Summer of Slash: Capsule Reviews, Part 4

Back with some capsule reviews.  These have been in the can for a while, but a mixture of grad school, work, and the hard drive for my desktop computer blowing up it's been a bugger of a time getting some new horror posts up.  I have a review for Maniac ready to go, too, but I'm still waiting for my computer to get fixed so I can get some screencaps up (my Netbook doesn't have a disc drive). In these capsule reviews you'll find brief thoughts on the Ozploitation version of Rear Window, a zombie movie penned by the man who came up with the idea for Alien, One of the best worst movies I've ever seen (one that would make Umberto Lenzi proud), and possibly one of the worst horror sequels I've ever seen.  Reviews after the jump...

Road Games:


"Who digs a hole in the middle of nowhere?


This line kickstarts what is a great little Australian thriller – about a truck driver named Quin (Stacy Keach) obsessed with a van that he thinks is responsible for the slew of dead female hitchhikers – that is more Rear Window than The Hitcher. So, it only gets a paragraph because it's not really a horror movie, even though the queen herself, Jamie Lee Curtis, shows up half-way into the film. There are some great moments of tension in the film (constructed out of very minimalist effects, after all, the film almost entirely takes place in the cab of a semi truck), but there's nothing here that makes the film a slasher. Thanks to the wonderful documentary about the Ozploitation movement in Not Quite Hollywood, I was able to hear about this film directed by Richard Franklin (Psycho II and the Australian cult hit Patrick), and about how it kind of pissed off the Australian filmmaking community because it used well-known American actors. However, Keach and Curtis are outstanding here essentially playing James Stewart and Grace Kelly, and there are some wonderful taut scenes throughout. However, the pacing is quite deliberate, so be warned: not a lot happens in this film. The ending is kind of a chore, but the set pieces are nice, and the Franklin is able to elicit some good tension out of Keach being confined to the cab of a semi truck (much in the same way Stewart was confined to his wheelchair in Rear Window) for almost the entirety of the film. It's all a slow burn, and at time the deliberate pacing is a chore to get through; however, the good outweighs the bad by a mile as the film is a lot of fun (thanks to the performances) with its classic storyline that pays homage to Rear Window in a respectful way.

 

Slugs:


Well, here's one of those movies that is so-bad-it's-good. It's like the best of Umberto Lenzi (Nightmare City) and Lucio Fulci, mixed with the cheese of Bert I. Gordon films. So, in other words: it's gloirious. Since these types of movies are never as fun to read about as they are to watch I'll keep this brief:

• The acting is so wonderfully awful, and it just reeks of the 80's. It just may be some of the most wooden acting I've ever seen in a horror movie with a semi-budget.
  
• Of course the only scientist in town is British, and he looks like a cross between Dario Argento and Jeff Van Gundy.
  
• The character Phillips, who I think is the town's water deputy or something like that, I couldn't figure it out, is the poor mans Leslie Nielson. He utters brilliant lines like: "You aint got the authority to declare Happy Birthday, not in this town…now get your ass out of here!" Brilliant.
  
• You know you're in trouble when the director's idea of tension is cutting back and forth between each actor's lines and any kind of reaction from periphery characters. This film has TONS of reaction shots, and they're all gloriously awful.
  
• There's a lot of cheap blood and guts in this film as the slugs simply sit on top of a victim, make loud snail-like noises, like the silly snails and spiders of Fulci's horror movies, as we see traces of guts through the horde of slugs.
  
• One of the film's best moments comes when a man in a restaurant starts choking, falls off his chair, and then has his eye explode as a stream of slugs comes flying out of the empty eye socket. It reminded yet again of something right out of a Fulci film.
  
• Like any good D-grade horror movie the film consists of a lot exposition to not only explain the confusing story, but also to pad the film to an excruciating extent.
  
• 
  
  I know I'm preaching to the choir when I speak to how entertaining this kind of bad movie is, so, if you're one of those people and you haven't seen Slugs yet, what are you waiting for!
  
  

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2:


I have no interest in spending more than a few sentences on this movie. Perhaps I just don't get it, but I didn't find this movie the least horrifying, funny, or clever; and if it wasn't for a hilariously over-the-top (and all too sparsely featured) performance by Dennis Hopper, this would have gone down as one of the worst and most unnecessary sequels ever made. It's an interesting premise as Hooper tries to take the nihilism from the first film and re-channel it to be some kind of jokey, tongue-in-cheek horror movie that features way too much of the cannibal chainsaw family we only briefly saw in the first film. The sequel is at times excruciatingly repetitive and way too long. Despite its great set piece at the end, and the aforementioned great performance by Dennis Hopper, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 is just too much of chore to get through with attempts at industry-specific humor that ends up just falling flat on its face. A missed opportunity that shows Hooper really was merely a one hit wonder. (Note: I admit that I am probably one of the few horror buffs that doesn't slurp up and gush all over the original TCM, so take that for what it's worth. Yeah, I may be a bit harsh on Hooper, but I've just never been impressed with the man's abilities as a filmmaker.)


 

Dead and Buried:


Gary Sherman's (Death Line aka Raw Meat) Dead and Buried is an interesting take on the zombie film. Sometimes great and atmospheric, and sometimes a bit slow and plodding it's ultimately more of a curiosity for hardcore horror/exploitation fans. From a Dan O'Bannon (Alien) screenplay, Dead and Buried begins benignly enough as a passer-through taking snapshots of the beach. When he happens upon a beautiful stranger he begins taking pictures of her. This seemingly serene beginning has your typical soft focused, early 80's aesthetic; however, it turns ugly quickly as just as the poor bastard's about to get some on the beach a horde of creepies come sidling up to him and proceed to set the man on fire. It's quite a jolt, a legitimate shock after the almost comatose tone of the preceding five minutes. The scene of the photag on fire is nicely juxtaposed with the peaceful environmental surroundings. He survives the attack, but by design, as we come to find out that the small town of Potter's Bluff is attacking and murdering people to create a race of zombies.


Now these aren't your typical zombies that plod along and groan and moan for "more braaaaaains"; no, these zombies are simply reanimated corpses…in the voodoo sense. The film is an interesting mishmash of exploitation film and a more cerebral horror film, and it never really takes off despite the film's eerie tone and atmosphere. I like that Sherman tells us immediately who the killers are, and that the mystery is more interested in whether the sheriff of the New England town, Dan Gillis (James Farentino), can catch on that there's something really weird happening under his nose. It's not just the murders, but there's something else going on: Gillis' wife keeps disappearing at odd times of the night and people we've seen murdered keep popping up around town. Dead and Buried is at its best when focuses in on these moments; however, they are few and far between as the deliberate pacing really hurts the film.

There a few standout scenes, though: viewers will recognize one scene where the attractive woman on the beach at the beginning of the film dresses up as a nurse and pays a visit with macabre intentions to the burn victim from the beginning of the film. Quentin Tarantino would late homage this scene with Daryl Hannah in Kill Bill. The other scene is near the end when sheriff Gillis watches an old reel-to-reel of his wife and him making love, and an evil secret is revealed. It's quite an eerie scene as the town's coroner (Jack Albertson) watches with delight as his master plan is revealed. Dead and Buried isn't the greatest horror film of 1981, and it certainly doesn't live up to the talent that worked on the film, but it is a decent enough horror film with some creepy moments as the fog drenched town of Potter's Bluff makes for a good creepy atmosphere. Just be warned, the film is pretty deliberate in its pacing inducing more than a few yawns. (Note: This movie was inexplicably added to the infamous 'Video Nasties' list in 1984. I have no idea why. There's nothing remotely 'nasty' about this movie.  Just further proof that people were overreacting to horror films in the 80's.)

Summer of Slash: City of the Living Dead (aka The Gates of Hell, aka Fear in the City of the Living Dead)

[This is a re-post of something I wrote back in October for the Italian Horror Blog-a-thon I hosted.  Today I am re-posting it because the invaluable and unmatchable horror blog Final Girl has selected this for her May entry for her Final Girl Film Club. And I figured I would use that as an excuse to post it again for my summer horror series.  Enjoy.]

City of the Living Dead is typical 80's Fulci as the plot is one nonsensical moment after another; however, in typical Italian horror fashion (and Fulci was one of the best) these nonsensical moments seem purposeful, they lead to ethereal, displacing scenes that are heavy on atmosphere and style and empty of all logic. That’s okay, though…we know that’s we get with post giallo Fulci – films that exist for the moment.


City of the Living Dead is the first of three in an unofficial trilogy Fulci dubbed “the gates of hell” trilogy (The Beyond follows and the series us wrapped up in The House by the Cemetery) – a trilogy that is more supernatural than it is about zombies walking around and munching on guts (which made Fulci famous with his notorious and gigantic grind house hit Zombi 2); more about atmosphere and making you feel uneasy than it is about things jumping out at you and scaring you. This era is what Fulci is best known for…and he was working at an incredibly high level at the time (1979-1982), churning out one spooky, atmospheric hit after another.

The plot is paper thin and therefore hard to summarize, but let’s give it a go: Father Thomas has hung himself and because of this the dead are descending upon a small New England town. If our heroes don’t get to Father Thomas’ tomb in time (before All Saints Day) then the dead will walk the earth. There’s your plot. When the ending does come you’ll be left scratching your head as it is one of the most bizarre and ambiguous I’ve ever seen…and that’s not a good thing. The ending just seems to come out of nowhere. The acting is as wooden as usual for these types of movies (one of the reasons for this was that English actors rarely got an English treatment of the script, so they either had to decipher it themselves or have someone translate for them), but it's not so bad that it distracts you from the memorable moments of the film.

Of course this film is infamous for more reasons than just its nonsensical plot and being the film that lead-in into what many consider Fulci’s masterpiece (The Beyond). There is of course the issue of the gore. Fulci had reinvented himself with the gut-munching classic Zombi 2 and probably felt that no plot and heaps of gore was what garnered him praise and notoriety, so why stray to far from that? It’s sad considering the film previous to Zombi 2, Murder to the Tune of 7 Black Notes, is his masterpiece; a film that is brilliant to look at and in its execution (and ability to make sense) of its intricate giallo storyline (which always has twists and turns that don’t always make sense). Fulci himself avowed that it was his favorite and most personal film, the one film that he spent the most time on, so of course it was met with no interest at all…go figure.

Back to the gore: there are eyes bleeding, brains being pulled out, the infamous drill scene, and the even more infamous “sheep guts” scene; these scenes of course caught the attention of the BBFC – which any horror fan knows as the group responsible for the well-known “video nasties” list – who thought the film too violent and forced the filmmakers to make sever cuts. The neutered American version entitled The Gates of Hell made its way to video stores across the country, but without a lot of the scenes that made the film so notorious among die hard horror fans. The brain removal scene had been cut altogether, the drill scene had to lose a few angles, and without question the BBFC made Fulci lose almost all of the meat (no pun intended) of the organ regurgitation scene. What was there left to see, then? Well any cut film is a bad film, so even though the film doesn’t really lose any of its style without those scenes, it definitely wasn’t the film Fulci intended to be seen (in fact in the American version – as he did in the butchered versions of The Beyond and The House by the Cemetery – he went by the very banal pseudonym Jerry Madison, a practice that was common for these Italian horror filmmakers).

The other famous moment in the film is when a weird little pervert named Bob who goes around town with a blow up doll is accused of the murders caused by the ghosts/zombies. The town doesn’t like him because of an incident involving a young girl years back; the father in fact still has it out for him. When the father finds Bob hiding out in his garage…well, let’s just say he puts Chuck Bronson to shame with how far he takes vigilante justice. The next scene – just like the spider death, acid to the face, and spike to the eye from The Beyond – takes about five minutes to happen as Fulci cranks up the “tension” (Fulci’s films do require a lot of patience has he doesn’t just jump into the gory scenes…he makes you wait for those big bad gory moments) of cutting back and forth between the kid and the crazed father putting the kids head on a saw horse and sloooooooowly pushing his head towards an industrial drill that he turned on. The death (when the drill finally goes through his head) is one of Fulci’s most memorable and impressive as far as effects go. I have supplied the moment for you in stills...enjoy:



The film is also infamous for some of the antics on the set. Fulci is a known misogynist, a man who had little to no regard for his female actors as he consistently asked them to horrible things for the sake of the film. None more horrible than what he had actress Daniela Doria do in City of the Living Dead. I’ve already made mention of the scene in question where Doria and her boyfriend (played by future Italian filmmaker Michele Soavi) are making out in a van at the town graveyard (what a bad idea!) when the ghost of Father Thomas pops up in front of the van and Doria’s character begins bleeding from the eyes and subsequently vomits up her insides. The story goes (from Fulci himself in an interview) that he had Doria actually swallow sheep entrails and then vomit them up – you can clearly see where it is Doria’s mouth spewing out the nastiness…this is followed by a prosthetic mouth where the rest of the guts are being shot out like a canon.


Yuck. My brother and I have a motto while watching these movies…we usually say something to the extent of “oh, Fulci.” He definitely was a disturbed, crazy old man who had no regard for the psyche of his young actresses.

It had been a while since I had seen this movie, and I have to say that to my surprise it holds up reasonably well. The atmosphere is wonderful as the small town is constantly drenched in fog, and you can tell Fulci is having fun with his set designs and all the spooky goodness his camera is able to capture. Fulci also employed longtime collaborator Fabio Frizzi to write the music, the result is a score that matches the film’s eerie mood (which was common with these Italian horror directors…the music is just as important as something like production design) with every synth beat and bass riff.

Yes, I’ve short changed the plot summary here and focused more on some of the infamous details of the film, but that’s because there’s really nothing to summarize. The film is more of a ghost story with teleporting, zombie like creatures than it is a straight zombie film (which some people try to pass it off as), and Fulci really strains to tie in a 4000 year old book into the story that has something to do with the strange goings on around the town (this is the same book, The Book of Eibon, that shows up in The Beyond); however, most of that is forgotten throughout the film because Fulci’s fantastic gore effects, or his ability to so consistently pull off spooky and unsettling scenes (for instance a scene where a woman, thought to be dead, is buried alive and struggles to get out of the coffin. Tarantino, in what isn’t his first or last homage to Fulci, would reference this in Kill Bill vol. 1) that makes us forget just what the hell it is we’re watching as we witness this small town slowly decaying.

In any other genre, even in normal horror films, all of this talk about nonsensical plots and unnecessarily ambiguous moments would be a knock against any film and its filmmaker, but the odd thing – and one of the reasons for my unabashed love of this subgenre – is that with Italian horror it just doesn’t matter; surrealism trumps all. It’s universally known to fans of the subgenre that you leave logic at the door and simply strap yourself in and drink up the rich atmosphere and amazing cinematography of an early 80’s Fulci film, and even though I remember not liking City of the Living Dead too much when I first saw it, I have to admit that I think it stands as one of the best examples of Fulci’s mastering of surrealist horror and shows the director at the height of his deranged creativity.

Extra Stills:

Italian Horror Blog-a-thon: Nightmare City (aka City of the Walking Dead, aka Invasion of the Atomic Zombies)

[Dusting off another old review for today. If you've never had the pleasure of seeing an Umberto Lenzi movie...this is one to see. I'll update the links later today as I had two wonderful submissions sent to me yesterday, one from Tim of Antagony & Ecstasy and the other by Roderick Heath of Ferdy on Films...if you're familiar with either of those blogs than you know the quality of those submissions is going to be at a high level. Enjoy.]

Umberto Lenzi’s Nightmare City is a masterpiece. No seriously, hear me out. The film is the Italian horror equivalent of the greatest of all 1980’s so-bad-it’s-good-movies, Commando. It is one of those films that is so awful in every aspect that the more you watch it, the more you appreciate every frame of the film. Not only is the film awesomely awful, but it inspired Robert Rodriguez’ Planet Terror and Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later. Lenzi’s film contains a plethora of 1980’s European horror film clichés. It’s the classic example of Italy churning out whatever was popular at the time and employing a hack director to just make sure the film makes money (this happened with cannibal films which stole from the Mondo films, and it happened with supernatural films like The Exorcist rip off Beyond the Door, etc. – basically they knew they were going to make a profit before the movie was even released, so they didn’t care about the quality). The result of all this is Lenzi and co. creating one of the funniest horror films ever made, and one of the truly great grindhouse experiences you are likely to have.


The film opens with Hugo Stiglitz as Dean Miller (great generic American name), a reporter who is headed to an airstrip to meet with a prominent scientist for an interview. However, an unmarked military plane lands on the airstrip and as Miller instructs his cameraman to shoot the action, nothing can prepare our hero for what he is about to see: oatmeal-faced, turtleneck/sports coat wearing zombies who rush off the plane and partake in an orgy of stabbing, biting, drinking blood, and missing a lot of their cues from Lenzi. These aren’t your ordinary zombies, though. In fact, they are more like what we’re used to seeing in American zombie films today; as Miller’s wife the good doctor Anna explains, they’re “infected.” Hmm, sound familiar?

The infected run around the city killing lots of people (looking suave while doing it), and in a surreal scene at the television station that Miller is employed by, the zombies rush in on what appears to be a daytime disco/aerobics show. If you have ever been curious as to why it is I love Italian zombie films so much, this scene helps explain a lot. They proceed to eat up all the dancers (some dancers, ever the performers, keep dancing while the mayhem ensues), and look to take over the station. Miller is at the station desperately trying to get a message out to the people about the infected…but his boss says no dice. A disgusted Miller retreats to his office, but he’s intercepted by a horde of infected trying to kill him. This is great because it causes Hugo Stiglitz to overact (like only Hugo can) and show just how wimpy he is as he resorts to throwing monitors and other various office supplies at the zombies as they try to break into his office and kill him. One monitor even explodes as cheesy looking sparks and smoke bomb effects go off. God bless you, Lenzi.

The rest of the film is some nonsense about how the zombies are not undead, but they are infected from a radiation spill and how they need blood to survive. The hospital where Anna works gets overrun soon enough (with a wonderful scene by a doctor who is performing surgery, and without hesitation when one of the infected walk in, he throws his scalpel at him, and of course does nothing to prevent the inevitable), but luckily our hero Hugo is there to rescue his wife and get her the hell out of there.

There’s also some stuff about how there is a national emergency and some military people have to figure out how they want to handle the situation. Miller and wife try to warn people about what is happening, but that crusty old veteran General Murchison (ably played by Mel Ferrer) won’t allow it to happen. Damn him! There must be something else to why this plane was allowed to land? Ah, but Lenzi is not interested in an even more convoluted storyline involving military conspiracy; no, he’d rather focus on bad make-up, inane goings-on like a lawnmower that pushes itself across the lawn of the good General’s wife, or the sculpture she is working on that randomly breaks and drips blood, which of course leads to her death (how these things are relevant to the film, I still haven’t figured out – it’s as if Lenzi was desperate to mix in some Beyond-esque supernatural weirdness).

The film ends with a showdown in an amusement park where the Miller’s climb a Ferris wheel to load a helicopter, but then…bad things happen including a nasty fall by Anna. But who cares, right? I mean look at Hugo with the gun! He just mows down the infected looking as wimpy as someone can holding a gigantic automatic weapon like that. Then the film does something way ahead of its time. Circular plot, baby! Just when we think the film is over as Dean is in trouble and his wife has just died Lenzi hits us with this…


Brilliant! Brilliant, I say!

Nightmare City is a film that even the most casual of horror fans would enjoy. It’s campy enough to be entertaining and has the so-bad-it’s-good quality that makes for a good party movie. It’s also fun to see zombies that aren’t boring. These zombies are fast (and dress nicely), and it’s fun to watch the film and see its imprint on tongue-in-cheek fair like Planet Terror (which lifted the entire hospital scene from Nightmare City) to better and more eerie horror films like 28 Days Later. At one point in Nightmare City one of the zombies picks up a gun and uses it…if you ask me this shows that Lenzi was way ahead of his time and a true auteur of the zombie genre, preceding Romero’s Land of the Dead (where zombies also use guns). Okay, Lenzi isn’t an auteur at all, but it is fun to watch him hack his way through this material and supply enough originality to the genre to keep us entertained, while also supplying enough crap that will make you laugh out loud and want to hit the rewind button.

I mentioned Commando at the beginning of this review, and although Nightmare City is not as quotable (“Let off some steam, Bennett”) it is just as memorable as far as awful 80’s movies go. The wonderful Italian touches separate it from a purely American film like Commando, which is why I love Nightmare City so much more than other “good” bad movies. I have an unabashed love for all things Italian horror and the weird nonsensical things these filmmakers add to their films (also kick ass synth soundtracks). It is because of these things that Nightmare City stands shoulders above all other bad Italian zombie movies, even the soundtrack and classic Italian horror motifs are horribly ripped off here. Everything in the film is a failure, which more often than not in this subgenre means the film is a success in being a guilty pleasure.

Compared to a good zombie movie, Nightmare City is a joke, but isn’t that really the point. No one rents a film like this expecting something good. The wardrobe and the make-up and the nonsensical storyline easily make this one of the most enjoyable pieces of crap to come out of the 1980’s Italian horror era. Lenzi would go on and do what most Italian hack directors do: rip off more material. His next film Cannibal Feroux was just a rehashing of the cannibal genre’s most influential film Cannibal Holocaust, and the films that preceded Nightmare City were just the same old tired gialli; however, with Nightmare City and its oatmeal covered, sport coat wearing zombies (and of course Hugo Stiglitz) I always find myself smiling at this wonderfully awful and hilarious Italian horror film that should be atop every horror buffs must see list.

Final Girl Film Club: Burial Ground (AKA The Nights of Terror)

This is part of the Final Girl Film Club -- this month tackles my favorite subgenre and focuses on one of the weirdest films to ever come out of the Italian zombie movement. Head on over to Final Girl to check out all of the other great entries.

Some connoisseurs of Italian horror really find this film to have profound statements about the class struggle in Italy at the time. They claim that the zombies rising from the dirt and attacking the castle is an ideal metaphor for the bourgeois rising up and attacking the wealthy social class. Okay…not really, but Andrea Bianchi’s Burial Ground (AKA The Nights of Terror) is one of the most infamous so-bad-it’s-good type horror movies ever to come out of the Italian Zombie subgenre. It's hilarious and horrible, and sure to be one of the most surreal movie-going experiences you’ll ever have.

The story is about some rich swingers who meet up at an old castle/mansion to have a discussion with a professor friend of theirs. Only what they don't know is that the professor stumbled upon “a great secret” that “must be true”. He heads outside and into a crypt to chisel away at some stone when some zombies are like “what’s up? Why did you have to bring us back from the dead?” The viewer is left to think that the poor professor knew these zombies before they were donned with skeleton masks covered in oatmeal and rubber cement, because when the zombies approach him he utters one of the films many hilarious lines: “stand back! I’m your friend.” Best not to barter with the walking dead because his “friends” don’t listen to him and poor Professor (who looks a lot like Alan Moore) supplies his "friends" with some easy dinner, and I mean easy; he just stands there and lets them chomp away, and thus kicks off Andrea Bianchi's Burial Ground.

Bianchi was a hack who mostly worked in soft-core porn or the giallo, moving around like most Italian horror directors, to whatever idea made him the most money. Some of his films include: Maniac Killer, Cry of a Prostitute, Strip Nude for your Killer, and The Malicious Whore. So really his only attempt at a zombie movie was with Burial Ground and even then the entire first act of the film is nothing more than Cinemax quality porn.

Once the gettin' busy commences we cut outside to two people making love in the garden. They soon realize something is wrong when a zombie rises up from the ground just as they're getting hot and heavy (oh what a hilarious metaphor!) in scene that is directly taken from Zombi 2. Perhaps that is why in Europe Burial Ground was actually referred to as Zombi 3. The zombies don't even look great as I mentioned before and really it appears that they only took the time with a select few that they showcase throughout the film, all of the extras were just given oatmeal and rubber cement to put on their cheap Halloween masks.

The fight scenes with the zombies and the swingers are some of the most hilarious in an y zombie movie. Our mustache-clad swingers find anything they can use to stave off the zombies (some even look like Christopher Llyod…see above). During one horribly long scene we get a POV of one of the characters holding a pitchfork (Hey, it’s Italian Zombie Doom!) just starring at the zombies while the rip-off Goblin music plays in the background. After a horribly long and awkward fight scene the zombies are finished off by, get this, a planting pot...yeeeeeah. This leads to the ever popular head-as-paper mache-being-destroyed scene that shows maggots escaping from the "brain."

The zombies in Bianchi’s film are up to the task though as they are more than capable of throwing knives and wielding farming tools themselves. In one hilarious scene the chamber maid wisely looks out the window to see what’s going on…and of course as she does this a zombie (who must have had some knife throwing practice at one time in his life) hurls a knife at her hand. Now stuck, the maid has no other option but to sit there as the zombies get a scythe and slooooooowly chop off her head. Pretty awesome. The zombies are also more resourceful than most as in one scene they show signs of great team work as the work together to make a battering ram so that they can knock down the door to the estate.

One of the main reasons why this film is so infamous is because of the creepy little mutant kid Michael. Here is what looks like a middle-aged little person playing a ten year old boy who has a weird obsession with his mother. He's always walking in on her while she's getting her groove back with some slimy looking Italian dude (the best line is "you're getting a rise out of me" all the while zombies are rising from the grave – insert “boing” noise here), and none of his creepiness is helped out by the horrible dubbing job.

The most famous scene of the film – and the one scene that when you explain it to others they say “oh yeah, I’ve seen that movie, I had forgotten what that movie was called” – is when Michael's mother slaps him after he gets himself a handful of his mom's goodies "just like when he was a boy" he says...yuck...but that's not the worst of it: Michael runs away and is bitten by a zombie. We are supposed to forget about creepy little Michael but when two of the survivors and Michael's mom are the only people left and they retreat to a church (with flesh eating monks and all!) there's little Michael emerging from a door (how he got to the church I have no idea) and his mother full of guilt for slapping her boy, and so pleased to see her boy alive, does the most disgusting thing in any movie...she lets her "boy" get some milk just like when he was a baby. Gross. And stupid...because as the other two look disgusted (hey something did gross out Italian swingers, amazing!) it is clear that Michael is a zombie, and sure enough, mommy gets the worlds worst tittie twister as Michael takes a big 'ol bite out of his moms breast. Ouch!

There are some classic Italian horror moments in the film like the pacing of the action, the horrible dubbing, the synth soundtrack, and especially how the zombies die. When the zombies are trying to find their way to the second floor of the mansion one of the swinger dudes who looks like Buzz on "Baywatch" grabs a gun and proceeds to shoot all of the zombies in the head. This leads to the always popular Italian shot of the zombie head with a completely black backdrop, exploding, looking more like a watermelon being hit by a shotgun blast than a head. This "isolated" head shot was popular in a lot of Italian horror films as the directors wanted to get as close to the gruesomeness as possible. The only problem was it makes it even more obvious how stupid and cheap the effects and make-up are.

This is still somewhat of a forgotten zombie film even though it has a cult following (not as big as Zombi 2 of course). This film is a perfect example of how the Italian's began ripping off their own stuff, and showed just what kind of hacks these directors were. Whether it was the giallo film, the cannibal film, or the zombie film, it was guaranteed that you would see all three of those genres on an Italian horror directors resume. The film is good for a lot of laughs as it produces some of the cheapest looking zombies, and ends in ridiculous fashion with a quote from The Profecy (that’s how they spelled it) of the Black Spider. See if you can spot the spelling error in the quote – and somehow that seems entirely appropriate for this film.

The violence is mild and predictable after if you’re familiar with this subgenre, especially the more popular Zombi 2 and The Beyond, but with its campy and hilarious characters and surreal moments Burial Ground is one of the better Italian zombie films. It deserves to be in the canon of Italian zombie movies. In the words of Kenny Banya: "It's gold Jerry...gold!"