Every few months I am inevitably called back to the directing work of Bruno Mattei and the writing work of Claudio Fragasso. This usually means I rewatch SS Girls for the billionth time. Last week I dove into Caligula Reincarnated as Nero, which was amusing but off-putting in the same way Women's Prison Massacre was, minus that last valuable sliver of entertainment. It was a depressing experience. I guess that just shows that sometimes you gotta stick with the classics.
Hell of the Living Dead is a classic. I've heard a few different folks say that it may well be the most incompetently made zombie film of all time. That is almost certainly true, though movies like Night of Horror still exist. It steals many scenes, ideas, and musical scores from movies like Dawn of the Dead, so originality is not its forte, but all the same, Hell sustains itself itself on not merely being a zombie movie. In my mind it succeeds at being a zombie flick, with an occasional dose of impressive atmosphere. But it's also an adventure film, an action film, a tribalsploitation film, and it has a dose of...real animal violence, to boot. Anyway, it's an exploitation film through and through, with all those elements churning in its greasy, grubby mix.
A lab is working on something called "Operation Sweet Death," which actually turns out to have an interesting dark secret behind it in the ending. What matters for now is that Sweet Death is a gas that turns people into zombies. This is released accidentally by two scientists who talk about whether they are tit men or ass men. The exchange in which they bring this up shows that every line in this movie is going to be solid gold. Next we see a group of Marines break into a building that is under the control of some ecoterrorists who want to expose Sweet Death. As one of them dies, he whispers: "You're all doomed to a horrible death. Doomed...to be eaten up. You will be killed...and then eaten. Eaten by men who were once your brothers..." That's how I talk, in Real Life. Anyway. The Marines then go on a long journey wherein they gain and lose numbers to the zombies, eventually stumbling across a village where an unbearably interminable stretch of exploitation stock footage rolls by, including a long scene of a crocodile being butchered* and an elderly nude woman eating maggots out of the eye socket of a corpse. Let me tell you, jumping from the rollicking comedy of Fragasso's dialogue to a fucking Mondo film is jarring. The end will shock you, or at the very least, make you kinda sad.
The dialogue here is key. There are a lot of weird one-liners in this movie. Namely, the Marines joke about necrophilia and quip lines like:
"Maybe there'll be chicks in grass skirts."
"Maybe there'll be some without grass skirts."
Genius. Fans of Troll 2 will feel right at home.
Let's see. What else do I love about this movie...?
-A zombie priest shows up who is played by Victor "Marty Feldman" Israel from The Witches' Mountain
-"Maybe they're just drunk or drugged. Or they're a leper colony. I don't think they intend to harm anyone." The man who says this, the news photographer, looks like Mario the news photographer from The Witches' Mountain.
-Zantoro. The "crazy" Marine. Watch the movie just for him. There is no explanation. Also, his name is Zantoro.
-Bruno Mattei has no idea how to dub black people. This is a pattern that continues into this film's remake, Zombi 3.
-This movie was remade as Zombi 3.
-This movie was also released as Zombi 8 even though it was made eight years prior to Zombi 3.
-There is a zombie lady who is full of cats.
-The soundtrack is stolen from Goblin's soundtrack to Dawn of the Dead due to a contract loophole for Dawn regarding Italian film law at the time. Perhaps, just as Women's Prison Massacre gave Claudio Fragasso's connection to Laura Gemser for the fashion sense that went into Troll 2, this movie's cribbing of Goblin led to his decision for what race his "Trolls" belonged to.
-The soundtrack is also stolen ex libris Joe d'Amato.
That's...basically it. This is probably the best Mattei movie to start with. If you can stomach this, SS Girls and Zombi 3 will open up to you. Gee, I wonder what the next movie I'll talk about will be...
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* My personal copy of the film doesn't contain this scene. The first time I saw the movie, when it did contain this scene, it was admittedly a bootleg on YouTube. I think it's safe to say that whoever uploaded the now-missing YouTube version edited this footage in from another source. Ick. In any case I've left this reference in as a warning to those who may stumble across the same bootleg. It's best to just get it from a legitimate source.
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