Intake of coffee has doubled....
A healthy diet has fallen to the way-side…..
It was another night at the Cinefamily (I might just start calling this place "home"). Day 2 of A Video Nasties Celebration. The follow up to the video nasty, Night Warning was Hell of The Living Dead, Bruno Mattei's Italian Dawn of the Dead ripoff. Definitely much more gory and DEFINITELY much more silly. Our gracious hosts explained that they had trouble deciding where to place this film in their Video Nasties series. They wanted the series to gradually grow more gritty and nasty as it progressed. This film was extremely gory, but the gore was very comic book like. So ultimately they decided the tone was right for earlier in the series.
Comic-book is a perfect way to describe, not only the gore, but the film in general. Not comic-book in the way it was shot, but more in the writing. If you go back and read old comics from the 80's or earlier that were intended for young audiences, you will find that the writing and dialog are very simplistic. It feels unnatural reading them as an adult. The format is so short that writers didn't have much room for prose and plus their audience's average age was 10-15. So the dialogue was simple and to the point. Logic would sometimes be sacrificed for cool-factor. Comics were written for the level of their audience. This film had that same feel (only it WASN'T made for 10 year old boys). It felt like it was made up as it went along. Like a 10 year old was telling you a story. A 10 year old is just going to make stuff up and not worry about story and logic.
The plot is thread bare. Basically a chemical plant accident causes people to turn into zombies. I'll spare you the details. What was the film really about? Exploitation! Stealing music. Stealing ideas from other movies. Stealing footage from other films. Cashing in on other titles. All key tenants in the exploitation movie machine.
First up - Cashing in on other titles. OK, let's see. We have it's original Italian title….
Virus
Huh? Virus….isn't the cause of the zombie breakout a chemical plant accident. Are the distributers trying to trick their audience? Do they not know that a virus and a chemical mutation are two different problems? Someone should explain this to them. Maybe someone did and that's why there were so many title changes. Once Virus was debunked, maybe the whole distribution team went into a panicked frenzy brainstorming for new titles. At least that's how I like to imagine it. Big board room. People throwing out title after title. Someone shouts out (in an italian)…
Inferno dei Morti Viventi (Hell of the Living Dead)
This is the title that many know. The US DVD was released under this title. Definitely more appropriate than Virus. Still though, this seems to conjure images of the dead rising from the earth. It reminds me of Dawn of the Dead's explanation of the Zombie Apocalypse - "When there is no more room in Hell, the dead will walk the earth." Aha! I see…nicely done. Remind people of another film they have seen and loved. That'll get 'em in the theaters! OK, but maybe they should be more accurate with the title. How about…..
Night of the Zombies
Ah! There we go. There are zombies. There is night. We have a title! This was another US title. This is the title I remember as a kid seeing on the video shelves. Another ploy to remind people of yet another movie they are familiar with and love, Night of the Living Dead. US audiences will eat this up (Pun intended!) More titles! We need more titles. Keep 'em coming! Ok, I have the greatest title of them all.
Zombie 4
But…this wasn't filmed to be a sequel to anything. It was filmed to rip off a bunch of movies! "Phewy! Who cares! People want to see Zombie 4. I say we go with Zombie 4." OK, little history. The Italians recut and retitled Dawn of the Dead to Zombie for release in Italy. Then in 1979 when Lucio Fulci's zombie film came out, they titled it Zombie 2 to cash in on the success of Zombie, even though that film really wasn't a sequel either. Here is where I get confused. There was no Zombie 3 until 1988. So how did they jump from Zombie 2 to Zombie 4? This was considered to be a US Pre-release title according to IMDB and the film was released in the US on video in 1984. Man, you need charts and diagrams to figure this stuff out. If anyone knows, please enlighten me.
UPDATE: I have since discovered that Zombie 3 was also known as Zombie Holocaust made in 1980.
UPDATE: I have since discovered that Zombie 3 was also known as Zombie Holocaust made in 1980.
Other titles that were thrown out in this fictional board meeting……
Apocalipsis Canibal
Die Holle der Lebenden Toten
Fate tous…Zontanous
L'enfer des morts vivants
Virus cannibale
Virus: L'inferno dei morti viventi
Zombie enantioin kannivalon
Zombie Creeping Flesh
Zombie Inferno
So you can see the film goes by many names. Exploitation films often have this issue. Producers will often recut films and release them under new titles. Sometimes they would pair them up with another film to release as a double bill and retile the film. My favorite example of this is the double bill, I Eat Your Skin with I Drink Your Blood. I Eat Your Skin was originally released as Zombies in 1964 and really didn't have any skin-eating anywhere in the film. Thus is the world of exploitation marketing. Sometimes producers would even shoot new footage to include in a film and recut it. Repackage, re-market. Producers best friend.
I don't know if this film had any original music in it. It takes from Dawn of the Dead, Contamination, and Beyond the Darkness (Buio Omega). Recycle! The cardinal rule of exploitation. Speaking of recycling, the film has lots and I mean lots of lifted nature stock footage and documentary footage of natives. There's an owl, elephants, various birds, bats, the list goes on and on. The use of the native stock footage is rather disturbing. Basically the filmmakers insert stock footage of a tribe going through funeral rituals and mourning. It's pretty graphic -- swollen dead bodies…rotting bones…corpses. Something about using actual footage of death for a low budget exploitation film is just disturbing. The film also makes no bones about ripping off other Zombie films. There is a whole SWAT team sequence lifted right out of Dawn of the Dead.
OK…before I wrap up, there are 2 scenes which are so funny, so off the wall, so just outrageously silly that they deserved to be mentioned.
MILD SPOILERS...can you really spoil this movie.....
The native scene. Oh man! Wow! So our main characters, a band of SWAT team members, a journalist and her photographer, need to cross through native territory. Lia, the journalist, warns the rest of the team that the natives are in a state of emergency and that she can help them pass through the natives land safely as she has spent time with them studying them. She insists on getting a head start so she can parlay with the natives. Wait though, it gets better. In order to approach the natives she needs to be one of them. She needs to become a native tribes person. In a medium torso shot, she rips open her blouse exposing her breasts. OK then…she paints herself up and wearing nothing but a grass thong proceeds to bounce through the jungle toward the natives. Here's wear we get some of the disturbing native footage intercut. Oh my! Exploitation at its finest. The crowd loved it. I laughed even though I had seen it before. You just can't NOT laugh. Disturbing and funny.
The other scene I would like to mention is the Tutu scene. Yes, the tutu scene! The film really doesn't move forward like a normal film. It's just the band of people traveling around New Guinea and having run-ins with zombies and natives. Not much plot. Well, this is yet just another zombie run-in. I believe they are looking for water, but anyway, they investigate an abandoned house. Of course they all split up to explore different parts of the building. One of the SWAT team members comes across some clothing, a small tutu, a top hat, and a cane. He holds the tutu up and lays it against his chest. He puts on the top hat and dances singing Way Down Suwannee River. What! Why! What the hell! Really….who came up with that! Distracted by his fun he is then taken by surprise and eaten by a hoard of zombies. Well, I guess I have never seen that before!
The print was in decent shape. Color was mostly good. Light scratches and a little choppy in places, but mostly a respectable print. The movie…well…don't expect anything from it…just watch it for its sheer goofiness and think of it as a sociological study of exploitation films in the 80s and you just might have fun.
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