Italian "Zombi" flicks

[Flesh Eater]

I'm rather confused about the Fulci Zombi flicks. I had read at one point that Zombi 2 was a sequel to Dawn. Then the other day I read that Zombi 2 was only named "2" so that it wouldn't get confused with the Italian release of Zombi aka Dawn. Also, I read that all of the lines in the flick are dubbed because some of the actors did not speak english, even though others did, so they dubbed the whole movie. I read the same thing about some of Argento's horror movies. Any truth to that?

[Flyboy]

I think it's a cash-in only unofficial sequel to Dawn. That's why they threw the Zombi 2 in the title. The end & beginning scenes were added by the producers to cash-in on Dawn's success.

I'm not too sure about the dubbing on Zombi 2. I saw this on IMDb:

Like many Italian horror films of the time, half the cast spoke only English and the other half only Italian. Many Italian films produced for international distribution filmed without sound and recorded several dialog tracks in different languages in the studio for later overdubbing. Because the actors are speaking a number of different languages (or some are speaking a non-native language phonetically), the dubbing in all versions of the film is not 100% synchronized. Ian McCulloch, Tisa Farrow, Olga Karlatos, and Stefania D'Amario were of the main English speaking cast, while Al Cliver, Auretta Gay, and Dakar were of the main Italian-speaking cast.

Zombi 3 is basically the same. Fulci only directed about 70 minutes of the footage for Zombi 3 & left the project due to illness. Bruno "Hell of the Living Dead" Mattei came on board to do the reshoots & complete the filming.

Zombie 4 & Zombie 5 are the same way. They have nothing to do with the previous films & were just given those titles due to the previous films. I think that was only done in the States with the Shriek Show DVDs. Hell, Zombie 5 came out in 1987 & Zombie 4 came out in 1988. Haha.

[Flesh Eater]

Yeah, I've noticed that Zombi 4 is also titled "After Death" which is what all of the actors call it. I suppose it was just given the Zombi title to cash in on the name.

Okay, so if I get this right, here is the series in a nutshell:

Zombi (aka Dawn of The Dead)
Zombi 2
Zombi 3
Zombi 4 (aka After Death)
Zombi 5

It looks like they just took some flicks and made a franchise out of them, even if they don't have anything to do with each other. It's kinda cool, but turdtastic at the same time.

[rich]

Zombi 2, The Gates of Hell, and House by the Cemetary by Lucio Fulci are absolutely amazingly classic Italian splatter zombie films!