ironhorse_iv Why the long face, something eating you? Yes, this movie is eating my time. Still, it was 'so bad, it's good' type of a film, so I can't hate it, too much. It was somewhat entertaining. Directed by Vincent Dawn AKA Bruno Mattei, the film tells the story of a four-man team of commandos lead by Lt. Mike London (Jose Gras). Their mission is find out, the true reason why the Hope Center Research Laboratory in Papua New Guinea, lost communication with the rest of the world. Presuming it was cause by a terrorist action, journalist Lia Rousseau (Margit Evelyn Newton) and her camera crew, joins them, as they investigating a series of mysterious, violent attacks on the locals, that can only lead them to a top secret government secret that must be destroy or reveal. Can the men make it to the Research Center or will the horde of the living dead be too much for them? Watch the movie to find out! Without spoiling the movie too much, I have to say, this movie is really trying too hard to rip-off, Director Lucio Fulci 1979's zombie horror film, Zombi 2 with its tropical settling. Not only that; the movie also try to rip-off the popular parts of 1978's Dawn of the Dead, way too much. Some good examples are how journalist Lia Rousseau looks very alike, the female heroine from that George Romero's film and how the whole look of the commandos, look way too similar to the outfit of the Philadelphia S.W.A.T. team. I think the movie goes way too far, when it doesn't hide the fact, that they were stealing the music from Dawn of the Dead. This almost caused a legal wrangle for the production of this low-budget horror film, due to the fact that the band, Goblin did not authorized their music to be used here. Then there is the inappropriate use of stock footage from the 1972 film, 'The Valley' & the 1974's cannibal documentary film, 'The Real Cannibal Holocaust' and last, 1979's "Des Morts'; a documentary about death. The movie was trying to incorporate the footage with the rest of the film, but they didn't do so well. It was so mismatched or seem out of place. It didn't match up with the ugly day for night colors, they were filming the film, with. Honestly, I don't know why they built sets, just to mirror the documentaries. They could have save more money, just filming, new footage. It seem like a waste of money. The movie has a lot of continuity errors because of how badly it was film. While, Mattei was busying himself with the studio filming, assistant director, Claudio Fragasso was given free rein to shoot some new special effects shots to gore up the film. Most of the special effects are somewhat dated. It's hilarious to watch. Some good examples are the cat inexplicably ripping out of a zombie's dead body, or a killer rat biting a scientist's face. There are 2 classic vomiting scenes which I laughed so hard at. The movie really tries to be gross with its gore. Gratuitous nudity is also involved when the female lead get naked so that she can fit in the natives tribe. It wasn't really needed. The actress really got exploited. It really feels, out of place like the English dubbing. The dubbing in this film is so bad, as the words don't match, the lips. Then there is moronic unreal dialogue, in which the actors had to speak. The funniest had to be, the couple that thought the zombies were drunks. The slow zombie concept hasn't aged well. They are just downright too sluggish to be taken as a serious threat and the make-up work is questionable, at times. Throughout the film, the zombies are handled almost effortlessly; the only danger to humans come when the living acts stupid or careless. There is barely any tense moments. The movie doesn't feel like a straight up horror film. It acts more like a silly satire action comedy. The soldiers are some of the stupidest, ever put on film. One of the commandos stupidly sets his rifles down, dons a tutu and a top hat and cane, and starts dancing! He summarily gets chomped on by the zombies by the next scene. WTF! My favorite character in the film has to be Zantoro (Franco Garofalo). He was just way over the top and crazy! It's hard to tell, whom brain-death here, the characters or the living dead. I also think the creators for this film, lack brain power, as well. One thing that I hate about this film is the dozen of alternate titles that it has. Not only is it known as Hell of the Living Dead, it's known as; Virus, Cannibal Virus, Night of the Zombies, Apocalypse Cannibal, Zombie Creeping Flesh, Zombi 4, Zombie Ultimate Nightmare, Zombie Inferno, Zombie of the Savanna and others. Way too much titles to name here. I do have to give them, some credit. This Rated R exploitation movie tries to tell something smart, with controversy conspiracy theories about the First World create diseases to control the Third World's population, but it never truly get explore, much, beyond, a few exposition sentences. Overall: It's a bad film, but the campy entertainment value makes us, forget how badly deliver the story was. The unintentional humor, over-the-top gore sequences, director's cameos, and the fact that there actually are zombies in this movie, make it, somewhat watchable.

Zbigniew_Krycsiwiki Good for a few occasional unintentional laughs, this padded flick is has something to do with news reporters and a commando unit teaming up in Spain (er, I mean, New Guinea) to do battle with the usual zombies in variable makeup.Even without its heavy use of stock footage, the film is still terribly slowly paced, with sometimes four or five minutes given to the camera slowly panning around the area the characters are in. Zombies grab people by their hair and just hold them for 12 - 15 seconds, allowing them plenty of time to yell and scream and try to escape, before either devouring them, or themselves getting killed. Was that in an attempt to build tension, or just lax editing? This also features one of the goriest, most ludicrous shock twist endings in the history of film, where the attractive lead girl has her tongue ripped out, and her eyes gouged out from inside her skull. Film gets points for being original, I guess.Filming started and stopped in early 1980, then picked up again a little while later, with stock footage being used in attempt to make the film seem more exotic, but which only slows the pacing, and gives this an even more inconsistent, erratic feeling. Didn't the filmmakers realise they were adding stock footage of desert life when the characters are supposedly deep in the jungles of New Guinea?

loomis78-815-989034 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.

MaximumMadness I'm not super-familiar with the work of famed exploitation director Bruno Mattei (here credited under an alias), but I know a little bit about him and I've seen a few of his other films. My best friend is an enormous fan of his work (in an ironic, so-bad-it's-good way), and this past weekend brought over the DVD of this film... the oddly-titled "Hell of the Living Dead." It was an experience, I will give it that.There is no real plot to speak of. Everything seems to mush together unnaturally. In the beginning, at a military center called "Hope Center", an experimental chemical is leaked, turning the staff into zombies. Elsewhere, a crack team of commandos infiltrates a building where activists protesting the Hope Center have taken hostages, and kill them all. Sometime later, in Papua New Guinea, the commandos encounter a gorgeous reporter and her cameraman/pseudo-boyfriend, who are being chased by zombies. The commandos and the reporter team up to escape alive.From there on, the film is a messy series of skits, essentially. The characters talk a little bit, go to a new location, zombies show up, they flee. This is repeated several times until the end of the film, which without spoiling anything, is outlandishly hilarious and ludicrous as the script tries vainly to tie the plot together by book-ending the story. It's a very random, funny climax.I haven't heard of any of the actors before the film, and after seeing it, I can see why. The acting is very hammy. Despite seeing a dubbed version, you can tell from the physical performances that the actors were all going over-the-top, and they never seemed to react naturally to anything. The English voice dubbing is pretty atrocious as well.Gore effects are a mixed bag. Some of the shots are fantastic, while others are laughably bad. The zombies themselves look halfway decent at times, however, they too-often fall back on that gray "Dawn of the Dead" look.Direction is pretty sub-par, and cheap. Mattei really dropped the ball here. And the insane over-use of stock footage got grating. As did the script, which as I mentioned above is the same "rinse and repeat" series of scenes over and over again. Finally, I must complain about one thing- for a movie about zombies, there certainly aren't many zombies in it. They are there for the first few scenes, before suddenly disappearing for what seemed to be a good 30-40 minutes, during which Bruno padded the film with excessive stock-footage of native tribes, and goody, unneeded scenes of the commandos interacting with said tribes. For a while, I forgot there were even zombies."Hell of the Living Dead" is fairly entertaining at times, but it's just too basic for its own good. It isn't good enough to be watchable as a good film, not is it bad enough to qualify for "so bad, it's good!" territory. As it stands, it's just a bland, boring, crummy movie with a few unintentional laughs. I give it a 3 out of 10. If you want to see a good (or rather, so-bad-it's-good) Mattei film, look elsewhere.