Zombie Creeping Flesh (DVD)

...off on the right footing Zombie Creeping Flesh as it is known in the UK is a rather ridiculous title given to the movie in a hope to cash in on the success of Lucio Fulci's Zombie Flesh Eaters (itself a victim of a different name in the UK). The movies correct title is Hell Of The Living Dead and for the duration of this review this is the name I'll refer to the movie as.

Of all the Italian Zombie movies Hell Of The Living Dead ultimately ...
...over filming of Lucio Fulci's Zombie 3 (his sequel to Zombie AKA Zombie Flesh Eaters) the result again was awful and disjointed, and a nasty stain of Fulci's reputation. Ironically Mattai remained one of the most consistently working Italian directors knocking out as many as four films a year until his death earlier this year, not surprisingly over half his movie output is completely unavailable in any form.

There is only one benefit ... more

Just to get off on the right footing Zombie Creeping Flesh as it is known in the UK is a rather ridiculous title given to the movie in a hope to cash in on the success of Lucio Fulci's Zombie Flesh Eaters (itself a victim of a different name in the UK). The movies correct title is Hell Of The Living Dead and for the duration of this review this is the name I'll refer to the movie as.

Of all the Italian Zombie movies Hell Of The Living Dead ultimately has the worst reputation, it has a disjointed storyline and some at times ridiculous action/horror sequences. It also suffers from some of the worst dubbing I've ever seen which probably hinders the movie in terms of reputation. Like many movies the original Italian score is incredibly difficult to find, and when you do find it English subtitles are not available. On the plus side gore fans will be pleased with the amount of blood and Goblins musical score is pretty good too.

When a rat turns vicious and kills a scientist in a strange chemical lab the victim casually releases a chemical into the atmosphere that turns the normal living into crazed zombies.
In another part of the world a group of guerrilla terrorists are holding hostages in a US embassy and a team of cracked commando's (that look like maintenance men) are called in to save the day. Having stormed the embassy and saved the day by killing the terrorists one of the guerrillas tells them that they are all going to die as his dying breath.

Again we are teleported to an unknown jungle location where we find a group of people in a small community arguing over a sick child, nearby the same group of commando's from earlier wait to move in, unknowing what their mission is. After a nasty encounter or two the commando's and the civilians meet up and try desperately to get away from an enormous army of flesh eating zombies.

What is so bad about Hell Of The Living Dead is that it somehow cheapens the other work of more established Italian directors, if a newcomer to the genre stumbled upon this movie first having been advised to investigate Italian horror they would no doubt ever watch a movie from Italy again. It's editing is absolutely terrible television transform from great big TV's to portables, people one minute are in one room and then miraculously teleported into a different room entirely, and the reaction to the deaths around them seem distorted from reality. Add to this the fact that the casting is just plain awful with commandos that look like they should be in retirement homes, and behaviour that would lead you to believe that if anything they needed to be committed.

The acting is just horrific, the Zombies walk like 80's robot dancers and the reactions to nasty incidents like someone being snacked on are incredibly delayed. I lose count of the times that a person is about to be attacked and just literally stands there waiting for death, or their supposed loved ones watch on while a bunch of zombies eat them; all the time completely reaction less to what's going on, almost like seeing your lover killed is an everyday event. There is that strange horror mentality that always happens in nasty horror where having fought for their lives the characters then put themselves into trouble again by wandering off to face the unknown alone. Usually in Italian horror no matter how bad the story gets you're given the gift of one half decent actor, here we are given nobody to lighten things up. The lead actress Margit Evelyn Newton is the worse culprit of the movie, at times it's difficult to judge whether she is reacting to events occurring around her or whether she is just suffering from a terrible case of wind.

Hell Of The Living Dead has another awful addition the intercut pieces of stock footage of surrounding wildlife and natives, picked up from a variety of sources and the quality of the footage is varied from bad to really bat. After nice clean prints shot for the movie, the intercut scenes are incredibly grainy, and sometimes barely even including colour. The stock footage annoyingly is not as limited as you might expect, I'd estimate that possibly up to 20 minutes of the film consists of it. The overlong and pointless tribal scene in which the group interact with the tribe is more or less completely stock footage intercut with a variety of African individuals (many of them playing dual roles, hoping that you wont notice) to try and add a little realism to the film.

There is little or no explanation to actions in the movie, who the people are and their purpose for being in a variety of God forsaken locations. And this can fault can lie nowhere else but with the movies director Bruno Mattei (AKA Vincent Dawn) his vision of what could very well be a decent script is just ridiculous. Newton at one point joins a tribe and engages in a series of bizarre rituals, now this tribe are coloured, and Newton is a very pale white but for this her acceptance into the tribe is a given, like she is completely normal, somehow she also knows how to understand the tribe and how to become accepted by them. Mattei consistently turned stories to pulp, in 1988 he took over filming of Lucio Fulci's Zombie 3 (his sequel to Zombie AKA Zombie Flesh Eaters) the result again was awful and disjointed, and a nasty stain of Fulci's reputation. Ironically Mattai remained one of the most consistently working Italian directors knocking out as many as four films a year until his death earlier this year, not surprisingly over half his movie output is completely unavailable in any form.

There is only one benefit to seeing Hell Of The Living Dead and that is for the horrific final scenes of the movie, and while the rest of the movie is entirely forgettable the movies final scenes will burn a hole in your brain forcing you to forger the movies flaws. And this appears to be a Mattei trait that despite how bad his movies are he always ends in such a way that you will find his movies difficult to totally forget.

There are no special features on this DVD, and thank the stars because there is only so much awful anyone is prepared to take. My big tip for you is to avoid this movie at all costs; even with a £4.99 price tag there are far better things to do with your money. 

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