80's Italian Horror Part Seven

ZOMBIE HOLOCAUST

(1980)

Dir - Marino Girolami

Overall: WOOF

Exploitation filmmaker Marino Girolami's Zombie Holocaust, (Zombi Holocaust, Doctor Butcher M.D., Island of the Last Zombies, Queen of the Cannibals, Zombie 3), is as comatose-inducing as cannibal/mad scientist/zombie movies ever get and ergo an insultingly wretched piece of celluloid.  Euro-cannibal sleaze is inherently awful in its one-note nastiness and while this example features the prerequisite amount of primitive natives running around without clothes on who capture and immediately stick their fingers into anyone that they can catch for a nice, tasty meal, it adds insult to injury with a completely dormant sense of pacing to go along with its grossness.  Every scene is maximized for the least possible engagement as if Girolami was hellbent on utilizing each piece of footage that was shot.  Whether it is characters standing around watching a surgery, standing in other rooms talking, standing in huts talking, walking around the jungle, running around the jungle, being slowly, (slooooowwwllly), led to a sacrificial alter, being left on an operating table to slowly, (slooooowwwllly), cut themselves free with a scalpel, it is all so unwaveringly lifeless that when the ridiculous gore does rear its ugly head, you will probably miss it on account of having long fallen asleep.

WILD BEASTS

(1984)

Dir - Franco E. Prosperi

Overall: MEH

 

Another in a steady tradition of low-budget exploitation movies to put its actors in as much physical danger as could legally be allowed, Wild Beasts, (Wild beasts - Belve feroci), is the final directorial effort from Franco E. Prosperi who appropriately and primarily worked in the mondo documentary genre before this.  As the title would logically advertise, it features a handful of animals, these ones escaping from the Frankfurt zoo after ingesting PCP in their water supply and then going berserk on anyone that is unlucky enough to cross their path.  Long before the days of CGI and presumably made without strictly adhering to the "no animals were harmed in the making of this movie" proclamation, it is a jarring watch that opens with a decapitated horse head and ends with a bunch of children who have also ingested the contaminated water and are now up to typical unwholesome "kids in horror movies" shenanigans.  In between all of that, rats attack and get set on fire, tigers get let loose on the streets as well as on, (hopefully), stunt performers, actors get up close and personal with bears, and elephants stomp on people.  While it actually possess a narrative, maintains a sincere tone, and does not seem to have caused lifelong traumatic physical injuries to its cast unlike Noel Marshall's crime against humanity Roar from three years prior, it is still a repetitive, poorly shot, and unpleasant experience.

GHOSTHOUSE

(1988)

Dir - Umberto Lenzi

Overall: MEH

Whereas foreign producers had attached the "La Casa" title onto Sam Raimi's first two Evil Dead films for non-American markets, Ghosthouse, (La casa 3 - Ghosthouse), was the first actual Italian movie to get the moniker, even though it was an Italian movie shot in Massachusetts.  Written and directed by Umberto Lenzi as a typical, (and most of all, nonsensical), haunted house yarn, it has many of the hallmarks of low-budget Euro-horror from the 1970s and 80s.  This includes a memorable and persistent score that leans heavy on a genuinely disturbing, gibberish nursery rhyme ditty, laughably incompetent performances, bizarre set pieces, and a story line that makes absolutely zero attempts at having logical footing.  Though the middle act drags, things start off strong where a creepy kid and her creepy clown doll inexplicably, (maybe?), manifest some kind of slasher demon that murders her father, turns light bulbs into pulsating balloons, and shatters a mirror that sends shards of glass into her mother's eyeballs.  This is only a teasing though as boatloads more head-scratching moments occur, particularly during the finale which throws coherency right out the window as if it was on fire.  Characters make asinine decisions, inexplicably turn up at different locations that the editing never bothers to explain, and come to conclusions that they would only arrive at because they read the script.  So yes; wacky, hilariously stupid nonsense in the most Italian of ways.