Because Cannibal Holocaust Was Already Taken

Zombie Holocaust
Dir. Marino Girolami
1980
Zombie Holocaust is one awesome zombie-taking-an-outboard-motor-to-the-grill scene bookended by 80 minutes of plot holes, non sequiturs and recycled story lines.
Produced by Fabrizio De Angelis, who gave us Lucio Fulci’s Zombie, as a quickie cash in sequel, this spaghetti shocker(aka Zombie 3 [but not this Zombie 3 (which sucked so hard Fulci quit halfway through, letting Bruno Mattei wear the funk of shame for the final product) [by the way, how long to do you think I can keep this embedded parenthesis thing going?]] and Dr. Butcher M.D.) reverse engineers that Fulcis plot (dragging Ian McCulloch along for another spin as a researcher). It starts in New York and works its way back to a zombie and cannibal infested island somewhere in the Pacific. Make that cannibal infested island where the odd zombie staggers around some 50 minutes into the film.
You see, expat Asians across America have suddenly gone all cannibal on their neighbors, including a hospital janitor who slinks around his workplace giallo style hacking off limbs and ripping out organs of patients to get his fix. The intrepid Dr. Peter Chandler (McCulloch) and part time anthropologist Lori Ridgeway(as well as a pair of fairly obvious zombie baits) trace the Asian offenders back to a cult living on the remote island of Keto, famed for its love of Manwiches made from real men. As luck would have it, Lori spent her childhood near the island though she shows no familiarity with its customs, culture, language and generally staggers around looking useless and baffled once they get there. Even after the tribe’s sacrificial knife, which Lori kept as a keepsake, was stolen from her apartment.
These idiots can’t get to the island to be devoured by cannibals soon enough, and De Angelis is a man smart enough to quickly deliver what his audience craves.

Zombology: When they finally fucking show up, again, nearly an hour into a movie called Zombie fucking Holocaust, these zombies are the byproduct of a mad scientist’s extracurricular experiments on the local island. Skulls get cracked open and brains are transplanted into dead bodies in order to…something. The movie’s not really clear on motivation here. These zombies are not carnivorous, either. That honor is reserved for the local cannibals. In fact, the shambling undead are smart enough to follow simple orders and use some basic tools.

This is the kind of film the Hell of the Living Dead scale was pretty much invented for. Both films just wallow in bigoted cultural fetishism and exploitation. With Hell, it was abused stock footage from Papua New Guinea while Zombie Holocaust forces a bunch of underpaid Asian extras to run around in leather thongs and pretend to eat people while the smug Europeans degrade them as backwards and primitive within earshot, not exactly endearing themselves to the locals. For its crimes against anthropology, train-sized plot holes (seriously, how did the stolen sacrificial knife make it back to the island and why does nobody seem to care when it shows up again?), absolutely incomprehensible climax and dearth of titular zombies actually holocausting anything, it sucks 53 percent as bad as Hell of the Living Dead.

ZomBlog Review: "The Beyond"

“The Beyond”

1981

Italian

Stars: Catriona MacColl, David Warbeck, Sarah Keller

Writer: Story by Dardano Sacchetti; Screenplay by Dardano Sacchetti, GiorgioMariuzzo, Lucio Fulci

Dir: Lucio Fulci

99 minutes

When I sat down to write this review, I began by listening to a rare CD recording of the film’s haunting musical soundtrack. And I glanced over the Grindhouse Releasing booklet, lobby cards, and the spectacular tin casing that surrounds it (Limited Edition No. 725 out of 20,000).

Before I even viewed this film, I knew it was important. I watched it for the first time nearly 11 years ago, after purchasing the splendid Grindhouse Releasing collector’s orgasm of DVD material (trivia point: Sage Stallone, son of the great Sylvester Stallone, created this production company to collect the best prints, stories, details, interviews, and memorabilia to be associated with a handful of great gorefests and to give them the attention and respect they deserve).

After sitting down to view the film, I was blown away to say the least.

[Full disclosure: My fellow blogger and I have a long-going feud pitting Italian film maestros Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci against each other. As I have grown older, and discovered more of Fulci’s films, I have veered towards Fulci as the master of the Italian horror cinema. But, I dig my heels in at this: Argento rules giallo. I digress…]

“The Beyond” is simply perfect horror filmmaking. The story is set up quickly and deftly. The characters are not entirely cookie-cutter (well, save for Joe the Plumber), and the zombies do not appear until far, far, FAR into the narrative. It is a slow burn and the film is better for it.

“The Beyond” begins in 1927 Louisiana. A sepia-toned group of vigilantes burst into a hotel room, brutally chain-whip, and then crucify a man, Schweick, who has been painting an innocuous visage of oblivion. The vigilantes accuse the artist of witchcraft, while he warns them that the very building they are in — a hotel on the bayou — was built over one of the seven gateways to hell, and that only he can save them.

They kill him anyway.

After a caustic attack via cement, the men bury him behind a wall in the hotel basement.

Fast-forward to present-day 1981, and Liza is looking to get the old hotel, which she inherited from some obscure family member, up to standards to open. Liza (MacColl) is desperate to open the hotel, employing a seemingly dimwitted, but concerned, host and a single maid. After a painter takes an unexpected tumble from a scaffold, Liza begins to realize there are far more troubling things at play in the hotel. An unoccupied room buzzes the front desk for attention. She meets a very blind, and very foreboding, soothsayer, Emily. While Emily appears to be blind, the audience knows she has seen something more horrifying, leaving her in her handicapped state — a prophetic text titled “Eibon” is missing, and without it, all Emily can do is warn of the terrors to come, all the while Dr. John McCabe (Warbeck) aids Liza in figuring out the mystery, and the curse, of the hotel.

Bring in Joe the Plumber…Literally, that is his credited name. Joe lumbers his way into the flooded hotel basement only to meet zombie Schweick, whom, after many years of being crucified behind walls, is eager to spread out his revenge, starting with Joe’s face (and, later, a morgue-full of corpses). The film jumps from place to place, each offering a glimpse into what Fulci envisioned — what would hell look like?

Cue a whirlwind of “what the hell is going on here?” moments. Cannibalistic spiders, a face being melted away by acid, Warbeck using a six-shot revolver improperly, a German shepherd Vs. Zombie scene, a zombie child — and lots of exploding heads.

I must stop before I give away the “WHOA!” ending.

Lucio Fulci seriously delivered on a more cerebral with “The Beyond.” Which will make it even harder to give another Fulci classic, “Zombie,” it’s proper due. But I’ll make it work.

Romero Rules Followed: 5 out of 5; There is flesh-eating, brain-blasting, lumbering undead, etc. All the rules are followed here.

Gore factor: It was one of Britain’s famous “Video Nasties.” What do you think?

Zombies or Wannabees? Zombies are plentiful… Near the freakin’ end, sadly

Classic, fine, or waste of time: Absolute classic.

Additional comments: I can find many faults with this film, but the majority is limited to cheap effects and vanilla script-writing. The story as a whole is fairly solid. The characters are likable. The ending makes up for a great deal of the film’s flaws. Fulci had already made a stone-cold classic with “Zombie” (look for it here, soon). He went for a more heady, existential direction with “The Beyond” and met with a great deal of success.

— ROB

Hell Hath No Fury Like Stock Footage Scorned

Hell of the Living Dead
1980
Dir. Bruno Mattei

As Jean-Paul Sartre’s reanimated corpse once famously observed, “Hell is other zombies.” And oh, was hell ever unleashed on the world in hack for hire Bruno Mattei’s 1980 zombie suckfest Hell of the Living Dead (aka Night of the Zombies aka Virus).
Not even a Goblin soundtrack could salvage a cinematic morass that sports such imminently quotable exchanges as the following:
--I may not know much about chemistry, but in bed her reactions are … terrific.
--I’m not surprised with that cute little ass.
And… *scene*
Seriously, crazed rats leaping out of green chemical clouds can’t eviscerate the cast of the stinker soon enough. The plot, which likely didn’t fill the back of a 3x5 note card, revolves around the mullet-encrusted men of a supposedly elite commando unit who strike horrid Charlie’s Angels poses are sent to New Guinea to investigate a chemical spill and attendant zombie outbreak. I the A-, B-, C- and D-Teams were not available at that time. At one point, having just narrowly escaped a horde of the hungry undead, one of our intrepid moron sets aside his firearms in an abandoned house to play dress up in a top hat and tutu (no, I’m not joking), wandering several rooms away from his weapons. Mercifully for all involved, he quickly gets eaten.

Zombology: Though it was released in Italy under the name Virus, the zombies of Hell of the Living Dead are actually the victims of a chemical spill at some s00per s33krit toxic factory in New Guinea. Instead of addressing world hunger by conventional methods, the company is developing a cannibalism-inducing chemical to address the overpopulation problem as part of the hilariously named Operation: Sweet Death. Typical. Other than that, it’s your pretty typical zombie fodder. The chemical outbreak spreads and the locals start chowing down on their neighbor’s liver tartare style. Get bit and when it’s dramatically opportune we’ll see your shuffling undead ass pop back up. In one climactic escape sequence, the “heroes” (I use that term with trepidation) are “menaced” (again, trepidation) from the comfort of their Landrover by brain-chompers that lumber along like a pack of Thriller re-enactors with Parkinson’s.

Final Judgement: Given its dearth of story, Hell of the Living Dead fluffs out its 100 minute runtime as a masterwork of stock footage,as real life images of genuinely starving people get repurposed as zombies, random animal shots serve as scene breaks (I wouldn’t be surprised if Mutual of Omaha got a producer’s credit) and in a thoroughly pointless 15 minute digression, plucky blonde reporter strips down to a leaf thong and body paint carefully placed to highlight her jiggling tits so she can blend in with a village full of the locals mourning their zombified loved ones against a constant backdrop of stock footage of native dances that quite obviously bounce between various tribes/rituals/times of day.
One thing that has to be acknowledged, however, is this movie essentially boils down to some rather rednecky Italian guys with uncontrollable mullets gunning down wave after wave of shuffling black folks, foreshadowing the great Resident Evil 5 controversy of 2008. With the benefit of 30 years, it adds an intriguing dimension to the proceedings that Mattei (fortunately) didn’t really address.

Explanatory Notes: There’s a reason I start with this film (City of the Walking Dead a.k.a. Nightmare City may have also served my purposes). I come to bury Hell of the Living Dead (hopefully this stinking zombie fucker will stay buried) and not to praise it. In fact, where it looks like Rob will get all good cop praising quality films based on the Romero scale of goodness, I intend to be the bad cop up in this bitch, excoriating crap based on the Hell of the Living Dead scale of suckitude. Much like the Japanese gameshow on which The Simpsons must compete, I don’t reward knowledge; I punish ignorance.
So from here on out, all films will be compared to Hell of the Living Dead. Ergo, the rating system will actually be inversed. A stone classic like Night of the Living Dead would score a 0 on the Hell of the Living Dead while Nightmare City would easily be a 95.

Zomblog Review: "Cemetery Man"

“Cemetery Man”
1993
Italian
Stars: Rupert Everett, Francois Hadji-Lazaro, Anna Falchi
Writer: Gianni Romoli
Dir: Michele Soavi
99 minutes

It has been more than 10 years since I first viewed “Cemetery Man” (aka “Dellamorte Dellamore”). And, to use a worn cliché, it is like fine wine.
Where should one begin in describing this masterpiece? I guess I should start with tearing down Michele Soavi, who made such fan-favorite genre pieces as “Stage Fright” and “The Church”; both forgettable fare for the uses of this blog, and, the perceptible horror fan. Soavi was a one-trick-pony prior to “Cemetery.” He knew how to get the great gore shots. He knew how to make his actors stand and be pretty, and he had a vague grasp on how to tell a cohesive story. Should anyone go back and view this film and “Stage Fright” side-by-side, the differences are staggering. There is no way I could convince anyone the same person made them aside from showing the DVD case.
Luckily for Soavi, he had much more working for him in “Cemetery Man.”
The story is fairly simple on the surface. Francesco Dellamorte is a grave caretaker — the only problem being is his graveyard seems to be overrun with “returners” as he calls them: after 7 days, the recently buried inexplicably rise from the dead and annoy him. He expels the annoying with point-blank-range shots to the head, and then has his “special” nearly-mute assistant, Gnaghi, replace them in their graves.
Dellamorte identifies himself as, literally, “the St. Francis of death.” For the Biblically unschooled, St. Francis of Assisi was the patron saint of animals, the caregiver of the most helpless (in most cases). Dellamorte is shouldered with the great burden of ensuring the dead remain dead. And, being a gravedigger and cemetery caretaker, this presents plenty of work and sleepless nights, which, eventually, begin to take a toll on the hapless hero. And his work becomes even more difficult and distracted by the ever-distracting Anna Falchi, who plays a widow grieving over a death (of her very old, but very ‘loving and giving’ husband…watch the dead lover’s headstone in key scenes for an extra chuckle).
I simply cannot give any review for this film without the mention of Death himself in this film. When the Grim Reaper shows up near the middle of the film, I cannot help but get chills; Monsieur Death in this film is truly frightening, even when the audience knows he appears to secure plot points (and perhaps to throw the audience one of the many curveballs).
A few points to hammer home: first, this film is loaded with style and spot-on cinematography. It is beautifully shot. The first 15 minutes stand alone as probably the best, atmospheric, and tone-setting of many modern horror films. It establishes more in those few minutes than a Michael Bay montage. We know Dellamorte, we know Gnaghi, we know the widow. And we get to see Falchi’s (the widow) phenomenal assets.
And then there is Rupert Everett, whom American audiences devoured in “My Best Friend’s Wedding,” a film that should not even exist, let alone get a mention here. Everett is amazing in “Cemetery.” From confused, to heroic, to romantic, he runs the gamut, giving the film the life it needed. He plays brooding with ease, and the audience understands why. He is alone, save for Gnaghi. And, even there, he is alone. He is a sad and cautious man who suffers greatly whenever his caution gets thrown to wind (or Anna “oh-my-god-did-you-see-her?” Falchi appears).
And when the film turns from dark-comedic to deadpan serious, he carries it with ease. The film as a whole is great slapstick and incredibly funny without even trying. And hold onto your seat for the holy-crap, mind-f*ck, out-of-nowhere-ending of this film. It seamlessly went from fun zombie horror film to “your mind is being raped” in a matter of minutes.

Romero Rules Followed: 3/5 The dead rise, pursue the living, and can be killed with head trauma; However, some of the zombies talk and seem to remember what happened to them prior to dying the first time (if the zombies actually ate someone, it would be a four).
Gore factor: Moderate, but surprisingly, the most gore comes when Dellamorte slaughters a gang of reanimated Boy Scouts. Who doesn’t want to do that?
Zombies or Wannabees? They come out of the grave, with tree roots, dirt, and all. These suckers are zombies.
Classic, fine, or waste of time: Classic
Additional comments: Anna Falchi…Jumping Jeebus.

— ROB