This is a convergence of divine proportions! Bruno Mattei and the Zombi series. Yes, while Hell of the Living Dead has sometimes been called Zombi 8, this is Bruno's crack at an official entry. But joining the convergence is gore mastermind Lucio Fulci, who made Zombi 2, among countless other movies generally perceived as "better" that Bruno's. And while he may have only directed a few of the scenes in this movie, his presence means Zombi 3 now has prestige. Ironically, Zombi 3 is even clumsier than Hell of the Living Dead, meaning that it has virtually no prestige at all. The sloppiness of Zombi 3, however, is its ultimate charm. So lazy of a film is it that it gains a charisma is that is distinctly Mattei's.
Somewhere on an island a group of scientists are researching something called "Death One," apparently part of a bringing-the-dead-back-to-life experiment. Of course, this works too well and when there is a fault at the laboratory people start turning into zombies. And, a group of soldiers is brought in to clean them up, with great death and horror abounding. Sound familiar? Zombi 3 essentially is a remake of Hell of the Living Dead, but it is almost a caricature of that earlier effort--as remakes have a tendency to be. As always we must turn to the Events to highlight why this movie is so charming. It is full of these little Happenings that make the movie unravel itself quickly. Case in point: the zombie infection returns after the soldiers kill all the zombies, because they bury most of the zombies in a mass grave, but insist on burning the original infectee...for...some reason. The ashes infect some birds and the birds infect the humans. General Morton, the military asshole responsible, says the idea of ashes falling back to Earth is "pure science fiction." There's also the scene where the soldiers find the original zombie, and conveniently there is a clothesline in front of his face so they can jerk it back and reveal that--gasp--he is now a zombie. Except this clothesline only has one or two thin rags of fabric on it, directly in the center, as if they couldn't afford enough clothing to make the clothesline look like anything that's not just a prop for this shocking reveal.
That's not even getting into the severed zombie head that comes to life and flies out of a refrigerator to bite someone.
The dialogue, being written by Claudio Fragasso, is of course excellent. There's a DJ named Blue Heart who acts like a stereotypical '70s black man--in the late '80s! Says a Marine of Blue Heart: "Man, I love this Blue Heart music when I'm coked up! It's makin' me horny!" You will become a Blue Heart fan by the time the movie's over, if anything because he keeps interrupting the film to give pro-eco messages. I feel like this was supposed to be related to the plot, but the zombies aren't caused by pollution, they're caused by a virus. Except halfway through the movie, they mention a "radioactive cloud"...I dunno. In any case, the revelation of this cloud is also marked by the best line delivery in the film: "There are reports...of...murder!...and...and people are eating each other!" Admittedly, though, the true star of this film is the head scientist, whose dub actor must have had a real rough time. The actor apparently insisted on putting lengthy pauses between each of his words, in order to take time to milk the giant invisible cow. Which means that every few syllables the dub actor had to stop, wait for the guy he was dubbing to stop chewing scenery, and then continue. He works well with what he's got, giving the guy a frantic and frustrated voice.
Weirdly enough, the movie ends with an extremely dramatic sequence where one of the Marines misses the escape helicopter, and fights off dozens of zombies, only to be mistaken for one of the ghouls and shot down. Of course, because there is absolutely no character development in this movie, there is no emotion in this--only the imitation thereof. Everything in this, from the action, to the dialogue, to the editing, is only an imitation of what real movies do. We have a chance to watch an unreal movie. Bathe in its blandness.
Indeed, blandness, in the most fascinating sense, is the focus here. If you are expecting anything new at all to the zombie concept--except for maybe flying severed heads--don't cross these premises. The zombies are slow and stagger around, and while some of them talk or use weapons, they're largely there to snack en masse on the designated dead characters, or to be blown to pieces by guns and explosions. Zombi 3 flirts nervously with the action genre, instead trying mostly to be a sci-fi thriller or horror film. There are some odd action-hero moments at the end that, to my mind, come from a different movie. Maybe it was that the characters were saying something defined, rather than flat and hilarious. God, and Bruno, alone possess the answers.
Zombi 3 suffers somewhat if you haven't familiarized yourself with Hell of the Living Dead. At least, I assume so. If you do watch these movies with this one first, let me know how it goes. The good news is...both are wonderful.
No comments:
Post a Comment