Night of the Zombies (1983)

Truly Dreadful Film

Such a frustrating disappointment

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

A weaker effort in the Italian zombie sub-genre that flourished for a short time in the late 70's and early 80's, although the movie is not without its charm and inspired moments. The make-up effects are on the cheesier side and obviously the production didn't have much of a pyrotechnics budget, consequently the gunshots and exploding squibs don't have much pizazz. Not surprisingly the film's set-up owes much to George Romero's "Dead" movies.The story line? A government is creating some type of dangerous chemical in an unimpressive-looking smoke stack factory. The chemical leaks out – a dead rat makes a cameo. Don't ask. People turn immediately into zombies and naturally enough want to eat juicy regular Homo sapiens. A political statement about over-population is thrown in. For some reason a SWAT-type team who blows away a band of eco- agitated terrorists at the beginning of the movie is sent on a mission to Zombie Island. This is where the bulk of the film takes place. The quartet of commandos is comprised of a charismatic squad leader, a somewhat colorful psycho who likes to taunt the zombies and two other nondescript types. The commandos run into a fairly hot-looking Iti reporter chick and her annoying mustachioed cameraman on the island. A husband and wife along with their zombie-bitten son are quickly dispensed with at this juncture. The best thing to do when watching a flick of this type is throw logic out the window and enjoy the high points. And there are a few. Most notably when the reporter chick tells the guys she'll have to go ahead and smooth the way for a powwow with the local villagers. She then proceeds to pop her top, revealing a most exquisite pair of natural breasts. As we all know, wacky tribes people go around topless, so it only makes sense that our reporter would do likewise – to make them feel at ease as it were. Hey, when in Rome… It's a great way to introduce gratuitous nudity into a picture and also be able to tell the actress playing the part, "But this is essential to the story, honey." There's some National Geographic type footage of tribesmen and women dancing around and eating maggots. Then our stars get to react with extras dolled-up to resemble the tribes people in the other footage. I learned a lot about native customs. Another inspired scene has one of the commandos (who can remember their actual names?) deciding to suddenly become a transvestite by donning a tutu and doing a little dance while in the midst of searching an abandoned house for zombies. Of course he enters the wrong room and ends up being devoured by the dead.It would be remiss of me to not also mention:All Italians seem to have (at least in this movie) a predisposition to helplessly watch as their fellow countrymen are eaten alive by zombies. They seem incapable of moving or doing anything to help. A very strange condition. They can even watch themselves being eaten without actually resisting. Must be attributable to pasta shock. Hell of the Living Dead (aka Night of the Zombies) should win an award for some of the worst examples of mismatched wildlife stock footage integration in a motion picture. And couple that with worse sound effects. At least half of the shots of birds and other animals are inexplicably accompanied by the sound of gobbling turkeys. Guess they only had one wildlife sound effects album in their collection.The driving Goblin soundtrack ain't bad at times. Another tip of the hat to Romero.The commandos constantly have trouble remembering to shoot zombies in the head even after being frequently berated by their resident psycho comrade. Sooner or later every character cannot resist wandering off by themselves, acting as if they are on a picnic - and sure enough they find zombie trouble.Overwrought characters repeat lines such as, "Die bastard! Die!"

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!!!"

A chemical plant in New Guinea accidentally releases a deadly virus that turns everyone that it comes in contact with into the living dead. Supposedly a SWAT team is called to the location to take care of the problem. A Reporter (Newton) and her photographer tag along to the island and cannibal zombies munch natives and everything else eventually ending up back at the chemical plant. Where do you start with such a notoriously bad movie? The plot and story makes little to no sense. The characters act stupid from start to finish and Director Bruno Mattei doesn't seem to care. He fills this movie with stock film footage of natives on the island. The problem is he's cutting back and forth with the actors and the film stock isn't even close to matching, apparently no one cares. The elite SWAT team is made up of four clowns who are more interested in getting tail than doing their jobs. The dubbing is the worst, the music is by Goblin and tracks are stolen directly from "Dawn of the Dead". This is truly lazy film making at its worst. Director Mattei started in adult films and it shows. The compositions are boring and stale and everything feels sleazy even when it shouldn't. Yes there is some cheesy gore shown in disgusting well lit close ups. Intestines are splattered and a tongue is ripped out and shoved up inside until the victim's eyeballs pop out. The gore and everything else involved in this Italian Zombie flick is unconvincing and extremely poor, it's not even worth watching for laughs.

I was trapped in to seeing this movie down to the plot summary on this page saying " A tough female reporter and her cameraman boyfriend team up with a four-man commando unit in the New Guinea jungle whom are fighting flesh-eating zombies " which sounds intriguing to a degree and does have an average rating of 4.7 . Not enough to get it into the IMDb top 250 but not entirely bad for an Italian Spanish zombie horror co-production and went in open minded with the mindset to be a little forgiving Oh dear . If nothing else I learned something and that is I don't have a forgiving nature . It's the usual Euro 80s zombie rubbish with a bunch of Europeans dubbed by Americans being chased by zombies that couldn't out chase a quadruple amputee . I will be slightly charitable and mention the dubbing isn't too bad in that the synchonicity usually matches the actors lips and a couple of times the inflexion used in the voices is slightly emotional but apart from that there's not a lot to recommend it outside the usual gorefest market where one note characters go around shooting the shuffling undead and get chewed to death when the plot demands it As for the bad points one of the more striking things is the lack of internal continuity . Early in the film there's a hostage situation which is no doubt included to introduce the SWAT team and the news reporter states that the anti-terrorist team have the newest and most sophisticated weapons which is strange since they include a commando with a Thompson sub machine gun developed at the tail end of the first world war . The film continues like this where the commandos shoot someone and conclude the only way zombies can be killed is by shooting them in the head . Nice bit of detective work since they were shot in the torso and not the head etc etc etc . Like I said this is a film that won't appeal outside of hardcore horror circles