Night of the Zombies (1983)

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

This is a terrible film that had the opportunity to have been considerably better. It has an admirable start with Goblin's electronic music mixed in with story narrative, this gives it a modern feel. As the movie begins we are at a chemical plant that is not as secure as they thought. A rat is found in one of the rooms, though it's not dead as the workmen first think. It attacks one of the workmen killing him, unfortunately, he doesn't stay dead. As the trouble progresses the noxious gas starts to leak out of the facility and infects the air... bringing on an extinction event.From here on it should have been an awesome film but the Directors, Bruno Mattei (who used the name Vincent Dawn) - this action speaks volumes - and Claudio Fragasso (who also co-wrote the story with Jose Maria Cunilles) decided to go an entirely different route than you would ever imagine.The viewer is then subjected to some really bad over-the-top acting (more than usual for an Italian horror) as we are introduced to a crack army assault team who stop a siege at an embassy. This ten minutes is a waste of time as it's really bad and is only there to let the audience know their next mission is in New Guinea.It appears the location was only introduced into the story so the director could hop onto the tribe and animal cruelty bandwagon, as they weave stock film of death rituals into the movie. Once again, these are not actually required and are not relevant to the film. However, it does mean the lead lady can get her boobs out and they are nice boobs.Another handicap is the speed of the Zombies, these are your old-time shambling dead. Even Richard Briars on a Zimmer-frame could out run these stiffs (Cockney's V's Zombies). It's even played up in the film. Even the zombie make-up is poor most are just covered in light blue powder and any other embellishments are large, bulky, and unrealistic.The twist at the end is a nice one and again if they hadn't gone the wrong direction with the story then, it could have been an outstanding Zombie movie.I wouldn't recommend this one to anybody as there are much better Zombie flicks about, my favourite being Return Of The Living Dead... "Brains... We Need More BRAINS!!!"

Remember the opening segment of DAWN OF THE DEAD, in which the SWAT team storm a building infected by zombie tenants and proceed to blast 'em all away? Well, that ten minute sequence serves as a basis for ZOMBIE CREEPING FLESH, a truly awful sub-Romero Italian zombie film with bits of ZOMBIE FLESH EATERS and THE BEYOND thrown in for good measure. Infamous hack director Bruno Mattei (who made up his 'amusing' pseudonym for this movie, Vincent Dawn) isn't content with just borrowing the plot from Romero's shockers either - he actually goes further to rip off classic music from DAWN OF THE DEAD and occasionally lifts entire dialogue from NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD! There's definitely a line between a 'homage' and plain 'plagiarism' and it's obvious which camp Mattei's film falls into.The one redeeming factor in this film is that, unlike Romero, Mattei actually has an explanation as to the zombie origins (he probably dreamt it up one drunken night with his partner in crime, Claudio Fragrasso). You see, to combat the over-population problems of the Third World, scientists have devised a gas to wipe out the excess human life - unfortunately for them, it does just that, but brings them back to UN-life afterwards! The opening of the film sees an undead rodent burrowing into the contamination suit of a factory worker and chewing through his stomach, causing much splattering of blood (and where would we be without blood in a so-called "video nasty" anyway?). His co-worker stands nearby, slack-jawed in surprise, until a gang of zombies arrive and chew on his intestines.From here on, the film changes track and introduces us to the would-be 'heroes', a quartet of incompetent SWAT men who spend the rest of the movie blasting their way through the ranks of the undead and desperately trying to avoid getting eaten. Their first trip is to a local village, where they meet a pair of reporters whose family have recently been eaten, and they team up together to infiltrate a native village in their bid to escape. Stumbling from one shoddy action scene to another, ZOMBIE CREEPING FLESH offers us the standard downbeat ending, then finishes with an absurd epilogue, a twist ending in which a courting couple scoff at talk of zombies on the television - until they themselves are scoffed by some undead in the local park! It goes without saying that the acting is bad - particularly so on the part of the guys playing the SWAT team, and the zombies are hardly convincing. None of the actors know the meaning of the term "restraint" which makes much of their actions laughable. The dubbing is extraordinarily bad, and gives the film extra unintentional comedy value as you listen to some of the awful dialogue the characters are given ("They could be drunk, or drugged - or maybe a leper colony!" says one of the SWAT guys on spotting an approaching zombie horde). The production values are non-existent and the zombie 'make-up' consists of a small amount of boot polish smeared over the faces of the white actors (in comparison, the black actors playing the native zombies have white paint on their faces). The sets are dull and uninspired and the action sequences lack consistency and are in desperate need of realism.Highlights to watch out for include heroine Margrit Evelyn Newton stripping down and painting herself to enter a native village (apparently aping Alexandra Delli Colli's actions in ZOMBIE HOLOCAUST); mondo-style footage of native rituals, clumsily inserted into the proceedings; far too much slow-motion stock footage of wildlife such as bats and monkeys, inserted for no other reason than to pad out the movie; a SWAT guy putting on a dress and hat and twirling a cane before being munched on by zombies; and the memorably bad overacting of another SWAT guy who loses it and attacks the undead with only a torch. Oh yeah, and before I forget, the funniest scene in the film, which takes place back at headquarters, where a government debate is raging. The bad dubbing just makes it funnier, this is one I had to rewind.The gore content is extreme and over the top at all moments: countless bloody gunshot wounds, exploding heads, tearing flesh, and intestine chewing; a cat clawing its way out of an old woman's stomach; people being ripped apart and spraying blood and all kinds of gruesome mayhem make this one of the bloodiest of the video nasty genre. To make things worse, we get mondo footage of natives smearing themselves with rotting human flesh and a native woman eating maggots out of a (real) rotting human skull. It's enough to turn the stomach, which of course is the point. ZOMBIE CREEPING FLESH is a true trash classic of the genre.

"Virus" ("aka Hell of the living dead" or "Zombie Creeping Flesh") is a fun rip-off of "Dawn of the Dead", with also some typical stuff we can find in Italian cannibals movies, but without the cannibalism (there is a tribe in the jungle composed mostly from stock shots of "The Real Cannibal Holocaust" - aka "Nuova Guinea, l'isola dei cannibali" - and stock shots of animals from documentaries too). The director is Bruno Mattei so it's not really a big surprise, he used a lot stock shots and work done by others in his movies (for example his "Zombi: La creazione" AND "Shocking Dark" are copies of James Cameron's "Aliens"). I kinda like his movies, because most of them are really fun to watch (the "so bad it's good" kind). But for this one, I think it's just an OK movie. Funny in many scenes, but also boring in many others. There is a nice variety of zombies, some looks like the blue ones from "Dawn of the Dead", others have a more "gory" look, as in "Zombi 2" of Lucio Fulci. The characters from the Swat are fun, lot of crazy men in the team with totally irrational reactions! Unfortunately, the movie is too long, should have been cut by at least 20 minutes.

Having watched this again recently after not seeing it since I was a kid, it really didn't live up to my memories. The acting is pretty erratic (and sometimes downright comical).The effects are a total mixed bag. Some are great, some are ripped from what looks like nature documentaries, and others are terrible (running out of time in makeup? let's paint these guys blue and put them in the background)It follows regular tropes that show these guys to be "badass soldiers" but they seem to forget their training and skills at all the opportune moments (you know, convenient zombie movie shtick).SPOILER: Having watched this again last night with the girlfriend, there was a part that literally made her say "Oh really?" and bust out laughing. As the group of survivors are leaving the infested house, there is a zombie that just straight up opens the moving car's door and starts to sit in like he's one of the living. I found this extremely comical as well.I can't hate on this film though, as I did have fond memories the first few times I saw it as a kid. It just didn't age very well. Still worth a viewing, and deserves a place in any serious zombie collector's movie collection.