Category: horror movie reviews

Posted on

Dawn of the Mummy (1981) Film Review: Eurotrash Zombies Invade Egypt!

A fascinating tidbit (!?!?) about me: I have seen hundreds – maybe thousands – of bad horror movies. As a young man, I lived near a movie rental store called Dollar Video – located in Lodi NJ, childhood home of Danzig of The Misfits! – that collected every cheap horror, sexploitation, nunsploitation, blaxploitation, cannibal, women-in-prison, slasher, softcore, mondo, over-the-top gore flick in existence. 

I was a regular at Dollar Video, to the point where I should’ve gotten a plaque on the wall. It was there that I rented such classics as Rabid Grannies, Satan’s Princess, and Syngenor. I’ve often wondered if my life would have been different without a place like Dollar Video. Did the movies I watched enrich or corrupt my young mind? 

Haha I know nobody gives a shit, so let’s get on with the movie review!

I rented Dawn of the Mummy at Dollar Video decades ago. Rewatching the film, I found it to be an interesting blend of American B-movie and Eurotrash sleaze. This makes sense, as the movie was produced by an American company with an Italian crew.

Dawn of the Mummy shies away from any sort of nudity, which no Eurotrash film would ever do. Instead, we enjoy shots of two people with their clothes on embracing in bed. I am not exaggerating when I say this is contrary to everything Eurotrash has ever stood for.

However, what we see of the special effects are vintage Eurotrash. Unfortunately, since parts of this movie are very dark and grainy it is tough to view many of those effects. A certain mean spiritedness that screams Eurotrash pervades this film. When an Arabic man pulls back the curtain to greet his bride on his wedding night, the zombies are eating her. 

To the plot! Three bumbling grave robbers disturb the tomb of Safiraman/Sefirama (I am unsure of the exact spelling, so will use Safiraman). They are accosted by Xena, Lunatic of the Sands, who entreats them not to disturb Safiraman’s rest. Later in the movie, Xena rejoices at Safiraman’s awakening. Perhaps she wants to be on Safiraman’s good side after his undead legions overrun the earth, or maybe she even wants to be Safiraman’s queen! Alas, Xena’s plans are throttled – along with Xena – when Safiraman strangles her.

The American fashion models arrive soon after the raiders open the tomb. Yes, you heard correctly. These models and photographers have a permit to film ANYWHERE in Egypt, and they’ve taken a hankering to Safiraman’s final resting place! 

Rick, the brains of the tomb raiders, sabotages a camera and then resigns himself to waiting around. When one of the models takes a liking to him, they don’t show that sex scene, which means the participants must have taken their clothes off.

Safiraman awakens! The first item on his To-Do list is to destroy the violators of his tomb. To do that, he needs his trusty undead legions, who soon rise. Safiraman is a mummy but his legions are zombies who munch on flesh, entrails, and intestines.

In the meantime, the models are growing restless because Bill the photographer wants to get as many shots as possible. Every B-movie needs its resident asshole, and Bill seems to qualify, but is it true? I can see how Bill would want to get all the shots he can. Perhaps the most disturbing feature of this movie is the fact that I empathized with the least likable character.

Dawn of the Mummy is fifteen minutes too long. It would have been perfect between 75 and 80 minutes. Gore aside, it is a funny movie. Most mummy movies are campy by design, and this is no exception. 

I would classify Dawn of the Mummy as an American B-movie with Eurotrash special effects. It isn’t a can’t-miss classic, but if you have a hankering for a campy mummy movie with gory effects, you could do worse.

This month, I am reviewing Eurotrash zombie movies. You can read reviews of Burial Ground, Zombie, Hell of the Living Dead, and Zombie Lake here, here, here, and here. If you like these reviews and want BONUS CONTENT, consider subscribing to my Substack, also called Abandoned Places. Next month I will be reviewing Frankenstein movies!

Posted on

Zombie Lake (1981): The Worst Naked-Women-Skinny-Dipping-with-Zombies Eurotrash Movie!

Say you are hosting a party that’s gone on waaay too long, and you want people to leave, but you do not want to appear rude. Don’t worry, I’ve got you covered. Just pop a copy of Zombie Lake (1981) into your trusty DVD player (you still have a DVD player, right?). In five minutes, everyone will have fled and you’ll be all alone! Of course, you might stay alone the rest of your life because nobody will ever talk to you again, but that’s another problem.

Is Zombie Lake that bad? Yes. Yes, it is. Director Jean Rollin disavowed this movie. Mr. Rollin, one of the guiding lights of 1970’s Eurotrash cinema, has also directed porn and even filmed a scene featuring a man french-kissing a woman’s severed head. 

Zombie Lake begins with a young lady who skinny-dips in a lake, ignoring the omnipresent signs that say DON’T SWIM HERE. She leaps right into the water, which is full of frogs, leeches, snapping turtles, and Nazi zombies. Sure enough, a Nazi zombie rises from the scummy depths and pulls her down.

Once awakened, the zombies decide they deserve some fun and shamble from the muddy waters of the lake to wreak havoc at a nearby French village. Why? Cue the flashback! Ten years ago, an occupying German soldier rescued a female villager during World War II. 

They have a beautiful moment together in a barn where the camera focuses on her love-contorted face – and stays there, not moving. After fathering a daughter, the soldier is slaughtered by the French Resistance and dumped into the lake with his murdered comrades. The mother dies also, because she read the script.

The zombies mostly attack nubile young women. The highlight – or lowlight – of this movie is when the women’s volleyball team all decide to go skinny-dipping in the lake, because that’s totally normal. The sole survivor rushes screaming into the village, where she bursts into the local tavern in a naked frenzy. 

Meanwhile, Daddy zombie visits his ten-year old daughter to give her the locket gifted to him by the girl’s mother while sappy music plays in the background. Later in the movie, he fights another Nazi zombie who wants to hurt her!

Watching them roll around in the damp grass in slow motion, I began to reassess my life. I burst into tears and had an emotional breakdown. After that, I went for a long walk and then drove three hundred miles to Central Park to watch the grass grow. When I came back, the zombies were still rolling around in the grass. 

After 80+ minutes of agony, the girl lures the zombies into the mill, where they are torched by a flamethrower and the movie lurches to a merciful end. As I took the DVD from the player with numb fingers, the same thought kept running through my head…I will never get that $12.95 back.

Zombie Lake is an exploitation film that combines several subgenres, Nazisploitation and sexploitation. Unfortunately, its main subgenre is boringsploitation. Yes, there are many naked swimmers in this movie, but it is a horribly unsexy film. The nudity feels clinical rather than exciting. If you want to see a wonderful scene of a beautiful woman swimming underwater, watch The Creature From the Black Lagoon, a flawed movie with great cinematography.

I do not recommend Zombie Lake to anyone. The story is deathly dull, the plot isn’t scary, the violence is goofy, and the zombie makeup is so bad you can see where it flakes off on their necks. I say this as a huge fan of Jean Rollin, who has directed some of the greatest Eurotrash movies ever. Just skip this one.

This month, I am reviewing Eurotrash zombie movies. You can read reviews of Burial Ground, Zombie, and Hell of the Living Dead here, here, and here. If you like these reviews and want some bonus content, consider subscribing to my Substack, Abandoned Places!

Posted on

Hell of the Living Dead (1980) Review: Eurotrash Zombie Jungle Hell

Hell of the Living Dead is an amalgam of two crazes that swept grindhouse cinemas in the 1970s, jungle cannibalism and zombies. A word of warning: make sure you are renting/buying the correct film. According to IMDB, this movie is also known as Virus, Night of the Zombies, and Zombie Creeping Flesh. I ended up viewing twenty minutes of Zombie 3, another movie, before realizing my mistake. 

When I rented Hell of the Zombies, it skipped ten minutes into the film. I watched the first ten minutes afterwards, but didn’t need to. In fact, I believe the movie is better without the introductory sequence. By the way, I reviewed two other Eurotrash zombie movies, Burial Ground and Lucio Fulci’s Zombie, here and here.

To the plot! A power plant in New Guinea run by an organization called Hope (irony!) malfunctions. Long story short, a dead rat clambers into a guy’s hazmat suit, which leads to pipes releasing noxious green gas that kills everybody. Except they’re not dead! 

Cut to an embassy, where we meet our special forces heroes, four guys who dress in blue fatigues and blue caps that make them look like janitors instead of highly trained soldiers. Maybe the costume budget ran out? 

They are sent on a secret mission in New Guinea, where we meet a pair of reporters stuck in a van with an angry man, his sullen wife, and their sick child. The kid seems to be on his last legs, but nobody helps him. This is strange, as you’d think his parents would want to get him medical attention.

Instead, the reporters leave the van and take a leisurely stroll around the deserted town. The wife takes a walk also – probably to get away from her husband – and is eaten by a zombie. The man is asleep in the van when his son dies, becomes a zombie, and eats him. Nothing in this scene makes any sense.

The reporters are the only survivors. They  join up with our four blue-clad Rambos, who are concerned they’ll blab about their ultra secret mission, but bring them anyway. Good thing they did, because they need intel to complete their mission! 

Enter the female reporter, who proves her worth by stripping down to a skimpy thong and dressing like a native. She infiltrates a village and learns that the plague is spreading amongst the natives. Since the zombies are literally everywhere, this is obvious, but it’s still a job well done! I can only imagine the brainstorming session that produced this plot point.

Hell of the Dead soon settles into a pattern, with our commandos killing bunches of zombies and then driving away. We witness grainy jungle footage, exotic animals, and wild dancing, as well as the natives disemboweling animals and eating unspeakably gross things. 

Turns out our blue-clad Smurfs aren’t just mindless killing machines. One of them has a thing for female reporters, but his hard-ass leader won’t put up with any of that romance bullshit. The commando who looks like Klaus Kinski enjoys taunting the zombies before blowing their heads off, which seems stupid but is realistic as a reaction to stress. 

The fourth commando is the quiet one, and you know what they say about the quiet ones. He wears a backwards cap and drives the jeep. But he harbors a terrible – or awesome – secret, which leads to the high point of this movie.

The Blue Goons check out a house. There is no reason to do this, other than the fact that they read the script. Backwards Cap Guy is sent to canvas the basement, where he throws away his guns and drapes a little green dress over his blue camos. Donning a tophat, brandishing a cane, he waltzes until the zombies gobble him up.

Undeterred, our valiant friends soldier on until they reach the Hope power plant, where we learn that Hope’s vision statement is solving the world’s overpopulation problem by designing a chemical that will make people in third world countries eat each other. IMO, this is nasty enough to seem plausible. The commandos’ mission is to destroy the incriminating documents, which they do before the zombies eat everybody. The end.

Hell of the Living Dead was supposedly inspired by Dawn of the Dead, and the two movies are similar in that they both contain the word Dead. By Eurotrash standards, this is a decent movie that becomes a great movie if you watch it drunk. Don’t watch it high, or when you are eating dinner. Actually, do not watch any Eurotrash movie when eating dinner. However, if you are a fan of cheesy 1980’s zombie jungle movies, this is a must-see.

Posted on

A Review of Zombie (1979), by Lucio Fulci: A Eurotrash Masterpiece

Lucio Fulci’s Zombie is the perfect movie to watch when you are discovering you might have a drinking problem. The first time I watched this film was at a high school party, when we sat around the television set in the living room drinking beer and watching this flick on VHS. 

Many of my fellow partygoers were hooking up and slipping away to look at the stars, discuss the meaning of life, and paw at each other, but I was made of different stuff. Besides all the beer, I ended up eating a whole box of Oreo cookies and barely made it to the eyeball piercing scene before spewing up black chunks everywhere. I’m sure I looked like one of the zombies in this movie!

When I watched Zombie a second time as part of my Eurotrash zombie watch – you can read my review of Burial Ground here – it was better than I remembered, but my memories are so hazy so that means nothing. I quit drinking thirty-one years ago. If I hadn’t quit, I’d be as dead as one of the zombies in this movie.

Zombie is a 1979 Italian zombie flick directed by Lucio Fulci. Unlike many of his later films, this has a plot, even if the plot doesn’t make much sense. An empty sailboat floats into New York Harbor, just like the scene in Dracula when the ghost ship Demeter sails into Whitby. The boat isn’t as empty as it seems, as an unfortunate Coast Guard officer discovers when a zombie rips his throat out!

Enter Anne Bowles, daughter of the boat’s owner. Anne has no idea what’s going on and she hasn’t read the script, so she joins forces with a hard-boiled NYC reporter with a British accent. They trace her father to a Caribbean island, which they reach by hooking up with a couple on a boat. 

I’m not sure what the guy does, but his girlfriend’s hobby is topless scuba diving, one of the many things that screams Eurotrash about this film. While underwater, she sees a shark fighting a zombie, which often happens. She has a camera but doesn’t take pictures of the battle, because who’d want to see something like that?

Cut to the isle, where a woman starts off the morning on the right note by telling her doctor husband how much she hates him. He slaps her and then goes off to his job of wrapping people up in sheets and shooting them in the head. No sooner has he driven off when the zombies attack, which leads to the infamous eyeball piercing scene. Warning: there are many, many gross scenes in this movie.

Meanwhile, our marooned heroes meet the doctor, who tells Anne he was great friends with her father. Since we see a flashback of him shooting her father in the head, perhaps he’s exaggerating. Doc asks them to check on the beloved wife he just slapped. Since everyone in this movie is crazy, they agree.

When they reach the doctor’s house, they find the zombies busy eating his wife, and rush back to the hospital as drums beat in the distance. The doctor tells them a) the dead are rising; b) he’s trying to find the cure. What I want to know is, what is he trying to cure? Get the hell out of there.

The zombies attack the compound when the sun sets. Despite moving slower than grampa shambling on his walker, they kill almost everyone. The survivors reach the boat and set sail. After turning on the radio, perhaps in search of the Bee Gees, they learn that zombies have taken New York City. 

Looking back now, I realize I did have a drinking problem, which was obvious to anyone who knew me. The real shock is how heavily edited the version of Zombie I saw back then was. I don’t recall the topless scuba diving scene at all. I would have remembered, no matter how drunk I was.

If you are an aficionado of Eurotrash zombie movies, it doesn’t get much better than Zombie. Character development has left the building, replaced by a bizarre combination of bare skin and gore. Gore wins by a country mile – we have worms, intestines, and technicolor bile. I will leave you with a friendly warning. Don’t eat Oreo cookies when watching this movie. Recommended!

An earlier version of this review was published on my Substack, Abandoned Places. If you like reviews of horror movies/comics/short stories, please consider subscribing!

Posted on

Burial Ground (1981) Review: A Eurotrash Zombie Primer

This is a review of Burial Ground (1981), an Italian Eurotrash zombie movie released in the wild and wooly days of the early 1980’s. What are Eurotrash zombies, you say? I’m glad you asked! Here are three essential factoids. 1. Eurotrash zombies are gross. Think maggots, green blood, decay. Do not watch when eating lunch. 2. Eurotrash zombies don’t crave brains, and are cannibals in the more traditional sense. Entrails? Spleen? Intestines? Yes, thank you! 3. Eurotrash zombies are crafty. They wield farm implements, use hand signals, and ride horses like they are jockeys in the Kentucky Derby.

Three couples travel to a villa for some fun in the sun, but are interrupted by a horde of zombies released from their burial ground. A word about those burial grounds, which are supposedly Etruscan. Just last month I visited Italy and visited actual Etruscan burial grounds in Orvieto. I didn’t see any zombies and the tombs don’t look anything like the ones shown in this movie. Shame, shame!

Anyway, the villa is inhabited by three couples, one child, and two servants.  The only character I will mention by name is Michael, who is supposed to be a child of about ten to twelve years old but is played by an adult actor with a growth disorder. Michael wears short pants – we call them floods in N.J. – and does not look like a child. Michael interrupts his mother during sex and asks her what she’s doing. The man she is frolicking with is not her husband, which might be why he’s confused. But I don’t think so.

Eurotrash zombies hate it when people have sex, so they shamble to the villa in record time to stop the fornicating couples. In this film, sex consists of the man lying atop the woman with his pants still on while they paw at each other. This isn’t done to appease the censors, as I don’t think there was such a thing in Italy in the early 1980’s. Burial Ground contains full nudity and an incest subplot so nauseating they had to hire an adult actor to play a child.

Our hedonistic couples are in for a long weekend, because these zombies are organized! They set a bear trap, which snares one of the women. The bear trap is a highlight of Burial Ground. It might be my imagination, but it seems like the zombies paused for a moment, proud of their handiwork, before shambling in for the kill.

The survivors gather in the villa and are picked off one by one. When the maid tries to close a window, a zombie hurls a dagger or throwing star and pins her hand to the wall. Maybe it’s a Ninja Zombie! They then use a scythe to cut off her head like an overripe grape. Later in the movie, one of the survivors tosses her corpse to the zombies. It’s every man for himself!

The most disturbing thing about Burial Ground is the character of Michael, hands down. Look, he’s an adult and I sure hope he got paid, but it’s still unsettling to watch a grown man pretend to be a kid. The incest subplot – which is why a child couldn’t play the part – multiplies the ick factor by a thousandfold.

I am unsure why Burial Ground exists. Maybe the movie was a tax write-off, or part of a money laundering scheme, or something even more sinister. Perhaps the zombie apocalypse broke out in Rome and they made this film to cover it up? Bottom line: if you can’t get enough of zombie movies, and enjoy watching them drunk or high, you will love Burial Ground.

An earlier version of this review was published on my Substack, Abandoned Places. If you like reviews of horror movies/comics/short stories, please consider subscribing!

Posted on

Room 237

This is a review of Room 237, directed by Rodney Ascher. Room 237 is a documentary about conspiracy theories that focuses on the movie version of The Shining, directed by Stanley Kubrick. There is a miniseries of The Shining, also, but we shall not speak of that. You can find my review of the Stephen King novel, here.

Short summary: The Shining is one of the greatest horror movies of the 20th century, but it is an ordeal to watch. Kubrick described his movie as “the story of one man’s family quietly going insane together.” None of those family members are very likable or pleasant. Jack Torrance is verbally abusive, his wife Wendy’s coping mechanisms are grating, and Danny is subject to fit and seizures.

Kubrick packs a bunch of subliminal imagery into The Shining. There is Freudian stuff involving mirrors, mazes and doppelgangers, along with lots of fairy tale imagery. Some of the imagery means something, such as when Wendy wears the same clothes as the Goofy sticker on her son’s bedroom door. Some of the imagery might mean something – based on recurring bear imagery, one can make an argument that Danny was being sexually abused by his father. Some of the imagery doesn’t mean anything at all, or might mean things the author never intended.

But it is still there, and viewers pick up on it. A side-effect of all the subliminal imagery in The Shining is that it might give people the impression that there’s something happening that they are missing. I am one of those people. Some might invent narratives based on what they think is missing (I am not one of those people), and that is the subject of Room 237.

This documentary asks the question, what is the line between lucidity and lunacy? Spoiler: we don’t get an answer. Does the number 42 pop up everywhere in The Shining? Yes, that is undeniable – Jackie Robinson (No. 42), The Summer of 42, Room 237 (2x3x7). Does that mean Kubrick was commenting on the Holocaust, which is one of the theories espoused by the interviewees? Debatable!

Does the fact that Danny wears a rocket ship sweater mean Kubrick created footage faking the Moon landing? The Overlook itself is a labyrinth with an impossible window. Does that make Jack a Minotaur? If you watch The Shining forwards and backwards, what will you see? Is there a cloud with Jack’s face superimposed on it in the beginning of The Shining? I couldn’t see it, but someone else did. Was it real?

Parts of Room 237 are a slog to watch, but I have never seen a better documentary illustrating why people believe in conspiracy theories. Recommended for conspiracy theory buffs and fans of The Shining!

Posted on

Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979)

This is a review of Nosferatu The Vampyre (1979), directed by Werner Herzog and starring Klaus Kinski and Isabelle Adjani. I rewatched this movie to see how it compared to the newest version of Nosferatu, now in theaters, but that’s another post. The plot: Jonathan Harker leaves his wife Lucy, traveling from Wismar, Germany to Transylvania to consummate a real estate deal with an eccentric count. Beforehand, he stops at the local inn, where in time-honored fashion the locals beseech him not to go.                

Spoiler: Harker goes. He walks to Borgo Pass, where a buggy with black horses takes him to the castle, which is a ruin. He’s met by Count Dracula himself, played by noted thespian and homicidal maniac Klaus Kinksi. Mr. Kinski is grotesque. He can pass for human – barely. His features are rodentlike, including a pair of jutting incisors. It’s a wonderful makeup job. The good Count only appears at night, speaks in a low voice, and seems depressed. Who wouldn’t be depressed, living in a shitty old castle for hundreds of years?                

After signing the contract, Dracula leaves Harker behind and travels to Wismar by ship, bringing rats, stormy weather, and the plague. Harker manages to escape, but part of him dies on the journey home. When he exits Dracula’s castle he is still human, but he loses his humanity on the journey back. The man is gone, replaced by something else.                

Dracula arrives in Wismar. The plague hits. The action shifts from Harker to his wife, Lucy. Dracula wants Lucy, but gives her agency. By agency, I mean he doesn’t just take her when she rejects him. The choice is hers. This is one of the more interesting parts of the movie. Does Dracula leave her be because of an obscure vampire rule? He has taken hundreds of men, women, and children against their will. What makes Lucy different? I will be honest with you, reader. I have no idea.

The plague worsens. The Count’s coming brings death and mayhem, and he can’t even bring himself to care. He’s dead, after all. The living do care. There is a scene towards the end, when Lucy walks amongst the revelers celebrating their last supper after the plague has ravaged the city. You can tell what she’s thinking: this can’t go on. Will goodness triumph, or will darkness cover all? Since this is a Werner Herzog movie, who knows?

Nosferatu might not move quickly enough for people, especially horror fans. It’s slow and brooding. The scenery is wonderful, lots of forests, canals, mountains, and old, decrepit castles. This is a monster movie that seems real. It has focus, and part of that is because of the level of detail. People have argued that the scenes inside Dracula’s castle are dreamlike, but I disagree. When Harker awakens after his night with the count, he finds the breakfast table crowded with food, including an unplucked chicken.

The problem is that reality is awful. Nobody knows this more than the Count, who I would argue is looking for an excuse to die. By not taking Lucy, he gives her the means to end his existence – if she has the belly for it. Spoiler: she does.

Recommended!