1979, Italy. Starring Ian McCulloch, Alexandra Delli Colli, Sherry Buchanan, Peter O'Neal, Donald O'Brien, Walter Patriarca, Linda Fumis, Roberto Resra. Directed by Marino Girolami. Available on DVD (Amazon).

One of the many things we try to do here in Teleport City is educate our readers on a variety of topics that might go otherwise ignored. For example, did you know the only reason Teddy Roosevelt is on Mount Rushmore is because he was the personal favorite president of the guy who thought of the thing? See, I bet you thought he was up there because of the funny way he would exclaim, "Positively bully!"

So here is a little travel tip from us to all of you who might be thinking about heading to the tropics soon: if Ian McCulloch is part of your group, don't go. Oh sure, he's a nice enough guy and all, but every single tropical island he goes to ends up being infested with flesh-eating zombies. It's a sure thing. I mean, if you were traveling to the tropics and Al Cliver was with you, sure you might risk it. After all, it's true that he did go to the island of Matool in Zombie, but he also went to another tropical island where he got to hang with ultra-sexy Annie Bell in Forever Emannuelle. In fact, Cliver shows up in a lot of Emannuelle films, but he also dies a lot in Lucio Fulci films. But his bad luck with tropical islands seems limited to Zombie, and I would wager that's because he was with Ian McCulloch.

So with Al Cliver, you have at least as decent a chance of getting laid by some mind-blowingly gorgeous person (male or female), and it's up to you to judge if it's worth the risk. I can take a quick glance at Annie Bell and give you my answer. With Ian McCulloch, though, you're going to die. Plain and simple, unless you are lucky enough to be his female companion of choice. You might have to dance naked for some natives or something, but you have a pretty good chance of escaping the island alive as long as you stick with Ian. And you'd probably have to dance naked in front of natives in an Emannuelle film, too.

Ian McCulloch stars here as his usual nosy self. Our action begins in New York City, where so many Italian horror films begin. They have really cool cities in Italy. I mean, come on -- Rome? What a cool city. But for some reason, they always come to New York. One of the local hospitals is having some trouble with organ theft, not as in someone is stealing Hammonds. One of the orderlies is busily yanking out hearts and livers and eyes and stuff, until he gets busted, which you'd think he'd figure on. You can only steal so many organs and leave the shredded-up, bloody corpses lying around for so long before they set up a sting operation.

This allows us to set up the typical Italian horror film cast of the plucky female, the dull male tag-along (McCulloch), and the young couple thrown into the mix for no real reason other than to be eaten later on. The female, Lori, also happens to be an expert on this incredibly obscure tribe from some island out by the Philippines. Well, thank god the orderly doing these bizarre things is from that same tribe. And there are other members of the tribe in New York as well. They steal a ceremonial dagger from Lori, and this is reason enough for them to all load up and go investigate the island to see if anything crazy is happening there, like with zombies or cannibals or something.

Their contact is a frontier doctor who lends them his and his boat to get to the island. But the doc is obviously up to something, as he does everything he can to keep them from getting to the island. When the boat breaks down, as they always do (sort of like punk rock tour vans), our cast puts to shore and is immediately set upon by the locals, who have reverted to the ancient ways of cannibalism and impressively clever but not overly practical booby trapping. Before you know it, Ian and his pals are in a desperate fight against a seemingly endless barrage of flesh-eating natives.

"But wait," you might be saying, "I thought this was called Zombie Holocaust. So where are the zombies?" Yep, that's a pickle right there. I guess since Cannibal Holocaust was already taken, they had to go with the next most popular type of holocaust. So even though this movie is about cannibals for the most part, the ten minutes of zombie action in the end are used to justify calling it Zombie Holocaust. When it was edited and released in the United States, they called it Dr. Butcher, MD: Medical Deviate. While the US version was missing scenes (I think it is missing important scenes of people talking or walking down a beach or something), at least the title, coy though it was, was more accurate.

To no one's great shock but Ian's and Lori's, the good doctor ends up being a raving lunatic who is using the natives as guinea pigs in his bizarre and brutal medical experiments, which seem to have something to do with brain transplants. He was the one who encouraged the locals to take up cannibalism, and now he's creating a race of very ugly living dead creatures who sort of shamble around the jungle looking menacing for a spell. They don't really do much else until the very end. All the work is left up to the cannibals.

Ian confronts the doctor, who has come to the island, while the reporter gets captured by the cannibals. Rather than eat her like they do everyone else, they strip her down, tie her up, and perform elaborate rituals around her naked body. Well, at least this tribe got some things right. Modern society absolutely does not have enough lewd naked dancing rituals going on. Damn Christians. They ruin all the fun. During the course of things, Lori inevitably becomes their great white goddess, though this must have happened when I blinked. One minute they're tying her down, the next minute she's leading the cannibal forces into a final battle with the crazy doctor and his five or six zombies. And then the zombies end up turning on him anyway. It's so hard to find good help these days.

Zombie Holocaust is going to disappoint anyone hoping for buckets of zombie action, since the zombies are sparse and don't play a big role in the film until the very end. Still, this is among the most fast-paced and enjoyable of the many Italian cannibal films. It lacks any of the political ramifications and absolute tastelessness of films like Cannibal Holocaust, and instead plays like an action/horror film. The gore is certainly there in abundance, and if that's what you are looking for, this movie is going to serve you up plenty of chest ripping, eye gouging, flesh biting, and other assorted goodies. You also get surgical gore, but considering you can get that in abundance on The Learning Channel, it's not that exciting anymore. Italian horror films will be in trouble if Discovery Channel starts airing cannibal documentaries with actual cannibalism in them.

Even though this is more of a cannibal film than a zombie film, it still has plenty of wholesome goodness to offer. Good gore, people eating, a faster pace than most cannibal films have (it lacks that hour or so of people traipsing through the jungle watching animals kill each other that makes most other cannibal films so tedious). An apple a day may keep most doctors away, but try using that shit against Dr. Butcher and he'll just pull your vocal chords out and put your brain in a pan. Similarities to both Zombie and Cannibal Holocaust are obvious, but being derivative never stopped anything from being enjoyable. Well, it stopped some things, but not this. The big city set-up at least makes more sense than Umberto Lenzi's bizarre mafia lead-in to Cannibal Ferox. And while the coincidences that lead to our cast going to this island are a bit absurd, they're easy to overlook in light of all the flesh tearing that the film has in store for us. Zombie Holocaust is no masterpiece. It's just good, ol' fashioned gory fun.

Labels: Horror: Zombies