Zombie Holocaust (1980)

It's no shock that b-movies and zombies go together like peanut butter and jelly, death and taxes, Ray Dennis Steckler and Cash Flagg (you'll probably have to look that last one up to get it).

In fact, if you Google the words "zombie" and "movies", you'll end up getting 10 and a half million results, many of which are lists of same and some disturbing FX pics - so don't Google this after you've eaten.

The fact of the matter is, you can't love b-movies (like I do) without having seen at least two or three zombie flicks. Or even OWNING a couple.

Which brings me to the late Seventies. Why? Because it was then that George A. Romero, the grand-daddy of the zombie film (what with Night of the Living Dead and all), came out with his even-more classic sequel Dawn of the Dead - which was not only a decent example of the undead attacking the living, but also a nice little allegory about modern society and consumerism, with a little bit of political commentary thrown in for good measure. Oh, that George....

And with the hype and word-of-mouth, Dawn certainly made the public at large realize that zombies had their place, and it was right there on the silver screen - in bloody color.

With the release of Dawn came even more zombie flicks, a lot of which came from overseas. Italy, in fact, was even more famous for their zombie exports than they were their Westerns; this gave both writers and directors a chance to be artistic and creative on a canvas of the surreal, the horrific and the nightmarish.

You have you Lucio Fulcis, your Joe D'Amatos, your Bruno Matteis (oh brother), your Marino Girolamis, your....

What's that? Who's Marino Girolami? Why, he's the man who came up with the little gem lumbering slowly up to us now - Zombie Holocaust (or Zombi Holocaust, depending on which title guy you get for your copy). This is a special bird, this film, and not without its own quirks and abnormalities.

Side story: many many years ago, when my family had one of those big satellite dishes the size of a silo roof, we got thousands of channels that we (meaning: I) watched endlessly - this was back in the days before everything was scrambled. One of them was some station in the Caribbean, which showed just about everything under the sun, some things which even I had never heard of before.

One of them was this movie, with a disclaimer before warning the viewer of the "dusgusting nature" of said film. I love small-time Caribbean satellite stations.

Anyway, this was my first exposure to Zombie Holocaust. And from the moment I saw someone dive from a window and their arm fly off as they hit the ground (not unlike a mannequin, oddly enough), I knew this was one I had to seek out.

Ever hear of the Video Nasty List? This is a famous (or infamous) list of movies deemed as unacceptable by the United Kingdom and therefore banned from viewing and/or purchasing overseas. Or, if they ever were seen, they were edited pretty darned well. Of course after several years most of these movies were released, uncut, and life went on.

Well, Zombie Holocaust never got on this list...but as you will see, it wasn't for a lack of trying.

The story has a rash of cannibalistic dismemberments and disembowelings occurring in a New York City hospital and one of the medical assistants Lori (Alexandra Delli Colli) is sent on an expedition to an island in the East Indies to find a doctor (Donald O'Brien) who may hold the secret to the mysterious god Kito worshipped by the cannibals responsible. Little does Lori know that she and her entire expedition are in greater danger still....

I'll admit that I'm a sucker for movies like these. None of it makes a lick of sense, there's nudity, stage blood, fake entrails and bloody effects to spare, not to mention dire warnings, foreboding jungles, well-placed outboard motors, chanting cannibals and even a few zombies here and there. Gotta love a movie with chanting cannibals in it.

Which reminds me: for this movie being titled Zombie Holocaust and all, there are only three or four zombies in it. Maybe five. This is the same thing as in The Beyond, where the zombies were put in as an afterthought, because this is really a movie about cannibals, cults, medical procedures and all the gore you can possibly shove into one movie. But of course, this being from the same time period and probably wanting to enjoy maximum playability in Germany - which, as you may remember from my review for The Beyond, was going through a frenzied want of zombie movies - added them effortlessly into the film so as to guarantee fandom in Deutschland.

Acting ability is not the point - it never is in movies like this one. Giving the audience what they want is the whole point in these "blood-and-guts" movies, let's call them. This is the kind of film that the kids both back then and nowadays watch in groups, seeing who will be the first to barf...how long can they watch what's happening onscreen? Can you guess what gross thing will happen next?

Gotta hand it to director Girolami; he stands by the old tried-and-true horror movie conceits that his contemporaries did, by filming every scene in a stark, realistic manner and making sure every scene is lit well enough that the uninitiated would think they were seeing a snuff film...even if the blood is brighter and more colorful than real human blood would be. Thanks for that, Technicolor.

I have to give props to the special effects team for Zombie Holocaust: Gianetto Di Rossi, Rosario Prestopino and Maurizio Trani, all of whom do their level best to make it really look like actual human bodies are being chopped up, operated on, ripped apart, gouged and feasted upon. Small wonder that for most, they would only be able to enjoy such a sight through their own fingers or from behind a pillow.

Of course, for the true, dyed-in-the-wool gore hound, this is literally a feast for the eyes, and such stories exist truly for them. Italian film-makers know this and that is why they concoct stories which can only serve to be a clothesline from which to hang assorted body parts. This particular one (written by director Girolami and Fabrizio De Angelis), does this quite well, and its many and varied details I will leave for the viewer to discover. After all, if you've read this far along wanting to find out more about the movie, then you're probably also going to want to find a copy of Zombie Holocaust for your own. Why spoil any of the details for you?

And as far as the seasoned pros who already have seen, own and know every detail about this movie, Zombie Holocaust is a prime jewel in their collection, sitting on the shelf proudly with Night of the Living Dead, Lucio Fulci's Zombie and Peter Jackson's Dead Alive...and with company like that you'd expect a wild experience. And you'd be right.

Maybe even a dusgusting one.

One final thing - this was initially released in the States under the moniker Dr. Bucther, M.D. (Medical Deviate), with a poster that held no bearing on the movie itself, indeed no one on the poster even looked like anyone in the movie. The beginning of the Dr. Butcher version even had a zombie rising up out of a grave and stumbling around: a zombie clipped from an altogether different film (Tales To Rip Your Heart Out) that doesn't even look the same as any of the other five zombies in this film.

What does that have to with my review? Nothing - but as long as nothing else about Zombie Holocaust is going to make sense, why should the last lines of this review? Just keeping it all consistent for you.

No problem, glad to.