Zombie Holocaust (DVD)

Zombie Holocaust

In 2005, my sister Claire and I decided to begin watching horror films. Fed up with the recent wave of sadistic, American slasher movies, we opted for something a little more exotic: the J-horror and Italian horror scenes. We had seen the Ring, the Grudge, Dark Water, The Beyond and so on, but wondered if delving deeper into the realms of weird, horror cinema would give us the 'absurd' high we were craving.
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...Absolutely hysterical, especially the goriest zombie death scene on the beach – realism loses whatever little grip it had on this film. Finally, another classic dreadful moment is the much-quoted ‘The patient's screaming disturbing me, performed removal of vocal chords’, which he removes by reaching no further than her tongue with a pair of tweezers and removing what looked to be something the size of a small tooth with relative ease. Another moment ... more

Zombie Holocaust

In 2005, my sister Claire and I decided to begin watching horror films. Fed up with the recent wave of sadistic, American slasher movies, we opted for something a little more exotic: the J-horror and Italian horror scenes. We had seen the Ring, the Grudge, Dark Water, The Beyond and so on, but wondered if delving deeper into the realms of weird, horror cinema would give us the 'absurd' high we were craving.

To begin with, let me inform my readers that ‘Zombie Holocaust’ has earned its rating as a result of raw entertainment, rather than technical brilliance! It is important to remember this, as if you are considering renting this film for a serious night in (you party animal), then don’t! On that side of things, ‘Zombie Holocaust’ earns itself a measly 1 star.

‘Zombie Holocaust’ opens with a typical scene of someone creeping into a morgue after hours in order to remove certain pieces of corpses, which are lying around quite unprotected. Cue the first bit of random, relatively unnecessary but also quite funny gore involving the removal of a corpse’s hand. The surgical precision displayed by this unnamed, irrelevant appendage-stealer is remarkably funny, as he spends a long time donning his medical gloves in order simply to hack the hand off with a scalpel. Seems a bit strange, no? He then places the hand gently into his bag and continues with his macabre vandalism. Then the scene changes and we have no idea why. Fair enough; it certainly gave us a laugh or two. This is simply the first in a long line of events that are – for want of a better word – random! It’s almost as if a scene was written, shot, then the next scene written, shot, then the next scene written, and so on. This seems more apparent as the film progresses.

Spoilers abound! That’s only if you care, though, really.

The plot, if not particularly coherent or gripping, is pretty much as follows (give or take a few gaping plot holes): a medical student and her professor (names elude me due to their complete irrelevance in the film… they barely come up!) experience bizarre goings-on in the hospital at which they work, mostly involving the disappearance of corpses’ hearts and various other body parts. Upon catching one of these thieves, who commits suicide thereafter, the two discover a tattoo that links the culprit to a strange Malaysian (perhaps?!) tribe on some island somewhere, about which the medical student seems to know a surprising amount. The two head off to do something about the ‘afore-implied-but-not-quite-mentioned’ cannibalistic rite they have somehow discovered, and discover lots of cannibals and ‘zombies’ and uncover a not-so-grand scheme, headed by Dr. Obrero (or in the American version, ‘Dr. Butcher’ – there’s a lot to be said for American creativity isn’t there?). The whole film wraps itself up in the end in a dubious and unmemorable tangle.

So much for the plot then. The special effects are my next point of scrutiny. Some of these effects left me speechless, due to their being so gloriously bad. The one that sticks in my mind most of all, due to the sheer hilarity that ensued, was someone jumping out of a high window and plummeting 100 feet to his death. However, the (obvious) dummy used for the stunt landed on the floor rigidly and its left arm broke off and shot out to the side; all of this was left in the original film, none edited out. The editors and producers SURELY must have noticed such a flaw. Especially since two seconds later, the actor himself is lying on the floor, semi-conscious, with both arms intact! We rewound it a couple of times just so we could witness again one of the worst mistakes I have ever seen in a film. Along with the make-up line of mockery I am taking here, the zombies (when they finally turn up) are just appalling-looking. They are essentially actors with corn flakes and wet paper towels stuck to their faces. Absolutely hysterical, especially the goriest zombie death scene on the beach – realism loses whatever little grip it had on this film. Finally, another classic dreadful moment is the much-quoted ‘The patient's screaming disturbing me, performed removal of vocal chords’, which he removes by reaching no further than her tongue with a pair of tweezers and removing what looked to be something the size of a small tooth with relative ease. Another moment to laugh at and simply rack one’s brains as to how on earth the director could have taken this seriously.

Acting really is never a strong point in virtually any zombie movie I have seen (with the exception of Romero’s ‘Dead’ quadrilogy), so it was little wonder that ‘Zombie Holocaust’ contained little to no acting talent. First of all, half the dialogue is in Italian, half of it in English, and then all dubbed over extremely badly in a studio after the film had been shot (by the same actors though). This, again, set the scene for some funny mistakes – my favourite of which is a nurse who is slightly upset by, but not terrified by, a mutilated corpse under a sheet. If I was dubbing her voiceover, judging by the way she acted on camera, I would emit some sort of gasp, and it would fit perfectly, as that is what she probably did whilst being filmed. However, the actress doing the voiceover saw it fit to let out a bloodcurdling shriek that lasted much longer than it should have and was totally out of place – hilarious! The rest of the acting, despite the dialogue, was pretty bad to say the least! The zombies, for example, seemed to try and make a groaning, zombie-like noise. However, it came out as more of a satisfied sigh: “aaaaaaah”, much to the delight of my sister and me, who repeated this catchphrase of sorts weeks after seeing the film.

Zombie Holocaust’s soundtrack was really bad. That’s all that can be said really. What little music there was happened to be typical Italian 80s horror music, which consists of a low budget synthesiser and not much else! However, it does help set the mood on the odd occasion, but gods forbid if it’s supposed to increase the tension.

The DVD extra features aren't particularly good. There are career biographies of each of the main actors, some footage removed from the original film (which looks like it has just been filmed without a care in the world for location), a mediocre stills gallery and a trailer reel for 'Zombie Holocaust', and at least three different countries' versions at that! The German version of the trailer for this film (known in German as 'Zombies unter Kannibalen'; presumably the word 'holocaust' was a little too daring back in the early '80s in Germany, for obvious reasons) is fantastic fun, from the way it is set out to the lead actress yelling 'Hier komms ein Monster!' - it is priceless, nearly making up for the other lousy extras!

All this negative criticism that I am giving the film is, as I stated before, when viewing it from a technical, orthodox standpoint. Nonetheless, if you, like I, have a love of really bad films (movies that are so bad that they become good) or want to look into them, then ‘Zombie Holocaust’ is getting towards the stages of being excellent for that target audience. It only receives three stars however, as it was overlong, and failed to sustain the disbelief and fun that I had with other films of its ilk.

Many have said that if Lucio Fulci (director of many Italian horror schlock films, such as 'Zombi 2', the producer of which actually directed 'Zombie Holocaust') was put in the director's seat for this film, it would have been a lot better. I have to say I agree with them.

Still, I suppose that 'Zombie Holocaust' is worth renting if only for the stupendous dummy scene, but don't expect too much action... or too much else really!

-Steve Torpey- 

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