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Tuesday, July 26, 2005Zombie 3 Release Year: 1988Country: Italy Starring: Deran Sarafian, Beatrice Ring, Ottaviano Dell'Acqua, Massimo Vanni, Ulli Reinthaler, Marina Loi, Deborah Bergamini. Writer: Lucio Fulci and Claudio Fragasso Director: Lucio Fulci, Claudio Fragasso, and Bruno Mattei Cinematographer: Riccardo Grassetti Music: Stefano Mainetti Producer: Franco Gaudenzi Availability: Buy it from Amazon  1988, Italy. Starring Deran Sarafian, Beatrice Ring, Ottaviano Dell'Acqua, Massimo Vanni, Ulli Reinthaler, Marina Loi, Deborah Bergamini. Written by Lucio Fulci and Claudio Fragasso. Directed by Lucio Fulci, Bruno Mattei, and Claudio Fragasso. Many people will list Plan Nine from Outer Space as the undisputed king of movies considered so awful they're wonderful, and I'll give the devil his due. That's a damn fine film. But if I were to update things a bit, I wouldn't hesitate to install Zombie 3 as the new reigning king of bad film. Mere words fail to capture just how truly entertaining this horrid piece of tripe is. For those who don't know the story, Lucio Fulci raked in the big bucks with his tropical island romp Zombie, and like any decent director taking orders from a greedy producer figured why not cash in on the success and do a sequel. The proposed Zombie 3 was troubled from the get-go. Fulci was entering a particularly cranky stage in his life, a frame of mind that was only exasperated by his failing health. The script for Zombie 3 was thin, even by Fulci's standards, little more than a vague treatment which Fulci expected to hash out and make up on the spot. When it became apparent that Fulci's increasingly bad health and cantankerousness were going to conspire to make sure that wasn't going to happen, screenwriter Claudio Fragasso and director Bruno Mattei were called in to patch things up, which is sort of like calling in the Three Stooges to fix your leaky plumbing. Fulci turned in a film that was well under the minimum requirement for a feature length presentation, but he insisted that this was the complete film. Exactly what he shot and how much of it remains in what was eventually released is a source of constant contention. Some sources attribute as much as two-thirds of the film to Fulci while others claim scarcely more than fifteen minutes of his material was used in the final cut. In interviews, Fragasso has attempted to tidy up the record and give credit where credit is due, dissecting which scenes were written and filmed by Fulci and which were dreamed up by he and Mattei. In the end, it seems more of the film belongs to Fulci than was originally thought, but in terms of his commitment to the vision and the overall feel of the film, this is a Fragasso/Mattei affair.
"A Fragasso/Mattei affair" is probably the scariest thing about this movie. Both men are notorious and celebrated for working fast and cheap, churning out lowest common denominator grindhouse fodder with complete disregard for just about anything but getting the job done. Fulci, at least, had his artistic vision, however cracked it may have been. The directorial work of Bruno Mattei, on the other hand, lacks any distinguishable characteristic unless you count "intolerably awful." And while Fulci's films often sacrificed narrative cohesion and logic in favor of surreal spectacle, Claudio Fragasso's scripts lack the same qualities but simply because he was in a hurry. However misguided you may thing Fulci's artistic direction was, if indeed you think it was misguided at all, you can at least recognize that he had a vision when compared to someone like Fragasso, who was simply sloppy and inattentive. Not that that translates into his scripts, daft as they may be, being any less fun. He is Fulci stripped of artistic pretense and charged instead with giddy don't-give-a-damn pulp sensibilities. Being a patchwork film from three different people, it's no surprise that Zombie 3 has very little to hold it together. At times, it seems to switch from one film to an entirely different film as it wavers between the "soldiers running amok" action scenes shot by Fragasso and Mattei and the moody "pokin' around in the decay" scenes presumably shot by Fulci. Technically, it has nothing to tie it officially to Zombie other than Fulci's involvement, but it's not so hard to draw the films together. In Zombie, it was suspected that voodoo was the cause of all the living dead troubles, but Menard dismisses that as superstition and indeed we're really never given any reason to believe that there's not some natural or man-made reason for all the restless corpses. In Zombie 3 it's stated obviously in a hammy prologue full of helicopters and shouting and running about that all the zombie action is being caused by a biological weapon that was accidentally unleashed when a terrorist attempted to steal it. Personally, I've never quite understood the whole "zombie-ism as a weapon" thing even though it's been used as a way to explain where the zombies come from in countless films. What kind of weapon is a zombie or zombie virus? Sure you'll decimate your enemy's population, but then it will spread to the next country, and the next, et cetera. You can't control the zombies, and just because you drop them off in Iraq doesn't mean they'll stop at the Turkish border. There just seem like better ways of going about conquering people.
The film starts off on a tropical island, much like Zombie, although this is a different tropical island with more people. Some scientists are carting around a super deadly biological warfare cannister. Does it get stolen by a terrorist? But of course. And naturally, the terrorist drops it and it opens up, because all biohazard material is transported in thin glass vials. You ever notice these canisters of biotoxins and plagues seem to pop open easier than your average bottle of aspirin? Someone should teach the military about the virtues of "To open, push down and twist." Before too long, the terrorist -- who flees to a high profile luxury inn rather than trying to actually hide out or catch the first boat out of town -- is infecting people with the virus, which turns them into flesh-eating zombies. Yep, always with the flesh eating, aren't they? The military moves in to contain the outbreak but bungles the job. They burn the infected bodies, which releases the toxin into the air. Didn't these guys see Return of the Living Dead? The heat also makes the virus more powerful, much to the surprise of the scientists involved. Now, granted I haven't had a chemistry class since high school, and even back then I didn't do so hot, but it seems to be that of all the tests you can run on a substance, seeing what heat does to it is one of the most basic things you'd do. Wouldn't that be like the first test you run? Well, not these scientists. Pretty much everything surprises them, and like all horror movie scientists they spend the entire film yelling, "We need more time to find an antidote!"
The zombie plague gets out, and soon enough, you got zombies all over the place. A group of soldiers on leave team up with some sexy ladies in an RV and get attacked by infected birds. I guess this is one of the only films where something other than people gets affected by zombie-ism, and maybe it explains what might happen to that shark in the first film, although it still doesn't answer the question of if zombie humans only eat other humans, do zombie sharks only eat other sharks. Anyway, they load up their wounded, proclaim their need for immediate medical attention, and go to an abandoned hotel. Because when you think emergency medical attention, you think abandoned hotel. They take it one step further by leaving the wounded at the hotel and sending some healthy guy to get the doctor. Wouldn't it make more sense to put the wounded in the plush RV and drive them to the doctor instead of going to the hospital and bringing the doctor back? Never mind. People are getting wounded all over the place, and all the wounds fester and bubble the way we like it, causing one of our heroes to utter, "That's not pus. It's something much worse." While poking around the abandoned hotel, they find a crate of machine guns and flame throwers. Now this may seem silly until you remember that down in the tropics they are always having revolutions and coups, so I figure most places have a cache of automatic weapons. Finding the weapons makes one of the guys utter the line, "Good! We'll need those!" even though at this point they have absolutely no idea anything at all is going wrong other than some birds got ticked off at them. They have seen no zombies, and no one's even threatened them. But they still strut around wielding their newfound toys, and well, so would I.
And then the zombies come. Some of the zombies do the slow zombie shuffle we've come to expect. Some of them haul ass and use machetes. There's really no consistency among the living dead. Some of them moan and creep about, and others are able to hold down jobs as popular morning DJs. This is one of the only films where you'll see a zombie just haul off and kick someone's ass. None of that mindless groping and grasping. No, this guy assumes a boxing stance and whips out the right hooks and some aikido submission holds. You're a piss poor fighter if a zombie makes you tap out. Some of the other zombies hide in closets and on top of pillars. It makes for a dramatic entrance, but you gotta wonder what the hell these zombies were thinking. Was that zombie perched up on top of the pillar for hours and hours in hopes that someone might happen by so he could jump down on them? Did the zombie crawl in the kitchen cabinet of an old abandoned hut out in the jungle just giggling about that one day when someone might come and stand next to it? I won't even talk about the zombie hiding under the pregnant woman in the hospital. Oh sure I will. So they go to the hospital, and everyone has been evacuated except for one perfectly alive pregnant woman. For some reason, they left her behind. I guess no one wants to deliver a baby while running from zombies. That's just too television sit-com. And for some other reason, the zombies don't eat her. They just sort of hide around her, waiting for someone else to come in. That way, they can burst through her stomach for a big shock. Of course, it would be easier for the zombie to just get out from under the table or something, but what the hell? What fun is a zombie rolling around on the floor when he could pop up through a pregnant woman's stomach? I like to imagine him and his zombie chums laughing and going, "This is going to be so cool!" as they all squat down in their hiding places and wait for someone to happen along.
What else have we got? Why would you pull into an abandoned gas station, where rags are hanging from the sign and all the windows and doors are boarded up, then wander around inside, amid all the rubble and cobwebs, going "Is anybody here? Hello? We need help!" I mean, the place was boarded up! What about a boarded up building covered in trash and cobwebs makes you think someone might be in there hiding, refusing to acknowledge you until you recount to them your entire story up to that moment? When I see abandoned, boarded-up buildings, the first thing that pops into my mind isn't "Why I bet a helpful person is in there waiting to lend a hand to someone with a story like mine!" And then there's the flying zombie head in the refrigerator. No scene in any movie has ever made me loose my lunch, but I lost it during this scene. Not because it's gory; just because, well, a zombie head was sitting in the refrigerator and comes shooting out when someone opens it, and then it goes flying all over the damn place. I thought things like that only happened in Hong Kong horror films! Ironically, a number of Fulci fans have pointed to the sheer lunacy of that scene as proof that Fulci himself had very little to do with the film. After all, why would the maestro of moody gore put in such a ludicrous gag? It turns out that in interviews, Fulci himself claims responsibility for the flying zombie head, and not only does he claim responsibility for it, he's damn proud of it and seems to think it one of the best things he'd ever come up with. So it's not so much proof of his lack of complicity as it is proof of the fact that he was really out of his gourd when making this movie. This is all a pleasant climax to a scene in which a couple people leave the group to go look for food. Because you know, when you are in an abandoned hotel in the middle of the jungle, you never know when they might have some Vienna Sausages they forgot to take with them. So they get attacked by the zombie head, which reminded me of an episode of The Three Stooges where a skull falls on an owl and the owl goes flying all around, so there's this skull with little wings sticking out the ear holes fluttering all about and messing with Shemp. It really did crack me up back in the day. Anyway, six hours after they leave, no one ever bothers to question what might have become of the people who stepped into the next room, nor what all that shrieking and shooting might have been about.
Meanwhile, this one dude is still driving to the hospital. This island must be the size of South America. He leaves in broad daylight, and by dawn, the idiot is still driving to the hospital. Amid all this, some other soldiers are marching around in those biohazard suits, shooting anything and everything that moves. To Zombie 3's credit, it is action-packed. No scenes of people thinking about stuff or contemplating the end of the world. Nope, they're just out there shooting at the living dead and getting eaten. Zombie 3 is both one of the worst zombie films I've ever seen and one of my favorites. Rarely do the elements of incompetence come together so beautifully as they do in this gory masterpiece of ineptness. It may not make your top ten list, but I guarantee that you'll have one hell of a time watching it, that you'll watch it again, and that you'll make all your friends watch it.
The zombies and make-up effects are a real let-down after de Rossi set the bar incredibly high with his still-unmatched work in Zombie. Even Tom Savini's creations for Day of the Dead pale in comparison to Zombie's shambling mounds of flesh. Zombie 3, on the other hand, tends to go more with the "slap some red paint and oatmeal on them" style of effects, which fall dramatically short of being satisfactory, even by Z-grade film standards. The same goes for the acting, the dreary score, and just about everything else. There are a few scenes of moody interest, but they're quickly undercut by the stupidity of the script, which is, coincidentally, the only real thing this film has going for it. When Lucio Fulci came back from the hospital and saw what happened to the film, he screamed, tried to make them take his name off it, and then died a few years later. I don't know if that last one is actually related to this film, but I'm sure Zombie 3 didn't help. Personally, I don't see why Fulci would hate it so much. It's not much worse than some of that crap he made. I mean, dude, you made Murder Rock! Zombie 3 makes no sense, has bland characters, cheap zombies, lots of gore, and a plot that seems to have been assembled by third graders on crystal meth. I would think Fulci would have liked it. Labels: Director: Bruno Mattei, Director: Claudio Fragasso, Director: Lucio Fulci, Horror: Zombies, Italian Zombie Saga, Year: 1988 posted by Keith at 8:00 PM | 0 Comments Wednesday, July 20, 2005Zombie
Oh, the evils that have been committed in the name of the Italian zombie movie. Vile and disgusting are many of them, completely devoid of social and cinematic value, totally disrespectful to the boundaries of good taste and good sense, utterly oblivious to the concepts of logic and cohesive narrative. These are, naturally, their good points. Among film fanatics, and especially among those who tend to dwell within the ranks of the less respectable end of the cinematic society, the worth of Italian horror films is a hotly contested debate. Italians do gory horror like no one else in the world. Coherence, quality acting, any semblance of a story, and even the slightest shred of logic or quality are less valuable than sheer spectacle, which I suppose is not an altogether rare attitude these days even outside the realm of what professionals in the film studies world refer to as Italian "gut munchers."
The Italian zombie films came largely in response to George Romero's knock-down drag-out zombie adventure epic Dawn of the Dead, itself partially financed by two of the best-known names in Italian horror cinema, director Dario Argento and his producer brother, Claudio. Though undoubtedly inspired by Romero's films, and while generally adhering to the laws of the living dead as set down in Romero's Night of the Living Dead (you must shoot them in the head to kill them, being bitten by a zombie turns you into a zombie, a group of strangers must band together to battle the zombies, et cetera), many of the Italian productions end their similarities there. Romero's films were equal parts horror and heavy handed social commentary, with society in general and the industrial-military complex in particular being the target of the filmmaker's disdain. In Italy, any social commentary that may be derived from such genre staples as the leaky radiation plant or a biological weapons experiment gone awry being responsible for the plague of zombies is purely window dressing, and the Italians are generally as likely to attribute the rising of the dead to voodoo and the supernatural as anything else. It doesn't matter really, so long as it gets the corpses out of the ground and shambling about in search of flesh and blood. At the forefront of the zombie movie explosion was another of the best-known name in Italian horror cinema: Lucio Fulci. Along with Argento, those two have undoubtedly sparked more vehement arguments about the merits of their work than any other directors in horror film history, with fans celebrating each man as a visionary genius or dismissing him as a talentless hack. The truth, obviously, lies somewhere in between, as it always does. Both men have had their flashes of brilliance and idiocy. And when it comes to Italian movies, one fan's idiocy is often another fan's work of art. What one mind poo-poos as slapdash nonsense another mind regards as surrealistic brilliance, and both sides of the argument are equally adept at shielding themselves from the criticisms of the other. It's best then, in my opinion, not to examine these films as being "good" or "bad," whatever that may mean, while pretending to attain some level of objectivity as if such malleable concepts could be scientifically measured and proven, but rather instead to surrender entirely to the subjectivity that governs all assessment of art, accept it as an integral lens through which we regard everything, and state simply whether or not we as individuals with individual biases and tastes, enjoyed the film. And while I may balk at pronouncing Lucio Fulci's films to be works of genius or buffoonery, and while what I consider to be good or bad in a film is tenuous at best, I can say without hesitation that, regardless of my feelings in any of these debates, I enjoy Italian zombie films. Like Romero, Lucio Fulci has what is often referred to as his zombie trilogy, consisting of Zombie, City of the Living Dead, and The Beyond. On a different road, however, we can see an Italian zombie film trilogy that consists of Zombie, Zombie 3, and Zombie 4: After Death with Bruno Mattei's Hell of the Living Dead trailing things as a possible addendum. This Italian zombie trilogy (plus one, if you want to be gracious to Mattei), while not being directly linked from film to film, encompasses a general narrative arc that focuses on the trouble with the living dead down in the tropics. All three films take place on tropical islands and feature vacationers and scientists versus the zombies. There is also a steady decline in quality from one movie to the next, though that doesn't necessarily equate to a decline in the enjoyment one can mine from them, depending on your particular state of mind. The fun begins with Zombie, probably the best known of Fulci's horror/splatter films and definitely his most coherent. In Italy, Dawn of the Dead was released as Zombi, and thus Zombie is also known as Zombi 2, which is why the trilogy skips from Zombie directly to Zombie 3. For our purposes here, we'll call this film Zombie, and you can just deal with the lapse in numerics. Although it suffers an attempt to unofficially link itself to Dawn of the Dead, comparing this film to that is ridiculous. Aside from having the living dead running amok, the films are completely different. Dawn of the Dead is as much a political and social film as it is a horror film, with as much scathing political and social criticism as gushing blood. Zombie is a film about zombies, and they want to eat people. And that's pretty much it. The trouble begins when a deserted boat floats into New York City's harbor area. Cops go to look around and are soon set upon by a morbidly obese zombie who then falls into the water. For some reason, the cops make no attempt to apprehend him after this point even though he should just be floating there like a cork in the Hudson River. Despite the fact that he is a cop killer, they are content to just let bygones be bygones and forget the whole affair. The boat belongs to the father of a young woman named Anne, played by Mia Farrow's less famous but seemingly more fun sister, Tisa. Anne happens to live in New York and had been wondering what happened to her dad ever since he mysteriously disappeared while doing some sort of research down in the tropics. It being a horror film, she decided to investigate the matter on her own. She's joined by the nosy and annoying reporter who seems to be a permanent fixture in all Fulci films, played here by British actor and Italian horror film stalwart Ian McCulloch. I hope that when the day comes that the world must be saved from the forces of hell, we can muster up better champions than an uppity woman and some boring reporter guy. Surely there are crusading knights and mystic types who are better equipped to handle this sort of thing. Small bump in the road to death is that they forgot to find out where the island, called Matoul, actually is. So they just sort of blindly strike out, and lucky for them they run into a couple down in the tropics who know where Matoul is, more or less. Actually, they don't, but searching for a lost island seems like a fun way to pass the time on a vacation. Lucky for us the female of the couple enjoys nude scuba diving. You can always count on Fulci for plenty of gratuitous sex and gore, and gratuitous is the way those things ought to be. They are only slightly phased by an underwater battle between a zombie and a shark. This is probably one of the most famous scenes in the movie (but the most famous is yet to come). It's also one of the silliest. I can accept the underwater zombie. Sure. But how the hell can human teeth bite giant chunks out of a shark? Especially rotten zombie teeth. Have you ever felt a shark? Their skin, much like Run DMC, is tougher than leather. Somehow, this zombie is able to kick shark ass, bite it, and who knows what else. A zombie outmaneuvering a shark underwater. Okay. And what happens to a shark when it gets bitten by a zombie? Does it become a zombie shark? Does that mean it stops eating other things and only attacks its own kind? If so, then I would think zombie sharks are actually pretty safe. Questions about inter-species zombism will have to be shelved, however, at least until Zombie 3. Upon arriving on the island where everyone is sweaty, they soon discover the place is just brimming over with the living dead, and one of the doctors, a man named Menard, is doing his darndest to kill them all, but just isn't having much luck. You get almost as many sweaty close-ups of this guy as you get of Eli Wallach in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. The locals insist that it's all some sort of voodoo vengeance. The doctor insists that there is a logical explanation for it all. That old chesnut. Some of the dead people are ancient Conquistadors who are remarkably well held-together for being dead and buried in the moist tropics for so long. Whatever the case, there's nothing logical about it, Doc. So just accept the voodoo thing, pound some more booze, and get to killin'. Despite the fact that the island is under attack by scores of the living dead, the doctor leaves his wife home alone and then asks our heroes to go check on her. In turn, the wife decides that zombies are scary and all, but this is a Lucio Fulci movie, so she better strip down and take a shower. Shockingly enough, the zombies attack her in the shower, bursting through the window and delivering the most famous scene in the movie, and one of the most famous scenes in horror history: the gouging of the eye. It's a great effect, as the zombie squishes the woman's eye into a splinter of wood and lots of oozy stuff gushes out. It's a tad silly in the set-up, as the zombie seems to take his own sweet time in lining the eye up and everything. But whatever. The end results is a great gore effect, and you can't fault the zombie for wanting to turn his attacks into a sort of art. Having succeeded in their mission to see how the doctor's wife is doing (they discovered she was dead), the cast indulges in the official "mad running about" people always do in zombie films. They decide going back to their boat may be a pretty good idea at this point, but there are just too many corpses shambling about to make it easy. Thus begins the wild orgy of blood spurting, head shooting, pus dripping, worm squirming, and flesh chomping that makes us all love Lucio Fulci so dearly. He certainly doesn't hold back on the gore here. Every effect is dwelled upon in bloody glee, and for the most part, they are top notch even under scrutiny. One of the guys falls for that old thing where you see a loved one who has now become a zombie and you mutter their name and stare, hoping that they will remember you or something. And then they kill you. We'll discuss that in a bit, because that old trick has always irked me. Zombie is not a perfect film, not by any stretch of the imagination. The characters are wooden beyond belief, yet are among Fulci's most human creations, which isn't really saying a whole lot. But in what is a definite rarity in Italian horror, none of the main characters are assholes or particularly irritating. You may not care all that much about them, but this is one of the few films that at least attempts to portray them in a positive and sympathetic light. Later and lesser films would simply rely on everyone being obnoxious, hateful, and loud as a means of establishing a character. At least the script here doesn't fall back on that tried and true method of making sure you cheer for the special effects, and instead tries to engage you on some emotional level so that you might be mor einterested in what happens to the people you're watching. The story is more or less coherent but still full of the stupid behavior and decisions that plague all horror films. The acting is surprisingly good from most members of the cast. McCulloch and Richard Johnson as Menard are top notch, and Italian genre film staple Al Cliver as one half of the put-upon vacationing couple is his usual sort of dumb self. Tisa Farrow is the real weak link in the cast, and she often looks more dazed and confused than terrified or determined. Luckily, McCulloch and Menard get to carry the bulk of the dramatics, and they're up to the task. In the end, however, such things are of secondary consideration. The Italian horror film is all about the image and atmosphere, about creating a smothering, nightmarish landscape where logic and reason takes a back seat if it's even invited along for the ride at all. And when it comes to atmosphere, Fulci succeeds in spades. Though less surreal and poetic than his later zombie films, Zombie possesses a gritty, exhausting sense of desperation and decay. Once we get to the island, there's not a scene that doesn't overflow with death. Buildings are ramshackle and crumbling, streets are dusty and deserted. Everything is cluttered and broken and hopeless. You can feel the humidity. One of the most evocative shots is of a deserted village street, windswept and dusty, with a lone corpse shuffling along in the background. Other shots, such as ones of Menard's filthy hospital filled with corpses wrapped in white sheets, continue to prove that at least in a film like this, the individual parts are worth more than their sum total. In many films, viewers are frustrated by the characters' inability to outrun the much slower living dead. With Zombie, Fulci lets us feel frustration, but it is a more satisfying sense, as it comes from the fact that it's not so much that characters can't outrun the zombies as it is generated from the fact that there's nowhere to run to even if they could. The island is a prison, a tomb, and even though the film may lack the trappings of more traditional stories, it is an ace at communicating feeling. All of this is thanks in part to Fulci's commitment to the image, but nothing smaller than a great sum of the credit should be ascribed to cinematographer Sergio Salvati. Salvati is a master of composition and one of the most accomplished eyes in all of cinema. With a resume that reaches as far back as being an assistant cameraman on films like Hercules Unchained and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Salvati became the cinematographer of choice for Fulci and a host of other Italian thriller directors. It's arguable that much of the genius attributed to certain directors can, in fact, be traced back primarily to their decision to employ Salvati, who has the an unparalleled talent for making even the worst films look interesting. The zombies, which are the real attraction here, are great. I may like Romero's movies more, but no one does zombie make-up like Fulci and his crew, headed by special effects wizard Gianetto de Rossi. De Rossi, like Salvati, would become a Fulci film regular, and he only got better with each subsequent outing into the land of the living dead. After a shaky set-up in New York and a little too much steel drum music down in the Caribbean, the movie sets a quick pace, building to a pretty exciting climax. I always thought Fulci had a problem with pacing. His movies have lots of long, boring stretches in which nothing happens. Zombie manages to avoid that for the most part and moves along at a breathtaking little pace that doesn't see any reason to relent once it kicks things into high gear. Although the final showdown may not exactly be scary, it's certainly a white-knuckle example of "survival horror" at its finest. And speaking of the finest, that concept should be dropped entirely when discussing Fulci's half-baked, half-finished follow-up, Zombie 3. Labels: Director: Lucio Fulci, Horror: Zombies, Italian Zombie Saga posted by Keith at 7:56 PM | 0 Comments Sunday, July 17, 2005Zombie 4: After Death
1988, Italy. Starring Jeff Stryker, Candice Daly, Massimo Vanni, Jim Gaines, Don Wilson, Adrianne Joseph, Jim Moss, Nick Nicholson. Directed by Claudio Fragasso.
As jaw-droppingly awful as Zombie 3 was, it's still a hilarious good time to view. Less so is the film that pretends to be the third in the series. Zombi 4 has nothing to do with Zombie 3 or Zombie 2, which of course had nothing to do with each other or the first film to sport the Zombi moniker, Dawn of the Dead. In fact, the movie isn't called Zombi 4 at all. It's called After Death, but someone decided to tack the Zombi 4 thing on the end, just like they tacked the "2" onto the end of Zombi to make people think it was related to Dawn of the Dead, aka Zombi. Why exactly someone would want to "capitalize" on Zombie 3 is a bit of a mystery, but who am I to question the Italians? Zombi 4, which is actually After Death, at least has the good manners to totally rip off Zombie 3, which was basically ripping off Zombi 2. I don't know who really decided this was Zombi 4. Most of the prints only bill it as After Death, yet lots of people list it as Zombi 4. At least Zombie 3 really was a sequel of sorts, involving, at least before his health lapse, Lucio Fulci. It's enough to make your head spin, baby! After Death is set on a sparsely populated tropical island, where just about all Italian zombie films are set. Makes sense. The tropics are pretty nice, after all, though I don't know why shambling mounds of flesh would hang around in the hot, humid tropics that would accelerate their rate of decay. You'd think the living dead would high tail it to Canada or somewhere cool to retard the decay, but what the hell. I guess a short life as a beach-coming corpse is better than a few years as a chilly living dead popsicle. The action begins on this proverbial tropical island, where some guy is busily practicing voodoo. Some of the local research scientists decide to put an end to his mad ways. Seems the voodoo daddy is pissed because the scientists couldn't cure his daughter and prevent her death. So he turns his wife into a toothy zombie hellspawn and sets to killin'! Everyone gets the bite put on them except for one little girl, who escapes and then comes back 20 years later. Why? Because. You know, I was once mugged with a couple friends, and I never went back to the street corner where it happened. It just seemed good common sense. And that was just two guys with a gun. If I'd been set upon by a pus-gargling zombie, I'm willing to bet I'd be equally uninterested in returning to the scene. The movie tries to pass this off as some sort of selective amnesia. She can't seem to remember much about the island, but you still have to question the coincidence there. She is accompanied by the usual party animal bunch of mercenaries who always show up for these kinds of things. And of course, they bring women and beer! And facial hair! Italy must absolutely be crawling with hairy, beer-drinking mercenaries who all boast gold chains and gay cop mustaches and like wearing unzipped camo vests with nothing on underneath. Eventually, the incredibly stupid heroine remembers why the island is so familiar. Her revelation that, "Oh yeah, this island is a portal to hell and my parents and friends were all slaughtered," is met with the usual ho-hum bravado commonly exhibited by macho bands of hairy mercenaries who bring their girlfriends and a cooler of beer everywhere they go. Maybe I am mistaken and these guys aren't actual mercenaries, but are simply members of a band called "Mercenaries" or something. This movie would kick a lot more ass if, instead of mercenaries, it was Motorhead. Lemmy don't put up with that living dead crap. He'd just go, "Oy, that's a weird lot," and smash them with an empty bottle of Jack. The siren song of howls of damnation coming from the jungle prove too tempting for our intrepid group of adventurers. They dock the boat and start wandering aimlessly around in the jungle, bravely pointing their M-16s at the trees. Shockingly enough, they are soon set upon by scores and scores of flesh eating zombies! As was the case in Zombie 3, there is very little consistency among the living dead. Some of them stumble around slowly and moan. Others do kungfu. Still others deliver eloquent soliloquies and use automatic weapons. And just like the zombies in Zombie 3, they absolutely love to jump through the windows and perform other acrobatic feats not traditionally attributed to the living dead. And just like the zombies in the last film, some of these zombies must have been crouched in their little hiding spots for weeks, just praying for the off-chance that someone might walk by them for a cheap jolt despite the fact that they are in the middle of the jungle on a deserted island. Elsewhere on the island are some scientists trying to figure out what happened to the other scientists. They certainly waited long enough. This bunch of boneheads find the old voodoo site and naturally start reading the incantations that release even more zombies. Scientists of the world, if you learn anything, learn that you should not read hellish incantations while standing in a cave filled with corpses. One of the scientists is a buff gay dude with 1980s hair. Well, I don't know if he's gay. It's probably stereotyping for me to assume all muscular young men in tight jeans and their button-down shirt knotted up like Daisy Duke are gay. All our annoying humans eventually meet and hole up together to try and solve the mystery of the zombies, who can be held at bay with special voodoo candle circles that have a tendency to get knocked over or blown out from time to time. Another note: if you have a magic circle of voodoo candles that can keep the legions of the living dead at bay, then don't set them out in the middle of the floor in the room with the highest pedestrian traffic. And close the window! It's like these people set the candles up in front of a fan and then ran back and forth really fast across the room. And also, even if you don't buy into the whole candle bit, despite the fact that the zombies run after you when the candles are out but stand still when they are lit, don't blow the candles out. Look' they aren't hurting you, okay? So you might as well just let them go on burning. Don't blow them out and yell, "Buncha mumbo jumbo voodoo bullshit!" You get plenty of the usual zombie fare, like one buddy coming face to face with his previous buddy who is now a zombie. I always hate this. I mean, he's a zombie. He's spitting pus at you. The friendship is over, man! It's like those movies where the villain will transform himself into the hero's dead brother or something, and the hero will stand there and actually see the villain transform into his brother's likeness. But the hero still falls for it every time and is like, "Tommy? You're alive?" No! You just watched the villain transform, you idiot! My favorite example of this was in the movie Event Horizon. Lawrence Fishburn spends ten minutes explaining to everyone that the evil presence will take the form of loved ones and dead friends to fool you, so if your dead girlfriend is suddenly alive and has traveled through space to come kiss you, then it's the alien. And then a couple scenes later, he falls for it. Look, when you are fighting a monster with super mental and transforming abilities and you're in hell or a spaceship or some remote island, and someone you used to love or your dead brother suddenly walks up to you, then it's not your brother or your girlfriend. It's a monster, so shoot it. And if your friend is a zombie, don't try to reason with him or "bring him back" because he's just going to bite you. Learn these things, people! Our heroes spend a lot of time sort of sitting around while the zombies gather outside and wait for the next time some dumb-ass spills beer on the magic candles or kicks them over proclaiming his general disbelief for all this "mumbo jumbo voodoo bullshit!" They then decide to take a trip down to the catacombs where all the ancient evil was released from, thus setting us up for the usual last ditch battle and ultra super shocking ending, the likes of which we haven't seen in literally dozens of other equally super shocking surprise zombie film endings. No really! I swear. Zombi 4, er, I mean After Death, is not a good movie. But what the hell? You got stupid humans getting their throats and chests ripped open by decaying corpses. That is, after all, what we look for in Italian zombie films, and this one doesn't fail to deliver. I still like the mind-boggling Zombie 3 more than this one. But After Death certainly has its charm. Sometimes, the best movies are the worst ones, and this one is pretty bad. Being as bad as After Death is, means it gets my unqualified seal of approval. I had a blast, and I learned something. I learned something about zombies, about surviving, and you know -- I even learned a little something about myself. Sitting through Zombie 3 and 4 will make you appreciate how accomplished Zombie actually is, even if it's not a masterpiece by any stretch of the word's definition. Although possessed of illogical moments and half-baked notions, Zombie is, in reality, not that terribly written or paced, and the finale will really get you on the edge of your seats. Subsequent films bearing the word Zombie and various numerals behind them, on the other hand, dispense entirely with any notion of being "commercial art" as I regard some of Fulci's finer moments, that is, films made for commercial reasons but not devoid of artistic merit in some way or another. The patchwork Fragasso/Mattei Zombie 3 and the Fragasso tour-de-farce that is After Death only prove that even if you didn't like Fulci's art, at least there was some art behind it. If After Death was Claudio Fragasso's solo effort in the world of zombie films, it's worth noting that Bruno Mattei's own Hell of the Living Dead, though never connected in any legitimate or illegitimate way to the Fulci films, can almost be added to the trio as a sort of addendum or companion piece. If nothing else, it makes Zombie 3 and After Death seem accomplished by comparison. This time out, Mattei is in the director's seat while Fragasso still delivers the derivative, wholly uninspired, completely abysmal screenplay. In a way, you gotta love the guy. If you ever studied film in school and heard how insanely difficult it is to get a script sold, let alone made into a feature, you can hold Claudio Fragasso up as evidence to the contrary. He's really some great kind of hero, and the best thing about him is that in interviews, he's completely forthcoming about his work, basically admitting that it's pretty much total crap, but as long as it's fun, who really cares? Fragasso's script, which has been cobbled together along with the work of a Spanish screenwriter (it was a co-production between the two nations), follows the example of Zombie 3 in throwing everything it possibly can into the film. Mattei cites Dawn of the Dead as a major source of "inspiration" for the film, and it shows in his choice of music, much of which is Goblin's Dawn of the Dead score with a little bit of their work for Contamination thrown in for good measure. In addition, our primary cast of characters run around the jungle in SWAT-like duds similar to those in Dawn of the Dead. But besides those two similarities and the fact that there are zombies wandering about, there's not much reflection of Dawn in this film. Once again we're down on a tropical island where a terrible virus escapes and contaminates the locals. Seeing as how this is an earth-shattering outbreak with symptoms the likes of which have never been seen (unless you watched some of the other movies), a small group of guys get sent in to check things out. One would think that if the entire country of New Guinea suddenly turned into zombies, someone might get suspicious. They spend a lot of time driving around in a jeep trading bizarrely awkward quips and one liners and typical "Italian movie dub" tough-guy speak. "It's hot as a horse's ass at fly time, and I don't like the heat." It rarely makes any sense, but you have to admire their commitment to giggling insanely and cursing. They meet up with a Caucasian anthropologist type who likes to blend in with the natives by stripping down to nothing but a grass thong and painting squiggles on her boobs, which all things considered, are quite a nice pair of boobs. Together, they fend off zombies, act completely crazy, and end up investigating the plant where all this virus nonsense started. The special forces guy are crazier than usual. One has to expect that the military in these movies will be miles over the top, full of cigar-chomping grimacing, shouting, blustering, and craziness, but these guys overdo it even within the realm of zombie film crack squads. One of them even dons a tu-tu and dances around while crooning "Singing in the Rain" as zombies stumble around. Oh sure, every crew has to have the "guy on the edge," but this guy is just plain silly, made even weirder by the fact that he possesses an uncanny resemblance to time-tested cinematic crazy guy Klaus Kinski. There are also two Tom Beringers in this outfit, which must be confusing. Now, I'm not a huge fan of real-life violence, but I'm also not a dove. I don't mind seeing criticisms of the armed forces, police, what have you, but surely the military recruits something other than absolute gibbering madmen to be in their squads. While Hell of the Living Dead has plenty of great stuff to offer - most notably the loony dialogue and wild gore - it's not nearly as fun as it should be. Sure the gore effects are generally good, but the zombie make-up itself is slapdash, uninteresting, and cheap. There's way too much time spent with grating, idiotic human characters. And worst of all, there's way too much padding in the form of grainy stock footage from some other film. How many times can I watch elephants, kangaroo rats, and jumping monkeys? On safari, not nearly enough, but in a zombie movie, I'd gladly trade monkey and mondo footage for some gut munching. Of all the films in this odyssey of zombie cinema, this is the worst paced. There's no tension, and every "shock" is telegraphed from a mile away. Still, like most Italian zombie films, it possesses a certain goofy charm that makes it watchable even if you have to lean on the fast forward button to get through yet another volley of stock footage. As in Zombie 3, we also get some ham-fisted attempt to add "meaning" to the film via heavy-handed dialogue about how white nations use the third world as their dumping and testing ground. Honestly, though, anyone who tries to pass Mattei's work off as putting forth any sort of social or ecological agenda is missing the point, or rather, attempting to force a point in where one doesn't belong. Bruno Mattei did not sit up at all hours of the night worrying about the plight of indigenous peoples around the world, only to conclude that the best way he could crusade for them would be via a sleazy zombie movie full of gratuitous gore and boob shots. Ecological/social messages were simply en vogue for such films, thanks primarily to George Romero's honest passion for his various beliefs promoted in his zombie films. That any similar sort of social conscience sneaks into Mattei's film is purely an accident of imitation, and any attempt to inflate these messages into anything else is simply pompous posturing from people who have a strange urge to inject politics and morality into the most amoral, apolitical grindhouse works around. If Hell of the Living Dead works for you as social or political satire, then hey, that's all well and good, but honestly now, at the end of the day is this really a movie about the suffering inflicted upon third world nations by oblivious industrialized giants? If you want that stuff, George Romero is there for you with very real and very earnest philosophy to accompany his shocks and gore, or you can seek out Let Sleeping Corpses Lie, another film that seems to take it's social messages more importantly than the horrific goings-on. If on the other hand, you just want to see idiots and assholes get hounded by flesh-eating corpses, then Italy is the place to be and you'll see no finer example of the heady highs and laughable lows that Italian zombie cinema has to offer than by indulging yourself in this quartet of tropical island mayhem. Appreciating Italian exploitation cinema means knowing how to embrace the good and roll with the bad, even when they come bundled in the same package. From Fulci to Mattei, these movies may not set a high standard in cinematic excellence, but they certainly turn the phantasmagorical fun factor up to eleven, and like Bruno Mattei says, film is there to entertain you. Labels: Director: Claudio Fragasso, Horror: Zombies, Italian Zombie Saga, Year: 1988 posted by Keith at 11:15 PM | 0 Comments |
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