Fulci lives. Forever.
On last night’s episode of “The Walking Dead” (Season 7, Episode 6, “Swear”), returning characters Tara and Heath found themselves on a bridge that was literally crawling with the undead. A huge mountain of sand blocked off one side of the bridge, and when they disturbed the makeshift tomb, dozens of walkers emerged from the sand and went on the hunt for fresh brains.
The sequence was easily the most memorable in what was ultimately a slower episode that surely did no favors for the show’s declining ratings, and you might have noticed that the mummified “sand zombies” looked very familiar – one of them in particular. As Greg Nicotero explained on “Talking Dead,” the whole sequence was a tribute to Lucio Fulci’s 1979 classic Zombie.
The makeup master explained:
[I wanted to do] zombies that looked like old Italian horror movies. We bleached the wardrobe, made full body suits… we made 18 of them. We got a chance to do what every great zombie movie does: show zombies coming out of the ground.
Nicotero, who loves to use “The Walking Dead” to pay tribute to his favorite zombie movies, made sure that one of those sand zombies was a direct homage to “Maggot-Eyed Zombie” from the Fulci film. That zombie, played by Ottaviano Dell’Acqua, is the most iconic and instantly-recognizable from Zombie, immortalized on most posters and home video releases of the film.
Check out screen-grabs of the Maggot-Eye tribute below, courtesy of fans on Instagram!