Erotic Nights of the Living Dead (1980)

That was an excellent one.

Best movie of this year hands down!

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

After pushing the envelope and erasing the borders between horror, softcore and hardcore porn flicks in his Black Emanuelle movies, Joe D'Amato went the whole hog here and made a film which could be, at times, classified as all of these things. It ends up being quite a mish-mash, but by the end, as the images of coitus and demise have passed before our eyes in a two hour parade, the film seems most like a kind of motion picture memento mori, reminding us of the inexorable link between the little and big deaths.The film begins in a madhouse, with D'Amato regular George Eastman (who, intriguingly, wrote this film) staring back out of the screen at us through a wired fence. We then follow a pretty young inmate as she searches out Eastman in the bowels of the institution, finding him and engaging in passionate, unbridled (softcore) sex. A shambolic, drooling maniac has also followed them, and he keeps at a distance, touching himself and lolling his tongue as he peaks at their pleasures. We could almost take this as a meta-cinematic representation of D'Amato's cinema – we the audience are the drooling lunatic voyeurs watching our own fellow madmen portrayed in flagrante on D'Amato's cinematic canvas.The plot itself now begins, as Eastman is revealed as the island-hopping skipper on a small schooner somewhere in the Caribbean, operating a sea-bound taxi service for wealthy visitors. He humours the rich men whilst lusting after their booty-prize women. Meanwhile, we follow Mark Shannon's property developer Wilson as he sources information on a local island, hoping to build a luxury resort there, and in the meantime ogle and frolic with the local whores. His frolicking set the hardcore action of the film in motion, as the whores explicitly fellate him in the shower and he enacts cunnilingus with them on his hotel bed. After cutting between Eastman and Shannon for a while, the two come together when the skipper agrees to take the developer (and a gold-digger he has picked up) to the island ripe for developing. But we've heard sinister things about this place, the so-called Cat Island: it is home to a hoard of zombies headed by a cat (!), the locals are terrified of it and some of them keep jujus to ward the evil off. We've also glimpsed some zombies bringing instant death to those they encounter with a swift chomp to the throat… Before leaving, skipper goes to a local bar where a girl he is involved with strips and does an act which involves masturbating with a champagne bottle and then popping it with her vagina. This is a long, slow, melancholy scene – scored with wistful music – in which the skipper, alone in the bar, watches the act with interest, amusement, impressed but still with a nagging feeling of loneliness. In D'Amato's universe, the viewer is alone, shown exotic and erotic sights but removed, alienated, atomised and ultimately sad.The skipper and his two passengers sail to Cat Island and there encounter an old black man with an egg-shaped disfigurement on his forehead and his luscious granddaughter, played with an exquisite lack of affect by Laura Gemser. They warn the visitors against messing with things but Wilson insults them, offers them money and generally causes offence. Gradually, the dead rise and interrupt the various erotic scenes which ensure, killing Wilson and aggressively establishing their ownership of the island. Gemser is a kind of succubus, making love to the visitors whilst the dead rise in the background. The old man gives the skipper a juju which has some effectiveness in warding off the dead but which is lost in the final melee, leaving the skipper vulnerable. He does escape with the gold-digger but they have both been driven mad by the experience, ending up making manic love which puts them right where we first saw them, in the lunatic asylum. Their lovemaking and the drooling idiot's view of this is interrupted by the guards. Skipper and girl are dragged back to their cells (they are convicted of Wilson's death and cannibalisation) and the loon is told that he should stop playing with himself and grow up. The audience are thus instructed to put their own private parts away and the film ends.Erotic (or Sexy, as the credits have it) Nights of the Living Dead doesn't altogether work – it is over-long, languorous and under-developed in terms of plot. Yet its mix of hardcore porn, extreme gore and softcore frolicking make it a compelling example of D'Amato's refusal to stay put in any one genre. In throwing - almost willy-nilly - meat shots, coy fondling, bloody death and monsters at us whilst constantly reminding us of his male characters' ultimately sad position as voyeurs, sometimes conscious and lonely, sometimes drooling and out-of-control, and by suggesting that sex in the face of colonial exploitation and strident displays of wealth, he does go someway to offering a compelling vision of late 20th century Western man on the rocks of alienated enjoyment, whose erotic nights are indeed those of the living dead.

No mystery here. You knew there was going to be zombies and sex.And just in case you weren't sure, most of the cast had porno experience. I don't mean just soft x either. The businessman and his lady were Italian porn stars. Uncut versions have hard xxx scenes.Cat Island is of interest to this businessman. He buys it, then hires George Eastman, all 7 and a half feet of him, to sail him there.The Goddess Gemser and her father are the lone inhabitants. Except of course the rising, then walking dead.Eastman's character relates the story in a wraparound segment from a mental hospital. Gemser appears here as one of the doctors too. George has a sex scene here, but keeps his pants on.A bit creepy here. The daylight adds to the unease. And the hands coming out of the sand is good for a few shocks.Gemser was the most beautiful woman here. #2 was the dancer in the club, even if her dancing was a bit lazy.The porn stars did alright, but range was obviously not their strong point.A decent entry into Joe's gore & porn list.

Le Notti Erotiche dei Morti Viventi, or Erotic Nights of the Living Dead & Sexy Nights of the Living Dead as it's more widely known among English speaking audiences, introduces us to John Wilson (Mark Shannon) who works for a company that are going to buy a tropical paradise called Cat Island & build a holiday resort on it. John hires local sailor Larry O'Hara (George Eastman) to take him & his wife Fiona (Dirce Funari) to Cat Island so he can give it the once over, despite Cat Islands bad reputation with the superstitious locals Larry agrees to take them. Once there they encounter a mysterious young woman (Laura Gemser) & her Grandfather who act strangely & warn them to leave. John isn't having any of it & since the boats motor has broken down their stuck there anyway. Things take a turn for the worse when it becomes apparent that Cat Island is also infested with rotting flesh-eating zombies whom appear very hungry...This Italian production was directed by Joe D'Amato who also saw to the cinematography under his real name Aristide Massaccesi & there really aren't many films like Le Notti Erotiche dei Morti Viventi around, this has been released in basically two different versions an explicit one with hardcore sex & a softer one without although I think both versions contain all the gore. The script by star George Eastman mixes hardcore pornography & Italian exploitation horror. I'm not sure that the mixing of these two genres work particularly well as both the horror & sex elements are kept well apart in terms of the story & one has no notable significance in regards to the other which at times can make you feel that Le Notti Erotiche dei Morti Viventi is two different films pasted together. The hardcore footage consists of one scene where two prostitutes have sex with John, masturbation (at this point while giving John a hand-job one of the women says "they could arrest you for carrying a concealed weapon!"), oral sex & full penetration are present but that's where the hardcore ends really, there is a scene when Fiona masturbates & an infamous bit when a women opens a bottle by inserting it into her vagina. The horror doesn't really kick in until the last 20 or so minutes when the zombies rise. The pacing is a real killer as far as the overall film goes, it becomes quite boring towards the end & at almost 2 hours long in it's uncut state I found my interest waining well before the end. There are very few characters in Le Notti Erotiche dei Morti Viventi & those present aren't that well fleshed out, a lot of scenes & ideas seem unrelated & go unexplained like the Doctor who gets one scene, the black cat that keeps turning up, the zombie in the port that Larry kills, the man at the beginning killed by a zombie & why the hell are there zombies on Cat Island anyway? Some sort of explanation would have been nice while the opening & closing segments are completely unnecessary & feel out of place. On a positive note director D'Amato amazingly manages to create some good sequences, the blue lit zombie scenes at the end look fantastic & add a visual elegance. I wouldn't give D'Amato too much credit though as these scenes were shot during the day & a blue sepia tone was probably added in post production with the alternate sunny daytime shots as they were filmed presented on the DVD as an extra. The real life Santa Domingo locations in the Dominican Republic look beautiful, the beaches, the clear blue sea & the palm trees make me wish I was there zombies or not! The gore is not that graphic, a couple of zombies have their heads chopped off, a few are shot in the head, there is one brief gut-munching scene, a Doctor is attacked by a maggot ridden zombie & that's about it. There is lots of nudity, in fact everyone take all their clothes off for the slightest reason except Eastman who never strips below the waist in any part. The acting & dubbing are up to the usual low standards set by Euro exploitation films. Le Notti Erotiche dei Morti Viventi is an odd film, I liked it's exploitation elements but found it very choppy, poorly paced & despite the odd explicit sex scene & brief horror I didn't find it particularly enjoyable or entertaining as a whole, just in parts which is where my score comes from. Still it's definitely worth a watch for Euro exploitation fans like myself who should be able to find a few redeeming features in it. However, if you get hold of the uncut version make sure you don't watch it in front of your family...

(aka: EROTIC NIGHTS OF THE LIVING DEAD)Just saw the un-cut, newly-remastered Shriek/Media Blasters DVD of this and I must say, I was bored by the whole thing. However, 'everybody else' must have liked it because the cast stuck around for D'Amato's next Caribbean offering, PORNO HOLOCAUST (1981)OK, I admit I was turned on by the hardcore threesome between Manlio Cersosimo and the two Dominican whores he had up in his room, but the rest of the film was totally un-interesting, horror-wise or sex-wise. Gemser should have continued played Emmanuelle and I'm surprised she didn't here. Especially for a Joe D'Amato movie. There's surprisingly little gore for a film of this scope, and the zombie plot looks like it was thrown in there as a pretext for the soft-core lesbian scenes between Gemser and Funari. There's also soft core sex scenes between Eastman and Gemser and between Cersosimo and Funari as well as the previously mentioned hard-core sex scene.Plot concerns George Eastman taking Manlio Cersosimo and his girlfriend (Dirce Funari) to an island so he can scout locations for a new hotel resort. A female spirit (Laura Gemser) and an old man conjure up the dead buried on the island to go after these three and stop any development from taking place. Some of the zombies get impaled on sticks by Eastman and some brown & green stuff (blood?) comes flowing out, and there's a couple of zombies who get torched, but that's pretty much all the action. Eastman and Funari wind up in a 'mental institution' after all this. Shriek/Media Blasters did their usual, impeccable wide-screen treatment of this DVD, far more than the actual film deserves. Not much in the line of extras, though. There's also a half-way decent electronic score by Marcello Giombini. Mostly deserves a yawn...3 out of 10