Well howdy all! Yeah I need to change
up my greetings from time to time. Welcome back for Day 4 of
Exploitation Encore and it wouldn't be an proper exploitation week
with at least one underrated Italian horror film. Well I have sat
through my fair share of zombie movies. 378 of them thus far. From
the eerie creation of Lucio Fulchi's Zombi to George
Romero's Dead creations that gave shape to the subgenre to even
the unusual genius of Serbia's Milan Konjevic, a guy that
financed his own zombie movie from his created comic book series:
Generation Tesla, Dusk Fighters and Romero to
bring us Zone of the Dead. That all being said, I have not
encountered a zombie film quite like this on its disturbing content
and lucky me it has alternative titles. This is Burial Ground:
The Nights of Terror a.k.a. The Zombie Dead a.k.a. The Nights of
Terror a.k.a. Nights of Terror a.k.a. Zombi Horror and Zombie 3- Die
Ruckkehr der Zombies.
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| Italian Gene Wilder is having a devil of a night. |
As this is an Italian zombie movie
expect names you never heard of if you have left the subgenre alone.
Written by Piero Regnoli (Lust of the Vampire, Navajo
Joe, Burial Ground, Nightmare City,Urban Warriors, Bronx Executioner
and Voices from Beyond) combine forces with director Andrea
Bianchi (What the Peeper Saw, Cry of a Prostitute, Strip Nude
for Your Killer, Exciting Love Girls, The Seduction of Angela, Maniac
Killer, Massacre and Fleshy Doll) tells us the tale of the
nosy professor and his jet setting aristocrats dealing with roving
bands of the undead. Professor Ayres (Raimondo Barbieri of
Burial Ground: The Nights of Terror and The Third Solution)
an archeologist cut from the same cloth as Professor Knowby of Evil
Dead tampered in a domain best left alone. Thankfully no demonic
book bound in human flesh or inked in human blood. So no real need
for story telling or character build up, we get right with the
professor unleashing denizens of hell right off the bat. Granted he
could have skibbled back to the castle, lock it down and prep some
boiling oils to burn them or just stand by and wait for Ben of Night
of the Living Dead to save his fuzz ridden ass but we don't have time
for rational solutions.
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| Italian Sid Haig looks down at his latest victim. |
Our three couples have arrived in the
nearby villa at the request of the professor who was planning on
pumping them all for some Euro to better fund his remarkable
discovery of reanimating corpses decades possibly centuries old.
Practical investment clearly. It was either this or Sega Dreamcast
and we all know folks rather have the zombies than a few titles more
for a game console.
Now our zombies have a few issues as
the masks and hands are made up but clearly you can see exposed skin
on the neck where they are just masks. The gore effects are standard
for the day and not bad at that. The day time shots are were I am
confused as I thought this would be more of a night of terror rather
than a close to supper time of terror. Now the one truly bizarre
thing that exists in this flick unlike any other zombie movie is
little Michael. Pietro Barzocchini or "Peter Bark"
is ten year old Michael or so the director wants you to believe.
This guy is in his late twenties, early thirties as a dwarf playing a
child and I guess that works considering the weird incestual groping
and smooching mom scene. Later as a zombie he proceeds to gnaw down
one of her breasts as well. Spoiler? Aw jeepers I do apologize
for that inconvenience but no one can make it up to me for sitting
through this obscure reel to reel. I mean zombies and an Oedipal
story line? Not even sure where to go after that one.
All of this is shot in Rome so you get
to see the ancient amphitheaters, ruins and the castle is the real
mccoy. No joke, the castle is real and they managed to film all of
this in four weeks time. Knocking out at 85 minutes it wasn't
brilliant by any real stretch but it did have its own flavor to the
zombie standing. Had this been stateside, maybe our would-be
survivors would have been hiding out in a Civil War fort with
boomsticks and old school gore spikes duct taped to the end of them.
One can dream.
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| Psst lady, get me a 40, some beef jerky and a Hustler. |
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