Movies That Witness Madness Part VI By Ian Watson Copyright Ian Watson 2012 Published At Smashwords **** Introduction To Part VI: “Spaghetti Flesh Eaters!” Just as every action has an equal and opposite reaction, every 1970s blockbuster had to have an inexpensive and sleazy mockbuster. The Exorcist spawned House of Exorcism, Jaws begat Tentacles while Star Wars found its opposite number in Starcrash, but it was Dawn of the Dead’s success that birthed some of the liveliest, most outlandish trashterpieces that ever met a projector bulb. Avoiding Dawn’s slapstick elements , these spaghetti knock-offs played it straight and went for the jugular, but their low low budgets, bad acting and ridiculous narratives often saw them enter the realm of high camp. You will be hard pressed, for instance, to find a better-paced, more outrageously entertaining unintentional comedy than the first suspect in our line-up… Zombie Creeping Flesh (1980) (A word about alternative titles: many of these pictures played all over the world, sporting a different title in pretty much every country. Zombie Creeping Flesh, for instance, is also known as Virus, Hell of the Living Dead, Night of the Zombies, Zombi 4 etc. The titles used will be those they were viewed under, although the alternatives will also be listed. In short, if you’re wondering why Zombi 3 is listed as Zombie Flesh Eaters 2, it’s because that’s the title on the region 2 DVD and also because there are three other films listed here that played under that name. On the other hand, if you couldn’t give a fig about such matters, reading this has been a big waste of your time. Sorry.) Spaghetti mockbusters may have been as inevitable as death and taxes in the 70s and 80s, but they were often brilliantly terrible imitations, especially if perpetrated by the crack duo of “Vincent Dawn”, aka Bruno Mattei, and “Clyde Anderson”, aka Claudio Fragasso, who spent most of the 80s ripping off the likes of Predator, Lethal Weapon and Rambo, to name a few. The pair eventually went their separate ways, with Fragasso gaining notoriety as the director of Troll 2, but Mattei pretty much stuck to what he knew and was still cranking out knock-offs up until his death in 2007. Starting as they meant to go on, the pair cashed in on Dawn of the Dead’s success with Zombie Creeping Flesh which, with its stock-footage, technical goofs, wretched performances and general incoherence, could lay claim to being the Plan 9 From Outer Space of living dead epics. The duo’s rough assembly apparently contained so much unusable material that most of it was junked and re-shot, with documentary footage haphazardly edited into the narrative in an attempt to convince the audience the action was taking place in New Guinea rather than in a field in Rome, which perhaps explains why the first thirty minutes feels like three different films overlapping. In the first film, workers at a chemical plant in (we think) New Guinea uncover a leak that has the unfortunate side-effect of transforming the staff into charcoal-faced flesh eaters, prompting a white-haired Adam West lookalike to note: “Operation Sweet Death must be considered a total failure.” The explanation for rising corpses now established, it’s promptly forgotten as we follow a hostage rescue team storming a sieged building and laying waste to the kidnappers with extreme prejudice, after which we finally meet our journalist heroine, Lia Rousseau (Margit Evelyn Newton), who’s in New Guinea with her cameraman for some reason or other. Also in town, despite having been in (we think) Rome in their earlier scenes, is the hostage rescue team, who have apparently gone on vacation in full tactical gear and carrying a million rounds of ammunition. Naturally, they encounter zombies. Naturally, they blast them to pieces. Then Newton disrobes, paints her body and starts interacting with stock-footage in an attempt to gain the trust of the natives. We think. When the tribe’s deceased return to life, however, a massacre commences, forcing our heroes to hit the road once more. Seeking refuge in a cabin apparently once owned by Danny Kaye, they find wardrobes full of fancy dress costumes and, as the undead close in, one of them dons a top hat and green tutu for a song and dance routine. So it’s no surprise when they’re torn apart at the climax. Mattei and Fragasso returned to the same material with Zombie Flesh Eaters 2, taking over from Lucio Fulci and effectively remaking their own rip-off. It’s not as much goofy fun, but any movie with a flying disembodied head and a zombie DJ can’t be all bad. Zombi Holocaust (1980) (Aka Dr Butcher M.D., Zombie 3) Combining elements of Italian cannibal and zombie movies, Zombi Holocaust is really a synthesis of two earlier successes: Joe D’Amato’s Emmanuelle And The Last Cannibals and Lucio Fulci’s Zombie Flesh Eaters. In fact, Fabrizio De Angelis might as well have edited the two together as the film recycles story elements, music cues, footage, cast members and locations from both pictures, for which the economy-loving producer awarded himself story credit. “We must have a psychopathic deviant loose!” announces a surgeon upon discovering an incidence of cannibalism in the workplace. When the culprit turns out to be an “Asiatic-looking” custodian, this ghoulish gourmet takes a twelve-storey swan dive after which his right arm snaps off and flies away, as if it was attached to a mannequin. Enter ex-model Alexandra Delli Colli as a ‘brilliant’ doctor with degrees in medicine, anthropology and gratuitous nudity who immediately recognises a tattoo on the deceased as the mark of Kito, the cannibal god, whose followers conduct blood sacrifices on far-flung islands without 7-11s or fast food restaurants. Realizing that simply won’t do, our imperialist heroes, perturbed at this attack on democracy, journey out to the islands to ‘study’ the natives. Who naturally turn out to be a pack of spear-waving bloodthirsty savages straight out of central casting, which begs the question: if they’re so primitive, how was one of their number able to obtain a Green Card? Fortunately, they’re frightened off by an army of zombies – well, three – in clay and latex make-up who somehow just disappear, leaving the survivors to seek shelter from the island’s resident mad scientist, Dr Obrero (Donald O’Brien). In a ‘shocking’ twist, the zombies turn out to be a by-product of his research into longevity, although how someone operating out of a hut could hope to “traverse a new frontier in science” is never explained. Fans of bonkers b-movie boffins with daffy dialogue will enjoy O’Brien’s performance as once his true motives have been revealed, his every utterance is an insane, quotable delight. Having left America when colleagues mocked his research into brain transplantation, the doc set up shop on the island and began using natives as guinea pigs, but when his operation is rumbled it leads to the film’s immortal line: “I could easily kill you now – but I’m determined to have your brain.” However, he’s reckoned without Delli Colli’s willingness to debase herself on celluloid, and when her prolonged nude scene wins over the natives they lead an attack on the doc, who gets his in a stock-footage inferno. Retitled Dr Butcher M.D. for its American release and (sensibly) trimmed for pacing reasons, Zombi Holocaust never lives up to its outrageous trailer (“He’s a depraved, sadistic rapist, a bloodthirsty, homicidal killer…”) never mind its constituent parts, but O’Brien’s ranting makes it worth a look. Burial Ground (1981) (Aka Nights of Terror, The Zombie Dead, Zombie 3) Unless you favour movies with titles like Exciting Love Girls and Fleshy Doll, Andrea Bianchi is perhaps best known as the director of the so-so giallo Strip Nude For Your Killer, so the prospect of him tackling a Romero knock-off is not exactly an enticing one. Bianchi, however, ups his game and delivers one of the all-time great sleazefests, a movie tailor-made for midnight screenings that’s best enjoyed in the company of others after three days of heavy drinking. As unintentional comedies go, Burial Ground is, if not the Citizen Kane, then certainly the Touch of Evil, plus you don’t get Charlton Heston playing a Mexican. That we’re in no-budget rip-off territory becomes apparent when Bianchi confines the action to a single locale, in this case a scenic Italian mansion where a group of morons are headed on vacation. Zombi Holocaust must have been shooting nearby because some extras in clay and latex make-up have wandered onto the property, much to the surprise of one old timer in a pre-credits sequence, who makes no attempt to escape and instead tries to ward them off with cries of “I’m your friend.” So we know this not going to be a movie about smart, resourceful people. Meanwhile our pathetic protagonists, who look at least fifteen years too old to be acting like horny teenagers in a horror movie, arrive and begin acting like horny teenagers in a horror movie. Their early scenes add absolutely nothing to the plot and reveal more flesh than character but they’re absolutely priceless, though it’s hard to say how many of the laughs were intentional. When one lady models lingerie for her man, he tells her: “You look just like a little whore – I like that!” Then as another couple argue about cash before heading off to do the nasty, the boyfriend says: “I’ll give you a rise, but it has nothing to do with money.” You get the idea. When the youngest member of the group is a twenty-five year-old midget in a toupee, unsuccessfully portraying someone half his age, you know you’re in trouble. Physically resembling a missing link between Edgar Allan Poe and Dario Argento, Michael (Peter Bark) is by far and away the creepiest presence onscreen, if not the creepiest character ever committed to film. When he’s not interrupting mom and pop’s sack-time with open-mouthed astonishment, he’s poking around in basements and finding something that “smells of death.” He gets his big scene when he declares his true feelings for his mother, played by Mariangela Giordano. “Momma, I love you,” he says, and begins roughly kissing her. “When I was a baby, you used to hold me to your breast.” Hoisting up her skirt, he adds, “I loved your breast so much, Momma”, which earns him a slap. Running off, he gets his at the hands of the living dead only to be reanimated as filmdom’s first lactating zombie. Like Max Shreck, Bark has become something of a cult favourite despite having essayed only one major role before vanishing into the sands of time. Tim Burton will make a film about him some day. Another cult favourite, Mariangela Giordano, spent years in ‘straight’ roles before washing up in the cheap and sleazy likes of Burial Ground and Patrick Lives Again where she was required to do little other than disrobe, run around screaming and disrobe some more before being despatched in as graphic a way as possible. She was beautiful/shameless enough to be still plying her trade by the time of Jess Franco’s Vampire Killer Barbys (1996), in which she showed a new generation how it was done. With the human contingent thus represented, it’s perhaps no surprise that the hordes of rotting cadavers display more intelligence, resourcefulness and better organizational skills than our supposed heroes. When their quarry retreats behind locked doors, the zombies are capable of locating a battering ram and somehow manage to arm themselves with knives and axes. They can climb walls, operate circular saws and, should the need arise, disguise themselves as monks, a ruse that actually fools our protagonists. Small wonder they back themselves into a corner during the climax. Spoiler. Nightmare City (1983) (Aka City of the Walking Dead, Zombi 3) An actor more closely identified with musicals and literary adaptations than Italian schlock, Mel Ferrer’s career spanned six decades and over a hundred film/TV roles, he directed Claudette Colbert in The Secret Fury and then-wife Audrey Hepburn in Green Mansions and also produced the classic thriller Wait Until Dark. Which makes him the last person you’d expect to see in the spaghetti versions of The Exorcist (The Tempter), Jaws (The Great Alligator) and Dawn (Nightmare City). When a newscaster announces a radioactive spill from a nuclear power plant, it can only mean that a planeload of mutated, axe-wielding assassins, who appear to have undergone cosmetic surgery by The Toxic Avenger, are about to disembark and carve up the assembled passengers and security personnel before setting off on a city-wide rampage. Their first act of terror, naturally enough, is to interrupt the gyrations of the lycra-clad lovelies of TV jiggle-fest It’s All Music and curtail their creativity with hooks, knives, swords etc. Now we know The End Is Nigh. Not only are these “attackers” (the z-word is never dropped) able to move from location to location without being seen, it’s remarkably easy for them to outwit General Ferrer’s men and sabotage a power plant, plunging the city into darkness. Fortunately there’s a white coat on hand to deliver a ‘yep, must be the radiation’-style speech in which he claims the radioactivity has “increased their activities beyond the norm” and given them the ability to increase their numbers by contaminating anyone they come into contact with. The solution: “Aim for the head.” Or as a character in a less classy production might note: “The radiation didn’t scramble his ass, sir.” It’s not hard to conceive of Nightmare City as a thriller re-tooled in the wake of Romero’s classic to change terrorists into zombies, but as society breaks down onscreen and director Umberto Lenzi attempts to mimic Dawn’s apocalyptic vision, the film becomes progressively sillier. For all the doom-laiden dialogue (“It’s part of the cycle of the human race – create and obliterate until we destroy ourselves”) it’s difficult to buy into a doomsday scenario where the female victims lose their clothes while tussling with assailants in dried-cornflake make-up. Having peppered his film with references to dreams and premonitions throughout, Lenzi appears to be reaching for profundity by having a character wake up at a crucial moment (Armageddon was just a dream!) before witnessing a planeload of mutated, axe-wielding assassins disembark as a freeze-frame caption informs us: “The Nightmare Isn’t Over.” Fast-paced, trashy and thoroughly enjoyable, Armageddon has seldom been so amusing. Plus, it’s safe to call Guillermo Del Toro a fan: he and Chuck Hogan homage it in Book One of their The Strain trilogy. Zombie Flesh Eaters 2 (1988) (Aka Zombi 3) With its widescreen cinematography, rousing score and memorable tagline (“We Are Going To Eat You!”), Lucio Fulci’s Zombie Flesh Eaters belied not only its budget but also its status as a fast-and-cheap imitation. Released straight-to-video nearly a decade later, Zombie Flesh Eaters 2 is a cash-in begun by a desperate-for-work Fulci and completed by the dire-namic duo of Bruno Mattei and Claudio Fragasso after the director became sick/ quit/ was fired. Whatever the truth, Fulci receives onscreen credit even though the finished film owes more to Zombie Creeping Flesh. Once again, the covert shenanigans of government-funded scientists are responsible for raising the dead, although even Bush-Cheney-era advisors could have devised a better moniker than “Death One.” When this “extremely powerful bacteriological weapon” falls into the hands of a thief with no getaway car, who is able to walk onto a top-secret military installation in broad daylight and raid their wares, it naturally sparks a manhunt that leads to a hotel where the staff has been wondering about their latest guest’s pus-filled sores. Expiring before contaminating others, the thief’s cremated remains infect the local bird population (or its hand-puppet equivalent) who begin attacking the townsfolk, in turn transforming them into green goo zombies. Moments later, zombies are everywhere, but rather than Romero-style shufflers, Fulci/ Mattei /Fragasso’s undead apparently mastered stealth, camouflage and hand-to-hand combat techniques while training in the Orient. When they’re not lying in strategic places, waiting to surprise our protagonists, they’re tooling up for a one-on-one machete machete battle. Top that, George A. It gets better, or at least loonier: there’s a disembodied head in the refrigerator, capable of flying toward its unsuspecting victim; a zombie DJ, whose playlist reads “play only Beatles songs”, delivers a stirring call-to-arms to his undead brothers and a pregnant woman discovers her unborn child has acquired a taste for eyeballs, much to the surprise of her gynaecologist. With all this happening, you might wonder what the world’s leading scientists are doing, so Mattei/ Fragasso contribute some blah scenes that provide the answer: nothing. When the military brass assure him that “everything is under control”, Dr Big Shot Know-It-All, who should be providing the voice of reason and eleventh hour solutions, begins ranting and gesturing in a way that suggests his caffeine level should be strictly monitored. “You never told us Death One could incur casualties!” he thunders. Somewhere, Coconut University is missing a student. While Mattei and Fragasso continued to reanimate cadavers in Island of the Living Dead and Zombie Flesh Eaters 3, Fulci never made another zombie movie and, after a run of mostly dismal features, passed away in 1996, aged sixty-eight. At least he was spared the fate of leading man Deran Serafian. Stepping behind the camera in later years, his highest profile release to date has been Terminal Velocity, starring Charlie Sheen. Zombie Flesh Eaters 3 (1989) (Aka After Death, Zombi 4) Okay, class: what happens when the director of Troll 2 decides to make a movie in his spare time, using equipment from the set of Strike Commando II, on which he’s employed as Assistant Director? What happens is he comes up with a threadbare, barely coherent mess to which he felt obliged to shoot an additional prologue to fill out the running time but which only served to make the narrative even more mystifying. Shot in Rome on sets borrowed from Michele Soavi’s The Sect, this is the sequence you don’t want to miss if you’re watching for laughs, as it belongs in Claudio Fragasso’s top ten most mirth-inducing scenes. You know you’re in trouble when voiceover attempts to plug narrative holes and sure enough, Fragasso seems to open about two-thirds of the way through another movie. On an unnamed island, a local witch doctor has raised the dead to attack the medical personnel who failed to care for his ailing wife, which brings a torch-bearing mob to his underground lair. “We did everything we could to save her,” claims one doctor, “but she’s dead now. And your curses won’t bring her back!” Needless to say, this fails to reassure our cut-rate Baron Samedi, but before experiencing mob justice, he threatens to persecute everyone after death, find them and feed on their intestines etc. Always take a bug-eyed, nearly-naked maniac at his word because no sooner has he expired than a pit disgorges an extra in contacts and plastic fangs, who proceeds to devour the group. Above ground, a family’s escape attempt is curtailed when mom and pop are slaughtered, though the young daughter is able to wander off, still clutching the necklace mom gave her. Without so much as a title card or caption to mark the passage of time, and without informing us of the girl’s fate, Fragasso jumps forward 15-20 years in the same scene to focus on a group of abrasive morons cruising past the island when their boat develops engine trouble. One of the women instinctively touches her necklace, which is the same one we saw handed down a moment earlier. That’s right – it’s the same character, fully grown, but of course she remembers nothing about her past. This is character development, Fragasso-style. So they wade ashore, but before they can do battle with the armies of the undead, the zombies need to be raised from their slumber by Jeff Stryker, John Waters’ favourite gay porn star, cast here in his first, uh, straight role. Jeff’s on the island with two other backpackers who, upon discovering a volume entitled The Book of Death, apparently mistake it for a nursery rhyme (“If you want to open the door to Hell today, these four words you must say”) and begin reading aloud, only for the dead to rise and curtail their future as children’s entertainers. The rest of the film displays the same contempt for logic as the deadheads change from shufflers to machine gun-wielding crack commandos and back again, but if nothing else the proceedings allow Fragasso to repeat his favourite technique of moving the camera toward a screaming victim. That camera wobbles as often as the sets, the hastily-applied make-up is unconvincing at best, music and footage are recycled from other movies and the acting, staging and dubbing are all terrible. It’s fantastic. Watch it on a double-bill with Troll 2. Zombies The Beginning (2007) Having already ripped off Aliens with 1990’s Shocking Dark, Zombies The Beginning is déjà vu all over again as Bruno Mattei follows up his Island of the Living Dead with that film’s lone female survivor being persuaded by a slimy corporate suit to accompany a bunch of marines back to the planet, sorry, island, with the intention of wiping out…well, you know the drill. A synopsis may be moot but it’s fun to watch Mattei attempt to recreate entire scenes from James Cameron’s $18m film on a budget of $9 plus change. He even rips off the dialogue. For good measure, he throws in some submarine footage from Crimson Tide and rips off that picture’s dialogue to boot. Remember how Aliens had an armoured vehicle that was shoulder-high in exterior shots yet the cast was able to stand up inside? Score one for Mattei: there’s no such discrepancy here because they have a van that must’ve been rented for the production since not only do the actors drive v-e-r-y carefully, there's also a Caution: Driver Has Limited Vision sticker on the shotgun side, which is hardly tactical. Another goof occurs when our Sigourney-esque heroine is locked in a lab with some zombie feti (don’t ask) and begins hammering on the steel door – despite an open window ten feet away. Come the finale, when Ripley guides the survivors to safety then ventures back into the compound, it isn’t to rescue Newt (score two for Mattei: no cute blonde kids in this movie) but to encounter this picture’s take on the Alien Queen – a creature that uses a length of pipe to extract zombie feti from living hosts and is controlled by a talking brain in a glass case (that’s three for Mattei: he goes waaay further). Footage of the compound exploding is lifted from Shocking Dark, so that by the time the credits roll the filmmaker has ripped off his three favourite directors: James Cameron, Tony Scott and Bruno Mattei. As Thelma Ritter says in Rear Window: “I only steal from the best!”