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nTitle: Hell of the Living Dead (1980)
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nDirector: Bruno Mattei, Claudio Fragasso
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nReview:
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nIt’s kind of hard to believe that four people holdnwriting credits for this completely nonsensical film, but yeah, four brains gotntogether to write this stupid, stupid film! Normally you’d think that the morenwriters the better the movie should be, but truth is that in Hollywood the rulenof thumb is the more writers, the worse the movie. This is certainly the casenhere, this movie blows! Yes my friends, this movie is awful, but in thatnItalian horror sense that also makes it completely watchable? This is thenreason why you’ll find people that will tell you this film rules and in anstrange sort of way, it does. Yes my friends, this is yet another “so bad itsngood” flick from those money loving horror directors of Italy. And by moneynloving I’m talking about directors Bruno Mattei and Claudio Fragasso two guysnwho just loved to make cheap knock offs of American films to make a quick buck.nThese guys knew these films were so sleazy and low grade that they always usednpseudonyms for these films, which is why instead of saying this film wasndirected by Claudio Fragasso and Bruno Mattei, the title screen says ‘Directednby Vincent Dawn’, as if they were ashamed at the film they just produced;. chancesnare they probably were. These films would get made at lightning fast speeds andnwith very little money, the results would usually be the kind of film we’ll bentalking about today, the nonsensical (yet entertaining just for that) Hell ofnthe Living Dead a.k.a. ‘Virus’ a.k.a. ‘Night of the Zombies’ a.k.a. ‘ZombienCreeping Flesh’ a.k.a. ‘Zombie Inferno’.
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nThe story goes something like this: a chemical leak has taken place in a chemicalnplant in New Guinea. The air borne chemical spreads all over the land, bringingnthe dead back to life. As chaos spreads throughout New Guinea, a swat team ofnfour men is sent to investigate this situation. I thought it was funny hownthere’s talk of zombie threat in New Guinea and all that gets sent in are fournSWAT team members? For a whole zombie threat? What the –? But whatever, sonthese guys are sent in and apparently left for dead because they’ve lostncontact with whomever it was that sent them; I’m guessing it was the U.S.nGovernment. These crazy SWAT guys end up meeting with a crew of two documentariansnwho are here to investigate what’s going on in New Guinea. For whatever thenreason, they end up together for the rest of the film; together they must trynand uncover the mystery behind the appearance of zombies in New Guinea.
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nHell of the Living Dead was shot in Spain and Italynbut in order to give the illusion that the film takes place in New Guinea, the filmmakersnspliced in all this random stock footage of wild animals flying and jumpingnfrom trees and running through the wilderness. This stock footage is prettynfunny because it appears randomly at any given moment in the film, so it’snlike, we’ll have these characters talking and suddenly, there’s a monkeynjumping from tree top to tree top! Characters walk a bit and then we get angazelle flying, then, a stampede of elephants, then, a fox eating a rabbit andnso on, it’s a cheap-o way to make your film longer. They even used stocknfootage of real life tribes conducting their rituals. Most of the time, whenevernwe see tribes men dancing and running, what we’re actually seeing is footagenfrom a documentary called ‘La Valle’.
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nI’m afraid that with the kind of film that Hell ofnthe Living Dead is, this is going to be the kind of review that makes fun ofnhow nonsensical and stupid everything is on this film, so excuse me for that,nbut I just can’t help myself. So these zombies are the chemical kind, and sincenthis chemical is airborne, it spreads all through out New Guinea, reaching deepninto the desserts and forest and turning even the Indian tribes that livenwithin into zombies. The first time we meet these tribes, they are conducting anburial of some kind. The lady documentarian says she knows how to deal withnthese cannibal tribes because she’s lived with them before, so she immediatelynstrips which I thought was hilarious, because she strips right in front ofnthese horny SWAT guys,which by the way apparently have nothing to say aboutnthis naked lady. Then, she puts on some body paint (which she apparently alwaysnkeeps handy) and then goes mingling amongst the tribe. This scene was so sleazy;nit was obviously just an excuse for some nudity! She could have done just thensame with her clothes on, but whatever. A few minutes after that, the SWAT guysnmeet up with her and the tribe and all hell breaks loose when the dead guy thatnthe tribe is burying comes to life and starts infecting the whole tribe. Itnturns into a full blown gorefest of a scene, in this respect I must say thatnthe film does not disappoint, there’s tons of gore.
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nEarlier I mentioned that this film was a rip off,nand it is. It’s a rip off of George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978). This isnblatantly obvious when we see that some scenes are almost identical . Let’snsee, we get little kid zombies, we get a SWAT team, a hostage situation…theyneven stumble upon a priest, who ends up being a zombie, mimicking that scenenwhere the SWAT team guys in Dawn of the Dead stumble upon that freaky priest. Wenget scientists and politicians talking on television trying to solve the zombiensituation. The main characters work on television and so on. But of course, this film is also NOTHING likenDawn of the Dead, because Dawn of the Dead was never a comedy which is basicallynwhat Hell of the Living Dead feels like to me. Funniest part is that it was allnunintentional; it’s obvious these guys didn’t know they were making such anhilarious movie, but they did it anyways. The comedy comes from how stupidnthese characters are and the dialog they say. For example, it is madenabundantly clear that in order to kill these zombies you have to shoot them innthe head, yet the characters keep shooting an exorbitant amount of bullets innthe chest! It makes you feel like screaming out loud to these stupidncharacters, they’d save so much ammo if they simply shot one bullet to thenhead, but no, they empty a whole machine gun in every other body part that isn’tnthe head! Even after a character has screamed it and showed them how effectivenit is to shoot them in the head.
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nWant funnier stuff? Well, how about the fact that some zombies are repeated during the film? We’ll see a zombie in this scene here,nthen cut to another scene somewhere else and there’s the same actor playing thensame zombie! Ha ha ha! Hilarious! How about a SWAT team member who in thenmiddle of a zombie attack decides to put on a Tu-tu and start dancing andnsinging “Singing in the Rain”? How about motor boats that are simply lyingnaround on the beach waiting for the protagonists to arrive? How about the factnthat characters seem to simply wait around for the zombies to grab them? Arrghnthis annoyed the hell out of me! I’m like run, don’t just stand there waitingnfor all those zombies to grab ya! Ha ha…hows about the fact that this filmsnborrows the soundtrack from Dawn of the Dead and Alien Contamination (1980)? Hanhah….How about the fact that characters never seem to run out of bullets? EVER?nAnd the dialog? It’s pure cheesy brilliance. For example, when a group ofncharacters stumble upon a building one of them says: “Buildings have people innthem, we’d better go investigate” I mean the hilarity is never ending with thisnmovie and therefore it’s watchable just for that; its empty calories of thenzombie kind.
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nRating: 2 out of 5
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