A New York couple (Ian McCulloch and Tisa (sister of Mia) Farrow) head to the Caribbean to explore a voodoo curse that causes the dead to rise, in this 1979 Italian zombie flick they should have called San Juan of the Dead.

Marketed as a sequel to Dawn of the Dead (which was released as Zombi in Italy), Zombi 2 (AKA Zombie Flesh Eaters) has none of George A. Romero’s political or narrative momentum. But director Lucio Fulci compensates for the total absence of plot with some notorious moments, including a naked scuba diver (Auretta Gay), a fight between a zombie and a shark, and an infamous eye-gouging sequence that drew the attention of the British censors.

Taken in isolation the scene is a masterclass in build-up and pay-off. Instead of showing the zombie opening a door, Fulci shoots the shadow retreating across the wall as light spills into the room, building a sense of dread that culminates in the close-up horror of splintered wood piercing Olga Karlatos’ eyeball. It is blindingly obvious that Fulci only cares about these nasty bits, considering the characters and performances are wooden enough to make you gouge out your own eyeballs.

But it isn’t until the dead rise from their graves 20 minutes before the end of the film that Zombi 2 delivers on its ghoulish promise. Once the horribly written, delivered and dubbed dialogue is allowed to shut up, the stark realism of the ramshackle settings and their undead inhabitants sets in. Fulci delivers some of the best thought-out zombie effects in the genre, his corpses moving like ghosts made solely from the ashes and dust of the ground. It’s just a shame the rest of the movie has so little going on behind its worm-infested eye sockets.