Z is for Zombies

Happy Halloween! It used to be a tradition at this blog to each year take a look at a particular movie monster and talk about movies where they appeared. I never got to do the Zombie one, partly because everyone knows which ones are the good ones. George Romero's Dead Trilogy, Return of the Living Dead, 28 Days Later, Shaun of the Dead and the like. I would've liked to do top 10 more obscure zombie pictures, but never had the time to do enough research. But now I can talk about Italian zombies!

Most of the best Italian zombie movies use the walking dead pretty sparingly, as in Lucio Fulci's The Beyond. But that's not to say Romero's Dawn of the Dead wasn't really popular, and a major influence that showed how to do effective thrills on limited resources. Italians never really bothered with the light social commentary (we have Demons movies for that), they just liked the zombies as a cheap way of showing blood and gore. So, let's take a look.

Zombie Flesh Eaters (Zombi 2, 1979)
Director: Lucio Fulci

The grandaddy and best pure zombie flick Italians managed to do was marketed as a straight-up sequel to Dawn of the Dead (also known as Zombi). Fulci had the idea of doing a horror movie set on a remote island even before the premier of DotD, but relented in adding New York scenes in the beginning and end that can be seen of tying to Romero's film. One thing to note is that Italian films seem to have a better tie to the origins of zombie mythology in the voodoo culture... but use it mostly just to have insensitive depiction of natives and their savage ways. Zombi 2 is not the worst in this regard, it came later with movies that cashed in both the Cannibal movie craze and zombies, such as Zombi Apocalypse (a.k.a. Dr Butcher, M.D.)

Fulci's film is a rollicking good adventure, starring an adventure seeker named Peter West (Ian McCulloch) and a spunky reporter Anne Bowles (Tisa Farrow), who embark on a dangerous mission after investigating a mysterious boat in New York's harbor. Fulci had an excellent eye for set-pieces and planty of them linger on in your memory forever after seeing them, even if they are only tangentially related to the plot. The best among them are an incredible fight between and underwater zombie and (a real) shark, and a woman's eye being slowly pulled towards a sharp wood splinter (eat your heart out, Un chien Andalus).

 

While the zombies in Romero's movie were just cartoonish actors facepainted blue, here they are actually very creepy looking, wormy and worn-down corpses. I think the scene of the dead rising from their gravces is exceptionally creepy, with Fabio Frizzi's incredible score creating the necessary chills. Fulci's best skills are as a visualist, and this film started something of a golden age on his filmography (which we will take a closer look at soon enough).

★★★★

Zombie Flesh Eaters 2 (Zombi 3, 1988)
Dirs. Lucio Fulci, Bruno Mattei, Claudio Fragasso

A lot of unrelated films were sold as "Zombi 3" during the 1980's, but by the end of the decade, the aged Fulci was also lured to do an actual sequel. But the collaboration with the screenwriter Claudio Fragasso didn't work out that well. Due to creative differences, Fulci was let go and Fragasso finished the film with his regular collaborator, Bruno Mattei. Fulci later called the movie as made by "a bunch of idiots".

I think Fragasso was trying to do a more ambitious version of his previous movie, Zombie Creeping Flesh (more on which below) and he needed Fulci's visual eye to achieve this. The end result is actually pretty okay entertainment, even if it's pretty easy to spot the visually nice and athmospheric scenes as being done by Fulci, and the cheaper shots by the Mattei/Fragasso team. Tonally they can't even keep up with what the zombies can do, whether they can run, wield machetes or even speak... at... a.. very.. slow... rate...

A deadly virus gets loose from a research center and the military is employed to stop the spreading throughout Pacific Islands. There's also a group of rich dorks on a holiday that are on the way of the zombies. There's a lot of characters to follow, but never mind, most of them are zombie food anyway. There are some very memorable scenes, as one sees a zombie head fly out of a refrigerator and another a zombie baby burst out of its mother's belly, like a scene from Alien. The entire film is hosted by a radio DJ, who, in the end, is revealed to be a zombie himself. SURPRISE?

There are two other movies that are usually told to be official Zombie Sequels, After Death (1989) and Killing Birds (1988). Both are cheap, cheesy and not terribly exciting in any way, though the first one has a voodoo cult and ninja-looking masked zombies, and the latter some zombie birds attacking people in the vein of Hitchcock (although so does Zombie 3). So that's enough of them at this point.

★★★
 

Zombie Creeping Flesh  a.k.a. Hell of the Living Dead (Virus, 1980)
Dirs. Bruno Mattei, Claudio Fragasso

 

This cheapo Virus movie presents something Mattei always excelled at; marrying two very unrelated movies. As a deadly zombie virus takes over a military research center, most of the movie follows a group of soldiers of fortune travelling around Papua New Guinea. The film used mondo movie footage from Akira Ide's movie called L'isola dei canibali, and stole the score from Dawn of the Dead and Buio Omega. It's so shameless one has to give the edge out to it when compared to the more sleek Zombi 3.

But for a film made on such a shoe string budget, it had some ambitious gore scenes such as tearing out a woman's tongue and then grabbing the brain through the mouth with eyes bulging out. Also rare for a Mattei film, the plot moves along surprisingly briskly and keeps surprising the viewer. Of course, most of it is driven by the characters acting like total jerks or making the dumbest decisions the entire time. 

 One has to love Fragasso's ear for dialogue:
"Up your ass. Lt. Mike London, Shit Creek. The year is now."

★★★ 1/2

Burial Ground (Le notti del terrore, 1981)
Dir. Andrea Bianchi

For my money, however, the silliest of Italian cash-grab zombie pictures is this one, which tries to match Fulci's zombies in their creepiness, but just ends up having worm-faced mummy guys crawl out of flower beds and slowly stumble to grab the nearest overacter screaming their lungs out. Burial Ground is something of a morality take, as a swinger's weekend of debauchery in a secluded mansion takes a violent turn.

There's some very fucked up things going on in the family, particularly with the 12-year-old Michael (Peter Bark) who doesn't want to die a virgin so he tries to achieve his long-time dream and nail his own mother before the zombies get to him. It's one of the Italian films that uses the legendary Etruscan people as a source of ancient terrors, but neglects to include much of actual Etruscan culture to go with it. Nevertheless, we get a healthy amount of zombie monks, too.

It's a great film to watch during boozy nights with friends, as the actors themselves seem to be quite relaxed as well. I love how when cast member become zombies, they seem to be quite happy with the development.

★ or ★★★★★

Three laughs: Night Killer

It is hard to rate some trashy films. Films can be really good entertainment in spite of the quality of the filmmaking. In fact, it might be even harder to create unique trash that keeps surprising you than most "quality" films with which you know what you are going to get. It certainly is an even better pleasure to watch them. My friend says that he knows a trash film is worth something if it gets three laughs out of me. I mean proper, good belly laughs when you just can't believe what the film is showing to you, scene after scene. That's as good a rating as any for these movies. Any film that has these three laughs has a special place in my heart. 

★ or ★★★★★

 

Three laughs case file #42:
Night Killer (Non aprite quella porta 3, 1990)
Director: Claudio Fragasso (as Clyde Anderson)

Ol' shlockmeister Fragasso is best remembered as the director of Troll 2, as well as having been the co-director of plenty of films by another trash master, Bruno Mattei (such as Rats: Nights of Terror). Whereas Mattei was content on doing cheapo ripoff films for the lowest common denominator, Fragasso seems to have quite a high opinion of himself. Case in point is this 1990 horror movie, which the director himself has compared to the works of Fellini.

Well, to my knowledge Fellini never did shlock that featured a killer that looks like the offspring of Freddy Krueger and the Toxic Avenger.  Fragasso would have wanted to make a psychological movie about trauma with parallel universes and dream-like logic, but the studio demanded him to have a more basic slasher plot. But it seems a compromise was reached, since these two sides seem to battle it out throughout the movie. Insult to injury, Mattei, who Fragasso kept saying stole his credits from their previous collaborations, was hired to add gore scenes to the movie. So the tables surely have turned.

In Italy, the film was sold as Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3, even though it has even less to do with the franchise than Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 did. In actuality, the film features gruesome murders at Virginia Beach where young women are stalked and killed by a rubber-faced fiend, seemingly with his bare claws. The killer has a grander plan for one of his victims, Melanie Beck (Tara Buckam), who has repressed memories of previously encountering the killer.

CONTENT WARNING: The movie depicts sexual violence.

Three laughs (SPOILERS):

1. The scene in the beginning with dancers practicing a dumb disco-dancing routine seems almost like a parody of later-era Argento with Opera or his production Stage Fright. The director's beration doesn't make any sense and the dramatic camera movements showing a really dumb Halloween-costume wearing fiend watching in the balcony just add to the bizarreness.

2. In-movie, it seems to fluctuate whether that mask and glove is just cheap plastic or the real thing. For instance, the killer can easily stick his claws through a girl. The most bizarre kill scene comes, however, when he makes a plaster cast for another lady, then proceeds to sex up his own simulacrum.

3. There's maybe some idea of females fighting against the pervy nature of the men around them in the movie. For instance, our lead has a scene where she lures a cat-caller to the toilet, then at gunpoint makes him strip and flushes his clothes. As the guy asks on how to get them back, we get an amazing line:

"Just reach in and fish them out. It shouldn't be anything new to AN ASSHOLE FULL OF SHIT AS YOURSELF!"

I have to mention the film's final moments as they have so many revealing twists that it's hard to keep up. Mostly because none of them make any sense. Anyway, the killer is shot to pieces by the police. But later on, in Christmastime, our lead's daughter gets a mysterious present. It turns out to be the killer's mask and once she puts it on, she wovs revenge. So, the mask was magical, too? Was this a prequel to The Mask (1994)? Either way, the film is SSSSSSSmoking!

Three laughs: Dead Heat

It is hard to rate some trashy films. Films can be really good entertainment in spite of the quality of the filmmaking. In fact, it might be even harder to create unique trash that keeps surprising you than most "quality" films with which you know what you are going to get. It certainly is an even better pleasure to watch them. My friend says that he knows a trash film is worth something if it gets three laughs out of me. I mean proper, good belly laughs when you just can't believe what the film is showing to you, scene after scene. That's as good a rating as any for these movies. Any film that has these three laughs has a special place in my heart.   

 ★ or ★★★★★

Three laughs case file #41:
Dead Heat (USA, 1988)
Director: Mark Goldblatt

How about a reanimator / buddy cop action parody made by Shane Black... 's brother? Well, ok, Terry Black isn't quite as droll a writer of the quips, or creator of ingenious action setpieces, but he has plenty of the same essence that takes you a long way. And it has a GREAT concept for a flick from the golden age of VHS. So, even though Dead Heat isn't quite as good a horror-comedy as you would want it to be, there's still plenty to enjoy, from truly weird effects work to major plot twists the kind you won't see in your run-off-the-mill action movie.

It features one of the final screen roles of Vincent Price, Keye Luke from Gremlins, and although the main pair isn't the most recognizable or generally even likable, they grow on you and the viewer wants to see the knuckleheads, if not succeed, at least uncover some weird shit. And to do a lot of wonton damage around town, and giving total disregard for human lives they may wreck. They may insult their corpses on the way out, as well.

Detectoves Mortis and Bigelow (Treat Williams and Joe Piscopo) run across bank robbers, and general nuisances of stiffs that can't seem to stay dead. There's a bigger plot going on as Dante Laboraties have some bigger plans than to simply resurrect the dead. And you can't keep our heroes down, since the same techniques that bring their adversaries to life also work on them...

At the very least for this time, it's a film that allows the phrase "the only good cop is a dead one" some consideration from the both sides.

Three laughs (SPOILERS):

1. The film opens with a scene of a crew of jewel store robbers on a heist. When our heroes arrive, they do the normal cop routine of starting fire before asking too many questions. But they soon realize the robbers actuallu can't die from simple gunshots. To get rid of them, one  has to be exploded, one run over with a car.

Cut to the key element of every cop action film: a pissed-off police captain yelling at the renegades for destroying everything around them. But at least they get results, man.

2. I like a sudden appearance of a gnarly monster man, especially as there's been a long while of exposition and getting to show the machinery that is used to bring people back to life. That's why it's a great joy as an obese biker zombie comes walking across an aisle to wrestle our heroes. It also gives the pleasure of seeing Treat Williams being knocked into an asphyxiation chamber and killed (he gets better).

3. One of the greatest special effects scenes comes from a scene best described as Big Trouble in Little China meets The Thing. In a Chinese butcher's shop some electric shenanigans bring meat to life. It means honking duck heads, wrestling with a pig carcass and getting an alien-like slab of meat to the face. As a coup de grace, there's a headless bull torso out to get our heroes. Best believe they make quips out of all of these!

"Zombie duck heads. What a concept."