Zombi 3
(1988)
(Guest review by Mike Martinez!)
Directed by: Lucio Fulci (supposedly), Bruno Mattei (realistically), and Claudio Fragasso (yet even more likely)
Another one of those films where the making-of is arguable more interesting than the actual film itself, ZOMBI 3 is an absolute abysmal disaster from frame one. This does lend it a certain level of watchability though, sort of like a train wreck or a horrible automobile accident. The script (by Claudio Fragasso, the brains behind NIGHT OF THE ZOMBIES and TROLL 2) is an absolute mess, but it isn't helped much by overall quite terrible dubbing, hammy performances, and totally inconsistent tone and direction, which varies from scene to scene. The movie has a disjointed, cobbled together feel, mostly is a product of its sordid production.
This film is titled and marketed as a sequel to the 1979 Italian gore horror cult classic ZOMBI 2, which itself was a name-only sequel (I found it a better Prequel) to George Romero's DAWN OF THE DEAD, named ZOMBI in Europe. This film has no connection to the other two films besides the presence of Ottaviano Dell'Acqua (who was a zombie in ZOMBI 2) and the crediting of gore maestro Lucio Fulci as director. The stories vary, but supposedly Fulci was hired by producer Franco Gaudenzi (producer of the loveably awful STRIKE COMMANDO) to make the movie in the Philippines based on the screenplay by Fragasso. Fulci apparently shot about 40-70 minutes of movie, but was ill and/or unhappy with the production and quit/got fired. It was made in 1987 but not released until 1988.
Trash director Bruno Mattei, a regular director for Gaudenzi and originally to shoot just for the second unit, (in-between the filming of STRIKE COMMANDO and DOUBLE TARGET), stepped in and finished the film. Not only did he finish the film, he reshot, and totally reworked a lot of it, added in new subplots involving the military attempting to contain the disease and scientists trying to drum up a cure to pad out the film's running time. Every actor I've ever talked to who was in one of Mattei's films has said that Fragasso usually stepped in and took over the bulk of the directing duties while Mattei just sort of stood by and made sure everything ran smoothly. Well, the finished product sure as hell feels more like a Mattei/Fragasso film than any Fulci film. It has no style and no gothic horror overtones, but instead has a fast pace, inane overacting, and lots of action and explosions... concepts alien to any Fulci film I've seen.
The "film" begins in a Southeast Asian lab where some scientists are testing out a new serum or biological weapon (one or the other, depending on who in this movie you listen to) on a Filipino cadaver. We wonder how the scientists can actually see what they are doing as it's all dimly lit except for a green backlight, plus a little blinky red light.
Well something goes terribly wrong and the test subject (the only Filipino there) comes to life, seems absolutely elated for a minute, only to then horribly convulse and explode like a beach ball. Thoroughly zombified, the corpse then bursts through his glass enclosure and just sits there making faces at the camera. Apparently nothing noteworthy happened after that as we cut to the head scientist on the phone. Did the zombie kill anybody? Did it just drop dead? Aren't the scientists concerned with infection? What?
The head scientist, who we can just call "Professor Know-it-all", portrayed by Robert Marius in what is sure to go down as one of the most awful performances in history, announces to his superiors that he is quitting the project due to moral concerns. His delivery is so halting and stilted that it's difficult to pay attention even to his simple message.
So then Professor Know-it-all and a military / scientific convoy is on its way to the airport to meet with a blue Gazelle helicopter and a Bad-Ass Looking Mercenary with sunglasses. Upon arrival, a terribly lame action sequence erupts and two of the airport technicians roll up in a van and reveal themselves to be eco-terrorists of some sort.
They spray their M-16s at Know-it-all and his guards, gunning down most of the guards (rather easily and miraculously not hurting Professor Know-it-all). The Bad-Ass Mercenary guy manages to kill one terrorist, before himself succumbing to gunfire, leaving the remaining terrorist who whacks Professor Know-it-all in the face with his M-16 and steals his briefcase. Apparently this heist was poorly planned as there is no getaway car... and the terrorist opts to just run for the woods, neglecting the opportunity to hijack the nearby helicopter or even attempt to disable it or kill the pilots. Well of course it quickly comes after him and the gunner manages to wound the terrorist who drops the case (which is apparently just filled with Death-One virus) and gets it all over himself. Uh oh, didn't see that coming.
The terrorist seems to easily shrug off his bullet wound, more concerned with his exposed hand turning green and oozing puss all over the place. He belaboredly enters a nearby tourist resort and oddly has to bribe the oddly corrupt (and Filipino) clerk to get a room for the night. Okay, so this terrorist was obviously after Death One, so he must be aware of what it is. Why doesn't he go for some sort of help or treatment, instead just opting to ride it out in some hotel room? Maybe he's not thinking too clearly after being shot and infected with a horrible, painful disease? Who knows...
So we then introduce a random hard-ass military General who we'll just call "Gen. No-nonsense", played by the recently deceased American expatriate Mike Monty (THE FIRING LINE). He informs Professor Know-it-all, in what looks like a Manila hotel lobby, that the virus is loose. The professor is unconcerned since it burns out on contact with oxygen. But the general tells him that the terrorist got infected with it before he got away. Well somehow that changes everything... the professor freaks out and gets all over-acty. General No-nonsense orders some military alert.
Meanwhile, a bellboy at the terrorist's hotel has to deliver his umpteenth pitcher of water up to the terrorist. He enters and is directed to just leave the pitcher on the table. The bellboy takes the old empty pitcher away. We then see inside the room's bathroom where the terrorist is hiding, looking really bad with green sores all over his face. He's decided to use a really long carving knife (where did he get a huge knife?) to hack off his infected hand. Well this doesn't do much, except cause brackish green blood to spew all over the place.
Outside, the bellboy collides with a random maid, dropping his empty pitcher, which shatters. He tries to pick it back up but cuts himself on the pieces and infects himself. The maid then comes into the terrorist's room to see what's wrong, enters the bathroom and is suddenly killed by being pushed face-first into the mirror. She bleeds a lot considering she's just being lightly pushed into a mirror, so lightly that the mirror doesn't even break. It's assumed the terrorist has made the crossing and is now a fully fledged violent zombie... in the span of less than a minute after cutting off his hand.
The next thing we know, the faster-than-light decontamination squad (lots of Filipino extras in white Tyvek suits a la THE CRAZIES with hopelessly out-of-date Vietnam War era M-17 gas masks and rubber gloves) is on the scene. They burst in, point their M-16s at the staff and tell everyone not to move and that they're going to be safe. We then get a semi-good steadicam shot of the soldiers going room-by-room grabbing people for disinfection.
One soldier idiotically takes his mask off to yell at the others that "we found him!", causing them all to go into that frenzied Kung Fu movie run through the hotel until they all get to a seated, and very dead, zombie terrorist. What's strange is that they have to pull these clothes on a clothesline out of the way in order to reveal him.... So who originally found him? Did they have to cover him up with the clothes to make his revelation more "dramatic"? So why is he just sitting there, dead? Is he dead? If so, what killed him? We never know. Maybe he's just a bored and despondent zombie who has taken one too many victims? Whatever.
We cut to General No-Nonsense on his phone with some random underling. He's holding the phone in a strange way, I assume so that you can actually see his mouth and how well-dubbed he is. Well he does luck out being dubbed by perhaps the god of dubbing himself, Ted Rusoff, who did voiceover work on a number of early A.I.P. US releases (like YONGARY and MATANGO) before moving to Italy in the 1970's. He's now a pretty well established actor, recently playing the main Semitic antagonist in PASSION OF THE CHRIST. Anyway, No-Nonsense congratulates his subordinates about a job well done and tells them to execute the population and bury them in a mass grave (!). He then tells them to burn the body of the zombie terrorist.
General No-Nonsense seems content that "everything is under control" when we get suddenly treated to another bad acting outburst by Professor Know-it-all who informs him that the ashes from the cremated cadaver can infect animals who breathe them in. (!!!!) What? He said before that the virus burns out on its own after being exposed to oxygen for 30 minutes... and how does any virus survive being flame-broiled in a crematorium kiln?
Needless to say, the ashes go up into the air and get into a rather thick flock of birds... but then we go to some wise-cracking ecologically obsessed black D/J. (!!!) sitting in a recording studio. He kindly informs us that his name is Blueheart, with that same wannabe jive-cracking dubbed voice that every black guy in every Italian movie at the time was dubbed with. He then throws on some Stefano Mainetti "hot new number", which is so 80's it would almost cause me personal injury had there not been a certain element of nostalgia.
A good 20 minutes into the film, our three "intrepid" yet completely inept young-ish heroes drive onto the scene. They're supposed to be U.S. Army recruits but for some reason were totally left out of the previous plot where the "U.S. Army" quarantines the hotel. Perhaps they were on leave and missed the order? I have my doubts that they're really U.S. soldiers in the first place-for one, they've got white undershirts on (soldiers at the time had greenish brown undershirts), they have a license plate on their army jeep, and their haircuts are way too long. This is a huge pet peeve of mine as it can't be too much to ask to just get actors playing soldiers to get a lousy $5 buzzcut! Where was the technical advisor? It's the Philippines! There's got to be tons of American former Army expatriate holdovers from 'Nam more than willing to lend themselves to movie productions (like all the extras from APOCALYPSE NOW). Ugh...
Okay, so the disposable heroes here are Kenny, Roger, and Bo, who are played by Deran Serafian (future director and son of Richard C. Serafian), stuntman Ottaviano Dell'Acqua (who actually played the cover worm-eyed zombie in Fulci's ZOMBI 2), and stuntman Massimo Vanni (the guy who is in almost every Enzo G. Castellari movie including THE NEW BARBARIANS, more for his athletic ability than because he's Enzo's cousin). Because I can never keep track of character names, I'll just refer to them by their actor names... except for Serafian, who we can just call "Clean Cut Hero". Since they're more stuntpeople than straight-up actors, I'll refer to Ottaviano and Massimo both as "Stuntman".
They are seemingly just out for a joyride behind Winnebago containing four horny good-looking girls (one of whom immediately starts yoohooing the equally horny G.I.'s) and two guys. None of these characters seem to have personalities of their own, besides the guy who isn't driving, who is wearing some dorky glasses. He makes a snide remark about the girls in the back fawning over the G.I.'s in the jeep, but then rationalizes that "in a place like this, pretty girls are hard to find". OUCH! What a sharp jab at Filipino women.
I'm not even going to get into wondering what they're doing driving around Luzon with seemingly no destination... it's just standard horror movie cliche by this point to just roll in some oversexed teenagers in an RV, just asking to be horribly killed off.
Back to Blueheart who is now giving some weird spiel about Mother Nature being a violated woman and all that. Really I think listening to his station would be terribly annoying if between every song he goes into a Tokyo-Rose style left-wing propaganda rant. Granted, it's still better than listening to uninterrupted Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh and seems to be the most popular program on the Filipino airwaves as EVERYONE seems to be listening to it.
This audience base extends to Patricia and Glenn, a young couple just driving around the countryside in a red Porsche. Patricia (played by INTERZONE's Beatrice Ring) is a walking horror movie cliche, being the asexual strong woman type so commonplace after Sigourney Weaver and Jamie Lee Curtis pioneered it. We'll just call her "Standard Horror Movie Heroine". Her boyfriend is a skinny and short whiny loser who likes to go on rants and argue with her. It leads me to wonder if they're really boyfriend and girlfriend... I mean, they're on a first name basis and seem relaxed with each other, but they are talking to each other in such an exposition-heavy way as though they've just met. Also, there is no chemistry at all, not even really any eye contact or handholding... maybe they're a married couple?
Suddenly they come across a bunch of dead birds on the road and feel compelled to stop to move the bodies. Turns out the birds aren't really dead but actually hand-puppets which proceed to peck at the boyfriend's cheek. He whines like a little girl and the two drive off. How such a wimpy dork with no charisma luck into a relationship with anybody, much less a beautiful woman, is beyond me.
Back to the RV where it's still more of the same-the skinniest of the girls is basically feeling herself up and kissing at the GI's who are giving her their full attention. Suddenly some zombie birds flock attack bus (in a laughably fakey sequence with more hand puppets and birds on strings) but only manage to bite (and you guessed it, infect) only ONE of the random girls. Swiftly, our three heroes stop the RV and help the girls, one of whom suddenly becomes an expert on the locale and informs us that there's no hospital anywhere close, but there IS a hotel...mmm hmmm...
Okay, back to Standard Horror Movie Heroine and Nerdy Boyfriend Glenn in the car. Glenn is looking really bad and bleeding out of his sores, so Horror Movie Heroine decides to stop off at an old abandoned gas station to get him some water. WATER? Yeah that usually does the trick.
Horror Movie Heroine enters and wanders around the derelict gas station (which is abandoned, totally ruined, and covered in spider webs even though it's right on a busy thoroughfare and zombies have only been loose for less than a day. Suddenly she gets blinded by a random green light (!) and we get our first real zombie action of the movie as a ghoul bursts forth waving a machete at her like a maniac. This whole sequence has to be seen to be believed. It's undercranked to make the zombie knife-thrusts look faster, but this gives it a comical 20's silent slapstick film effect.
The zombie only succeeds in dulling his blade on the walls and floor before accidentally chopping a gasoline pump, which sprays unleaded in his face, incapacitating him. (!!!) How are zombies immune to losing limbs, falling from heights, gunfire to the body, etc. yet knocked out by some fuel in the eyes? Who knows, but Horror Movie Heroine is of the presence of mind to take out her Zippo, light it, and throw it at the zombie, which causes the whole gas station to explode. She gets back in her car and drives off while her dubbed voice declares "thank god... it started!". Umm, why shouldn't it?
Now our military people are freaked out. An uncredited bald extra in military clothes tells General No-nonsense that violence is spreading all over the country and people are eating each other! The General looks unconcerned and just orders him to kill everyone. Professor Know-it-all disagrees and says they need to find a cure. The smarmy General just sits there and makes snide remarks while Know-it-all overacts badly, "When you hired us to work on Death One, we should have known the RISKS!". Okay, if the scientists didn't make "Death One", what are they there for? How did the military (who seem to be completely ignorant) then stumble onto such a powerful biological weapon in the first place?
The main band of protagonists and their newfound lady friends show up at the aforementioned hotel. Man this place is a real mess. They immediately make themselves at home and the wounded one gets taken up to a room to lie down. Most of the hotel building materials are appearing to be rotting away, the telephone doesn't work, and there is toilet paper hanging from the ceiling... and we're led to believe that the zombie plague accomplished this in less than 24 hours!
Characteristically for this kind of film, (especially if anyone has seen RAIDERS OF ATLANTIS, which was also shot in the Philippines) the group stumbles onto a crate full of loaded M-16s and shotguns... in a long-abandoned hotel! What are the chances? Do Hotels usually keep such things in stock?
Stuntman Massimo suggests that he take the jeep to go find some help, and of course one of the attractive women hops in with. As they drive, some rather shameless macking erupts on both their parts. It's a wonder Stuntman Massimo doesn't just pull over and jump the girl.
The random woman and Stuntman Massimo drive along until arriving at some random abandoned village with another old dilapidated hotel (though this one has a swimming pool). While I admit it's a nice location, there seems absolutely no motivation for them suddenly being there. Massimo purports to have engine trouble, stops, undoes ONE of the two jeep hood latches (!!!) and opens the hood! At first there doesn't seem anything wrong with the engine, so the disinterested lass scampers off to wander around the abandoned hotel. Back to Stuntman Massimo and dry-ice steam is now billowing out of the engine, even though it's been off for over a minute and nothing was coming out before.
Meanwhile, the girl is maliciously pushed (?) out of a hotel window and falls into its swimming pool. She starts screaming so Stuntman Massimo dives in to help her. Wow, this must have given him some flashbacks to GREAT WHITE in which his character suffered a similar fate, but Massimo pulls his girl out of the water only to find that she's had both her legs recently amputated! Why his legs are okay is anyone's guess. She IMMEDIATELY turns into a zombie and starts clawing at him. He shoves her off into the water and sees a dirty, kinda ugly local guy shuffling toward him (yeah we know he's a zombie, but how does Massimo?).
I'm always amused by how quickly some characters in movies like this are able to adjust to the situation and immediately figure out what's going on. Stuntman Massimo immediately assumes that a bunch of zombies are about to kill him, so he runs up, grabs onto a handy C-stand which just happens to support his weight, and kicks the ugly guy in the face with no indication that he was threatened in any way. Needless to say, it isn't long before dozens of zombies start following him. Some moving slowly, others wading though water at full bore speed. Several zombies jump out of the local hedgerows to attack him, making me wonder what they were doing hiding there in the first place, and for how long.
This is when our two plot threads finally link, and Horror Movie Heroine and Boyfriend Glenn drive by and pick up Stuntman Massimo. On goes the radio and we're treated to yet more Blueheart, the lovable DJ.
The next sequence is one of those ones Mattei must have added just to beef up the running time. More soldiers in white Tyvek suits and gas masks are wandering around shooting and killing zombies (even with hits only to the body), who are hiding in ridiculous places like fire escapes or on top of secluded columns (!)... Meanwhile Blueheart is on the air, telling that an epidemic of murder, rape, and cannibalism is spreading. Wait, "rape"? Since when are the zombies rapists? I'd assume that you can't really blame the rape spree on the zombies, more or less just a side effect of law and order breaking down. That could be an interesting question-how many of us would immediately become rapists should society crumble? Well, I hardly doubt the film is intelligent enough to tackle that subject. Speaking of which, a zombie jumps off of a solitary support column and trounces a soldier with a very dirty uniform. It's dirty because either it's "Take-2" (yeah right) or else the stuntmen rehearsed the scene and didn't bother changing uniforms. The soldier opts to KNIFE the zombie in the chest (!!)... which appears to kill (!!!) the zombie. So these zombies aren't your standard shoot-in-the-head variety? You just need to shoot them, period, and they die? Weird.
Our heroes in the hotel are lamenting the loss of the wounded girl. Another random, undeveloped girl and her equally random, undeveloped boyfriend decide it's time for some chow. They enter the hotel's kitchen and the guy opens the refrigerator door to find a zombie head sitting there on a plate (!). The zombie head comes to life (!!!) and floats toward him, biting him twice in the neck (!!!!). So these zombies can be killed by being knifed or shot to the body, yet they can survive decapitation AND break the laws of physics! Wow! The girlfriend screams only to have a zombie hand come in from offscreen and rip out her throat... I guess (the effect is gory but it seems more like he's ripping off an extra flap of skin she has over the normal skin on her neck). So I guess there's zombies inside already? Strange that none of this attracts attention of any of the other characters in the hotel, nor is it (or the two people just killed off) mentioned later in the film.
Standard Horror Movie Heroine is still driving Stuntman Massimo and her Nerdy Boyfriend Glenn, who is still suffering slowly from his bird bite. It's full-blown night. Wow, this is certainly taking a lot longer for them to get to the hotel from the abandoned village than it did to get to the village from the hotel. How fast is she driving? 10 mph? Glenn announces one of the most ridiculous lines I've heard in any zombie film, "I'm feeling better now Patricia, but I'm thirsty... for your BLOOD!" He immediately attacks her at "human-normal" speed. This causes her to swerve and stop the car (but not crash it, as damaging a Porsche would exceed the film's budget), and get out and run away (!) while stuntman Massimo and Zombie Glenn duke it out on a bridge! Stuntman Massimo kicks the crap out of zombie Glenn, but is dogpiled and gangbanged by a sudden onslaught of zombies. Horror Movie Heroine hurts her ankle and runs into some zombies blocking her path. The zombie movement is absolutely glacial and there is no danger of them catching up to her at their current rate of movement. Rather than get back in her (perfect condition) car and drive away, she instead opts to jump off the bridge. (!!)
Back at the hotel, the zombie of the first girl to die there (the one bit by the bird) is hovering over her friend, who appears to have just slept through her other friend getting horribly mauled to death in bed next to her. The zombie girl actually speaks "Nancy!" (!), alerting Nancy, who then gets up and jumps out of the way when the zombie girl lunges at her. This means the zombie girl (who has makeup on her face but none on her arms and legs) leaps right through the window, falls two floors and dies. Dies? Zombies can't take a two story fall all of a sudden?
Meanwhile, Clean-cut Hero and Stuntman Ottaviano are on watch when suddenly the RV lights come on (!) and Horror Movie Heroine walks toward them, silhouetted and staggering in like zombie (!!) yeah, it's a wonder they don't shoot her but then again keep in mind the two of them haven't actually seen any zombies yet. Well, the REAL zombies are right behind her of course and once they come into view they opt to just stand there and pose for the camera. This gives the heroes time to build a shitty barricade and ready a Flame thrower (!??).
Once the zombies do break in (as slow as molasses), they suddenly grab a random guy (where did he come from) at faster-than-human-normal speed and maul him, but none of the other heroes seem to care. Suddenly zombies are jumping down from upper floors to battle our heroes one at a time... how did they get up there? One zombie lives through getting a giant wooden stake through the neck, but another dies by just getting shot with an M-16 in the back. Go figure.
The remaining heroes-Clean-cut Hero, Standard Horror Movie Heroine, Stuntman Ottaviano, Dorky Guy with Glasses, and "Nancy the Barely Developed Random Girl" all book for the jungle.
Now it's broad daylight in the jungle in a filler scene involving only Stuntman Ottaviano. Assumably this scene was shot after everyone else had gone home and Mattei only had Ottaviano handy. Apparently he's scouting ahead for the rest of the group (encumbered due to Horror Movie Heroine limping) and he gets to fight several (fast moving) zombies in random shack... one of which bursts out of a CABINET (???) from which he can't escape. Why did the zombie climb in the cabinet in the first places?
Ottaviano stabs one with lightly from below with a blunt piece of wood and it dies. We're then treated to a protracted fight on bridge between Ottaviano and another zombie, ending with him smacking the zombie on the head with a big rubber 2x4. He then says "hey look, some canoes!" and in the next shot him and the others are all canoeing away. God this is terrible.
Back to that same Manila Hotel Lobby where the Scientists are dicking around over some paperwork. Apparently they are close to finding a cure and ending this "Useless slaughter!". I'm amazed that the General No-Nonsense so calmly shrugs off the constant abuse from Professor Know-it-all and his cronies without shooting them or even raising his voice.
Meanwhile we get more filler shots of Tyvek soldiers killing zombies while Blueheart yacks on more to the tune of "Run to the soldiers for help! They will cure you". We then get a couple groups of zombies killed en masse with no squibs. Is there supposed to be some sort of anti-military social commentary here? Are we supposed to feel sorry for the zombies, as though they heard Blueheart on the radio and went to get help, only to be mercilessly gunned down? Pttthh...
Our 5 remaining heroes stop on river bank where the Dorky Guy with Glasses decides to chase a chicken. His shenanigans attract the attention of Nancy, who looks at him longingly as though the two of them are destined to be in a beautiful relationship. Ahhh... nothing brings people together better than escaping a quarantine...
The chicken leads him to a group of very Filipino soldiers, and he is immediately killed. I have to point out that a lot of these action scenes are rendered a lot less exciting due to some less-than-stellar sound design. The M-16s sound more like lawn sprinklers than guns, and every single gun sounds the same. No ricochet sound effects, no casings falling on the ground, just lawn sprinkler sounds. Clean-cut hero and Stuntman Ottaviano run in and avenge his death by gunning down a couple of the soldiers who flail around as they fall typical of cheap action movies. Then the group continues on its merry way, though on foot for some reason. Did the canoes run out of gas?
A Bell 206 Jetranger flies in, piloted by two very hung-over looking Filipinos in Tyvek suits. They appear to be responding to orders to land in some random village for some reason. These guys obviously aren't too scared of getting contaminated as even though they're in their Tyvek suits, they don't have gloves or gas masks on like the other soldiers did. Also, even though the exterior shot shows them in clear skies, the interior shot (which looks like it was shot on the GROUND,) has them blanketed by dry ice fog. The co-pilot notices a group of zombies below them, on what looks to be a putting green on a golf course. Some guy in the back pulls out an M-16 and easily guns them all down. No squibs. This scene has no purpose other than to introduce the De-ex-Machina-copter.
Back at a cheaply set up press conference in the SAME Manila hotel lobby with less than 20 extras, where General No-Nonsense proclaims proudly that "all is contained". Professor Know-it-all and the rest of the scientists seem quite unimpressed. More eyebrow raising dialog erupts where the scientists claim that they had nothing to do with Death One's creation, only that they worked on it. Uh huh...
The group of heroes (now numbering 4) gets to another abandoned village. For some reason they all decide to split up, one tends to a pregnant black woman found lying by herself in a dilapidated hospital. Hey, it's been less than 48 hours since the zombie plague erupted, and already the hospital is in total ruins... yet how did this pregnant woman ride the whole thing out without becoming a buffet table for some zombie?
Clean-cut Hero and Stuntman Ottaviano walk into a room of some building (another deserted hotel? This is getting VERY repetitive...) and have a brief stand-off with more Tyvek soldiers. Rather than just shoot them, the soldiers decide to take them on with their bare fists (!!!). Well that's funny because our heroes have no intention of duking it out melee style and immediately shoot the soldiers once they gain the upper hand.
Meanwhile we get two more fights simultaneously. First, Nancy is left tending to the pregnant woman... when another couple of off-screen zombie hands sneak up on her and rip her face off (!). To compound the matter, she is plunged forward into the pregnant woman's stomach (!!!!), which opens up to reveal a full-grown zombie hand (!!!!!) which pokes her eyes out (!!!). It's like the zombies set this overly elaborate scheme up just to kill the woman... and somehow got the pregnant (not zombie) woman to cooperate with them. What happened to her fetus? How does it become a fully grown zombie hand?
Meanwhile Standard Horror Movie Heroine encounters the zombified version of Nerdy Boyfriend Glenn... how did he beat her there? She's been traveling via swimming and canoe not stopping to sleep, eat, or take a dump, and this slow-moving zombie outran her fast enough to set up an ambush (!). He starts to not only talk to her but give us a speech about joining him in zombie land. This talking zombie thing really sucks. It's supposed to make them scary, but it just makes them even more inconsistent as 99% of the ones we met earlier didn't feel compelled to go all Greta Garbo on us. Horror Movie Heroine thankfully dispatches him with a spade to the head, though this is accomplished via a truly cheesy looking fake head. She seems awfully broken up about killing him... leading me to believe yeah he really was her boyfriend... but at least she's found a good rebound guy in Clean-cut Hero... who shows up just in time to rescue her from more zombies who suddenly shamble in. What's with the green back lighting whenever zombies show up?
Our three remaining protagonists leave the house and wander through the village (enshrouded with dry ice fog), only to find most of their exits blocked by zombies. Clean-cut hero hoses lots of them down with his M-16, announcing "there's no stopping them!" even though zombies at falling down like bowling pins all around him. Suddenly ammunition (which they've been spending liberally all through the film with no on-screen reloads) is suddenly announced to be running low.
Conveniently, there's lots of ammo boxes literally strewn around on the lawn (!!!) and a neat row of zombies advancing from behind them. Stuntman Ottaviano finds some convenient gasoline can, lights the ammo boxes (!!!) which proceed to burn calmly (!!!) and scare away the zombies. Why didn't they open the boxes or even attempt a reload? Why isn't the gunpowder in the cartridges causing bullets to shoot everywhere?
Well, what takes care of one horde, but another group of about a dozen zombies comes at them from a small cheaply-constructed hooch. Well, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that any poorly constructed hooch in a cheap action movie is certainly doomed... so of course Standard Horror Movie Heroine finds a convenient pineapple frag grenade which gets lobbed in the general direction of this group of zombies. The resulting explosion is actually pretty cool, including an aerial shot of the building exploding (I highly doubt any hand grenade could do this). What's lame is that the zombies are a very safe distance away, yet feel compelled to throw themselves into the air. Why didn't he just throw it right at them instead of blowing up the house? Well, it seemed to work anyway, and got a cool explosion in there.
They leave to find a chopper just peacefully sitting in the middle of a field. It's the same Bell 206 Jetranger that we saw the random hung-over Filipino soldiers riding on before... what is it doing there? What happened to the soldiers?
Clean-Cut Hero announces out of nowhere that "till yesterday [flying choppers] was my job", so he and Standard Horror Movie Heroine run for the chopper while stuntman Ottaviano suddenly decides to stay there and "cover them" by wasting his remaining ammo on the slow moving zombies. Pay attention to their costumes here-a lot of them are "frayed up" by obvious zig-zag cut marks in the fabric. Are the zombies undead medieval jesters or something? Stuntman Ottaviano guns them down with his M16 and says some ridiculous expository dialog "Out of ammo! Looks like I've had it!" and proceeds to fight melee style with the zombies even though his friends have started the chopper and have proceeded to take off without him.
Realizing his error, he grabs the skid of the chopper, but Clean-cut Hero, now piloting, doesn't think to either A) land so Stuntman Ottaviano can easily get in, or B) get higher up so the zombies can't grab him. Maybe this wouldn't have been a problem had zombies not been HIDING (!!!) in hay bales underneath the chopper, who suddenly jump out (at full speed) and doom our poor friend Stuntman Ottaviano.
Some bad overacting relays how Standard Horror Movie Heroine and Clean-Cut Hero are mildly sad about their friend's fate and they merrily go about their business.
Meanwhile Stuntman Ottaviano is on the ground, left for dead, literally dogpiled by zombies. He's suddenly all bloody but has no visible wounds. Somehow he gets a second wind manages to fist-fight off the zombies (!!!) one by one until he's able to run free toward some more Tyvek-clad soldiers. For some reason he expects them to come to his aid even though A) he has just killed a lot of their friends and B) he's obviously very wounded AND infected. Well that's a no-brainer. The soldiers kill him, and it's actually a pretty good slow motion death scene... but I don't feel sorry at all to see him go. He was an idiot for not jumping on the chopper, though of course screwed by his friends who were too stupid to let him on.
On board the chopper, we get some more ridiculous expository dialog attempting to wrap it all up with some message, so Clean-Cut Hero closes it up by turning on his helicopter radio. Of course, the only thing playing is Blue Heart, who is still broadcasting as normal even though it turns out *gasp* he's a Zombie! What? So now zombies can not only talk, but speak in their normal voice, AND are still compelled to go to work and continue their normal job like nothing ever happened to them? As a final plot twist, this really sucks. It makes so little sense that we'll just pretend it didn't even happen.
The hero pets his new girlfriend on the cheek, the camera zooms in on her, freeze frame, and the credits roll. Those used to seeing movies like this will be fairly shocked by how small the credited cast and crew is. Even central characters like Professor Know-it-all (Robert Marius), General No-Nonsense (Mike Monty), the Nerdy Guy with Glasses, the entire scientific staff, Boyfriend Glenn, the pregnant woman, the terrorists, and half of the people in the bus go uncredited. I'm guessing they (as well as most of the crew) were mostly Filipino natives and deemed not important enough to credit, or they weren't covered by the Italian guild rules for credited film artists. Either way, it's lame as it robs me of vital information... but it isn't the first Italian film shot in the Philippines to do this. Also, Alan Collins AKA Luciano Pigozzi is oddly credited (he was in several of Mattei's films of the period) but never appeared in the film.
Either way, it's obvious that this is not a Fulci film. The crew, the feel, the cast, the music, even the font on the titles is screaming out a Bruno Mattei / Claudio Fragasso collaboration. Still, all the interviews with the cast since have given full credit to Fulci for directing their scenes. I sense a conspiracy, as though all the players were contractually obligated to promote the film falsely as a Fulci project, hence a truer sequel to the eons-better ZOMBI 2, when in reality little of what Fulci filmed or oversaw remained in the finished product. I'm sure the truth is out there.
The End
Written in January 2008 by Mike Martinez and used with his permission.
Starring: Beatrice Ring, Deran Serafian, Ottaviano Dell'Acqua, Massimo Vanni, Marina Loi, Robert Marius, Mike No-Nonsense, Ulli Reinthaler, Deborah Bergamini, Rene Abadeza, the voice of Ted Rusoff
Not Starring: Luciano Pigozzi (as Alan Collins) even though he's in the credits for some reason.
"Hi, I'm a zombie!"
"Professor Know-it-all"
"maybe not-so Bad Ass Mercenary"
"General No-Nonsense!"
"I dropped my cue cards!"
"let's hope the hotel let him keep the towel"
"practicing her kissing on the mirror"
"Blueheart the D/J"
"Clean-cut Hero"
"Stuntman Ottaviano"
"Stuntman Massimo"
"oversexed, unattached attractive young women with no personalities"
"zombie lunch"
"Dorky Guy with Glasses"
"Standard Horror Movie Heroine"
"Nerdy Boyfriend Glenn"
"when hand puppets attack"
"grrrrr!!!"
"why would they T.P. the place?"
"Nerds with Guns"
"Please help me! Even though I'm all bloody, I'm not a zombie!"
"take that you friggin... monster!"
"it's what's for dinner"
"too, too quiet."
"The Fog, it ain't!"
"probably the best effect in the movie"
"obligatory zombie immolation scene"
"yippee kay-yay!"
"someone help him out of that cabinet!"
"Nancy gazes longingly"
"another nerd bites the dust"
"wheee!!"
"Bell 206 Jetranger"
"they are totally on the ground"
"we got everything under control!"
"I need a drink... and a better agent"
"oh he totally copped a feel"
"Forgive them father, for they know not what they do!"
"Zombie Blueheart!!!"
