing spree that was known as Zombi in Italy) or Zombie, as we see it here, in this glorious uncut 2-disc Ultimate Edition from Blue Underground, this was a gorehound's delight that came from perhaps the greatest exponent of Grand Guignol slaughterhouse splatter that the genre has ever celebrated – the unstoppable, irascible, Benny Hill-alike Eurotrash bullyboy, Lucio Fulci. Night of the Living Dead spawned The Living Dead At Manchester Morgue, and the phenomenal success of 1978's Dawn of the Deadleft the crypt door open for, arguably, Romero's most notorious contemporary gut-muncher, Zombie Flesh Eaters, which followed on almost immediately in 1979 … and almost beat him at his own shocking game. My first impression of it was from one of Jim Sterling's "Worst Games of the Year" videos.When the dead rose for George Romero, they must have sent a telegram to their Latin cousins. I saw that the game itself was mechanically a mess and a mauled Diablo clone.
Then came my greatest grievance with the game: I didn't look into it until just two weeks ago when I was really interested in the Overlord series itself and comparing all of the known Overlords. The Fourth Overlord - aka The Overlad, Witchboy, Demon Lord of Nordberg, etc., etc. was slain by a party of three, the leader of which was a unicorn whose shit quite literally smelled like roses, as reported by the Overlord Wiki article on Sparkle himself, "Sparkle makes an appearance in Overlord: Fellowship of Evil. He leads the Shining Justice as the head of the 'Trio'. He is the source of the Golden, which cutified all that is ugly and evil, the Minions like other evil creatures. He produces the Golden with its dung and its supply stew made from cutified slugs."īear in mind that the Second Overlord was originally "slain" by a party of eight powerful heroes and then actually slain by the Third Overlord in a dramatic Minion civil war battle at the end of the first game. The Third Overlord wasn't actually slain at all, but instead was sealed away in the hellscape known as "The Infernal Abyss" and became a demonic god.įurthermore, the Second and Third Overlords had a plethora of great achievements, but the Fourth Overlord (who, might I add, is the most physically imposing Overlord seen thus far) not only conquered the world and either enslaved it or destroyed it, but he also decimated the Glorious Empire in a series of tactical strikes and choice battles. #OVERLORD RAISING HELL RED MINIONS SERIES# His accomplishments far exceed those of his predecessors, and yet it only took not even half the amount of heroes to take him down as it did for the Second Overlord.
#OVERLORD RAISING HELL RED MINIONS SERIES#.