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4
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7 |
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10
= Highest Rating |
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It's
no coincidence that Lucio Fulci's Zombie
and Marino Girolami's Zombie
Holocaust, both made in 1979, feature extraordinarily
similar plots. Each gore-splattered story starts
off in New York City, then follows an expedition
to a remote, zombie-infested island where a mad
doctor is encountered. Ian McCulloch (a sort of
second-string Roger Moore) headlines both casts,
playing a guy named Peter in both films; Alessandro
Barrera, who appears as a Matoul native in Zombie,
also shows up in this one. Was some kind of cinematic
conspiracy afoot? No, merely a case of Italian
exploitation filmmakers ripping themselves off
as readily as they did everyone else. In fact,
Zombie Holocaust
(padded with footage from an American student
film and re-dubbed Dr. Butcher, M.D. for
stateside release) ups the plagiarism ante by
blending two popular grindhouse genres of the
day —
cannibals and zombies —
into a single sleazy mishmash. Guaranteed to delight
gorehounds with its profusion of exposed innards,
the movie will leave a bad taste in the mouth
of just about anyone else. Or maybe even an upset
stomach.
At a teaching hospital
in New York, various body parts of corpses slated
for anatomy class start going missing. A hand,
a heart... Someone is entering the morgue late
at night and stealing them. At first attributed
to med school initiation pranks, the horrible
truth comes to light when one of the hospital
orderlies is (literally) caught red-handed slicing
open a cadaver's chest and chowing down on its
heart. The orderly, a dark-skinned Asian man,
leaps to his death from a window rather than face
the police. One of the doctors, the glamorous,
model-gorgeous Lori Ridgway (Alexandra Delli Colli)
—
who's also a student of anthropology —
recognizes a strange tattoo on the dead man's
chest. It is the sign of Keto, the cannibal god
of a primitive Southeast Asian tribe who dwell
on a jungle island of the same name. Following
up on the bizarre incident, Lori hooks up with
Dr. Peter Chandler (McCulloch), a scientific investigator
for the U.S. Government (even though he's a Brit,
and the agency for which he works is never really
identified). There's been a rash of mysterious
organ thefts across the country, all tied to Keto's
cannibal cult. Chandler organizes an expedition
to the island to get to the bottom of things.
Accompanying him are Lori, Chandler's assistant
George (Peter O'Neal), and Susan (Sherry Buchanan),
a pushy reporter keen for a big scoop.
On the main island
of the archipelago to which Keto belongs, the
foursome meets up with Dr. Obrero (Run,
Man, Run's Donal O'Brien), a seedy but supposedly
philanthropic medical researcher who's been living
among the natives for some time. He provides the
expedition with a boat, a trio of native bearers
and Moloto (Barrera), a knowledgeable guide. But
engine trouble strands the group short of their
goal on another island... Or is this truly the
case? Chandler begins to suspect that Moloto isn't
on the up-and-up. This becomes the least of his
worries once a band of savage cannibals starts
attacking the expedition. Appearing out of the
forest like wraiths, the primitives first pick
off the bearers and quickly make snacks of the
poor souls. Dr. Obrero, contacted by radio, directs
the survivors to make for an abandoned church
on the island. A rescue party is being organized
to save them.
So where the
heck are the damn zombies, then? The living
dead finally show up during the next cannibal
attack, in which George is horribly slaughtered
(his eyeballs plucked out for handy finger food)
and the screaming Susan is carried off into the
jungle. Lori, Chandler, and Moloto are saved from
a similar fate when a number of moaning zombies
shuffle into view, scaring the cannibals into
panicked flight. Shaken, the three arrive at the
rendezvous point to find Obrero waiting for them.
He writes Susan off as a lost cause, urging Lori
and Chandler to leave the island as quickly as
possible. But Chandler smells something rotten
about the entire affair... and the foul odor is
not just limited to zombies and cannibal scraps.
An inept piece of
junk, Zombie Holocaust
is a sordid, slapdash, inanely scripted hodgepodge
of then-current Italian exploitation themes —
if you've seen Fulci's Zombie
and Sergio Martino's Slave
Of The Cannibal God then you've pretty much
already seen this one, too. Even
though set in the Pacific, the film's locations
(aside from the New York footage it was entirely
shot near Rome) are made to look just like Fulci's
Caribbean guts 'n' ghouls opus. The
acting and dub work is simply atrocious. Delli
Colli is particularly wretched, compensating for
her lack of ability by spending most of the movie's
climax buck naked. (Quite a nice bod, though —
I'll take her over Tisa Farrow any day!) McCulloch
(Contamination)
deserves praise simply for not letting his embarrassment
show. It's extremely
gory, of course, with makeup effects ranging from
the unconvincingly cheesy*
to cringe-inducing shocks. Folks not accustomed
to this kind of fare will be in for some extremely
rough sledding. (Thankfully the viewer isn't subjected
to any real animal deaths. And by the way, the
zombies don't actually do any of the killing or
munching —
that's purely the cannibals' department.)
So how come I didn't
rate the movie a "1" on the EC scale?
Surprisingly enough there are some effective
scenes. The sequence in which poor, ill-fated
Susan (Jeez, she wasn't that much of a
bitch) finds herself strapped to an operating
table in the mad doctor's grimy, ramshackle lab,
her scalp cut away in preparation for a diabolical
experiment, is unforgettably horrifying. The spare,
minimalist score is decent and the dialog provides
the occasional howler. Besides, the flick is
better than Hell
Of The Living Dead... No stock footage!
|
| *
Watch when the hospital orderly nose-dives out the
window... As he hits the pavement below, one of
his (or rather the dummy's) arms snaps completely
off and goes flying. Moments later when Lisa examines
the body, both arms are still attached. |
|
|
A
recent Shriek Show release, this is the uncut European
version of the film (with the original score), minus
the American-made opening footage/title sequence
which morphed it into the notorious Dr. Butcher,
M.D. (as in "medical deviate") here
in the States. It's an adequate transfer with a
terrific slate of Extras. These include: the German
and American theatrical trailers for the film (the
latter under the Dr. Butcher moniker); trailers
for four either current or "coming soon"
Shriek Show releases (Jungle
Holocaust, Eaten
Alive, Beyond
The Darkness, and Burial
Ground); a "Zombie Art Gallery"
of stills, posters, lobby cards and photos of the
gonzo promotional campaign that heralded the flick's
opening in New York; a deleted scene which was cut
from the original Italian print (totally inconsequential,
it's not missed in the slightest); and a brief video
interview with special effects artist Maurizio Trani
—
during which he nonchalantly drinks wine and smokes
a cigarette, claiming to remember virtually nothing
about making the film. Even more Extras focus on
the American "contribution" to the Dr.
Butcher version of Zombie
Holocaust. Director Roy Frumkes (writer of
Street Trash) is
interviewed, explaining how as a student teacher
he sold three minutes of footage from an anthology
project (for $300) to the film's U.S. distributor,
which was then "cannibalized" for Dr.
Butcher's opening sequence. Clips from this
unfinished student project (Tales That'll Tear
Your Heart Out) are provided with voice-over
narration by Frumkes; there's also a photo montage
from Frumkes' scrapbook covering the shooting of
this footage. As icing on the cake, look for a hidden
Easter Egg on the "Special Thanks" page
—
click on the name of Edwin Samuelson, editor emeritus
of DVD
Maniacs, to view the film's English-language
opening/closing credits. A colorful insert booklet
contains a marvelous essay by Chris Poggiali, whimsically
detailing the grindhouse moviegoing experience in
New York City's then-infamous 42nd Street "Deuce"
section.
While probably the best-looking version of
Zombie Holocaust extant,
picture is rather grainy most of the time. Audio
is at best acceptable.
But this likely represents the best possible elements
that Shriek Show could obtain. Personally, for this
kind of movie it's not actually all that distressing...
Perfectionists who demand pristine, Dolby Surround-enhanced
transfers of Z-grade, dubbed Italian cannibal-zombie
gutbusters might wish to re-examine their priorities
in life. 5/28/02 |
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