Hell of the Living Dead

Sunday, March 9, 2008

Kommitted to Klassiks indeed, Dan. Yeesh.

Anyways, this is a cheap-o Italian zombie flick by Bruno Mattei, the fellow that did Rats: Night of Terror, which Andy and I watched during our big marathon day back in December. I said then that I suspected Mattei had "the touch" for making hilariously, entertainly bad horror films, and that Rats only fell a few inches short of being a good example of a fun/bad movie. I was hoping Hell of the Living Dead would be his classic.

Well, sorry to say that even though there were some classic moments, it actually wasn't as good/bad (or do I mean bad/good? I'm confusing myself) as Rats was. It starts as an obvious Dawn of the Dead ripoff (even flat out stealing large chunks of that film's score) but then for whatever reason the locale changes to the jungle. My guess is that these movies are set in the jungle so often because the filmmakers can't decide if they want it to be a cannibal movie or a zombie and decide if they go to the jungle, they can figure it out halfway through shooting. Anyways, this locale leads for some choice racism where the all white heroes mow down hordes of black zombies.

There's some other good stuff here; bad dialogue, phony looking but still kinda cool gore, awkwardly long shots, etc. I especially loved the part where the cutie heroine has to go speak with a local tribe, so she goes topless and covers herself in weird paints. That is an A+ for effort in the catagory of gratuitous female nudity. High five Mattei. Then, we see a series of shots of her standing alone in the woods, staring off screen, cut with stock footage of African tribesman to make it look like she's looking at them. Priceless.

Still, though, far from a classic, and I regret watching it by myself and not with others. I'm not sure if I will check out another Mattei film again, but I do appreciate that so far he seems like Umberto Lenzi without the rampant misogyny. So, we'll see.