Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Zombie Holocaust (1980)


Probably the most remarkable thing about this movie is the pairing of those two whored out concepts of late 70's / early 80's Italian cinema , the zombie and cannibal genres . As with most of the films I review this one is in the center of many a mixed opinion . I , for the life of me cannot percieve how you can praise Fulci's work as being groundbreaking and compelling yet write this one off as a rip off . Trust me , I'm not calling it an original piece of work nor am I labeling it as being an epic saga of biblical proportions . All I'm saying is that Fulci himself wasn't the most original guy and to target and persecute similiar films is a bit absurd .

I guess all that really matters when you boil the head down to the skull is if it's worth watching and possibly adding to the collection . Of course it is .

As most of these sorts of films begin, this one starts off in the Big Apple and ends up on some remote island that provides shelter to a tribe of gook cannibals . Yes , you read right folks, "GOOK" cannibals ! Not the spic/injun kind found in genre classics such as Cannibal Ferox and Holocaust . And these guys don't fuck around when comes to blowdartin' some hapless fuck , strippin' him down and commencing to taste testin' his dumb honkey ass . A bunch of charnal Charlies chowin' down yet another dumb ass group of whiteboys ( and gals ) wandering around the wilderness in search of a clue as to why some injun / spic ( apparently this guy's Filipino as that's about the only credible connection I could find linking him with his slant eyed brethren back on fantasy island ) cannibal back in NYC was cutting off and eating hands of the recently deceased . As if that wasn't enough plot , then comes the groaning, slow motion , defective & 'rejected from the set of Burial Ground' zombies that end up actually being the lobotomized victims of the mad doctor who supposedly rapes dumb bitches that happen upon the island . Apparently those rapes happen offscreen to some uncredited cast member(s) since I've not seen any such thing occur in any of the versions of this film floating around. Oh well ...



There are enough slithering entrails in here to keep the attention of most gorehounds, though most of the zombies are pretty rough lookin' and I don't mean big and scary either . A couple of the more common complaints about this film are the meandering plot (if you want to call it that) and bad acting. Uh , this is an Italian cannibal/zombie movie , right? Love 'em or leave 'em , they aint exactly Shake-fuckin'-speare. Ya dig ?

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