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I've seen quite a few zombie movies over the years and I have to say that the european ones are the best. The gore effects in these movies are very realistic and provide quite a few scares and Night of the Zombies is no exception.The gore effects and storyline are good and is what I expected from this type of movie, but what I didn't expect was the overlong use of stock footage from a National Geographic special which was not only unnecessary but very annoying and the dubbing could also have been handled better, but overall not a bad movie storywise. Just remember to keep the VCR remote close so you can fast forward the stock footage.

MY RATTING 7/10

.. is good and bad. The acting, bad. Script, bad. But I give it credit for one thing; zombies. Yes, the make up was horrible, but this movie had so many zombies. I loved it when the zombies chased the boat into the window, very cool. This movie is just fun to watch. I laugh at the stock footage and some of the acting, but I must admit i wish more movies like this would be made in the new millienium.

7/10

This low-budget terror motion picture deals with a group formed by a four-man commando squad who run into a pack of natives terrorizing island of Papua . After a chemical leak at the Hope Centre in New Guinea , an enterprise devoted to feeding underdeveloped countries, turns its staff into flesh-eating zombies , there a special force led by Mike London (Jose Gras 0r Robert O'Neil) are sent to investigate it . They run into a TV news crew led by celebrity journalist (Evelyn Newton) , who are after the same news . As a female reporter and her cameraman boyfriend team up with a four-man commando unit in the New Guinea jungle whom are fighting flesh-eating zombies . Then , the group discovers that the entire country has been overrun by zombies .

Gory, gruesome , pretty repellent , and ghastly cannibal feast in which the stumbling flesh-eating stiffs and can be only destroyed by fire in the head . Unrelenting shock-feast plenty of disturbing images laced with brief touches of black humor . Army of Zombies appearance roaming the countryside , village and some people besieged inside a mansion and a factory deliver the goods , enough to be interesting . Bruno Mattei's main great success is regularly directed with startling visual content and acceptable production by Jose Maria Cunilles , also producing to Mattei and Fragasso a pair of "spaghetti westerns" titled ¨Scalps¨ and ¨Apache Kid¨ ; furthermore special mention to filthy make-up by the craftsman Giuseppe Ferranti. In the first draft, Claudio Fragasso had followed the idea of an entire Third World made up of an army of zombies against whom the armed forces of the industrialized nations would have had to fight. However, the script had to be altered considerably due to budget limitations. This frightening movie is plenty of thrills , chills, body-count executed by the eerie Zombies and photographed in pallid color with lurid images and passable results . Stock footage from the film Nuova Guinea, l'Isola Dei Cannibali was used for the native scenes , it has been recently re-released on DVD as The Real Cannibal Holocaust. This is an ordinary excruciatingly Zombie film where the intrigue , tension , suspense appears threatening and lurking in the sunny outdoors and every room , and corridors from a house , a shack , a native hamlet , jungle and many other places . At the time considered the plus ultra of thoroughly disturbing movie is less stomach-churning by nowadays's standards, yet its fundamental power to thrill remains undiminished. This genuinely frightening story with correct utilization of images-shock is professionally photographed by John Cabrera on location in Barcelona , Catolonia , Spain . Using yet another alias, "Vincent Dawn", Mattei middlingly directed this "Hell of the Living Dead" or ¨Virus¨ , a low-budged zombie picture inspired by other zombie cannibal movies such as Zombi (1978) and Lucio Fulci's Zombie 2 (1979). "Virus" was filmed in Spain and used jungle footage from New Guinea and a patch soundtrack from Goblins "Dawn of the Dead" soundtrack, which was a minor hit in Italy and abroad . ClaudioFragasso, the writer of the screenplay, also directed one half of the movie, he said in an interview .

Mattei directed all kind of genres in low budget and exploitation pictures . He eventually had more pseudonyms than any working director in the world. He returned to editing before making another comeback in 1976 with two low-budget Nazi exploitation films, "Women's Camp 119" and "SS Girls"(1977) . Mattei followed these taboo-breaking films with excursions into porno films and Mondo "shockumentaries", all directed under his many pseudonyms, concentrating on "shock value" with films such as Mondo erotic (1973) and "Libiodomania" . Always on the lookout for new exploitation avenues, Mattei followed with "nunsploitation", with the soft-core sex film La Monaca di Monza (1980) and the violent sex thriller "Guardian of Hell" (1981). Both films involved a partnership with writer/director Claudio Fragasso, who helped him write and direct the back-to-back productions . After directing two women's prison films starring Laura Gemser , Mattei moved to directing sword-and-sorcery flicks , starting with I Sette Magnifici Gadiatori (1983). Both Mattei and Fragasso collaborated on the Sci-Fi/horror flick "Rats " (1984), inspired by the futuristic movies of the early 1980s . Mattei considers this his best work, despite his still having to work with a very low budget. He worked relentlessly through the 1980s, some action flicks and about half of Zombi 3 (1988) after Lucio Fulci was taken off the production, though Mattei was not credited with it.

Rating"Hell of the Living Dead" or "Night of the Zombies" : Passable , this is one more revolting , foul Zombie horror pictures in which the camera stalks in sinister style . It's just one long unrelenting cannibal feast and average budget terror movie that still packs a punch for those who like to be terrorized out their wits.

Hell Of The Living Dead is a typical rip off of Dawn Of The Dead made by Bruno Mattei who is a very cheesy director in my opinion! I know that the acting is awful, the zombies look stupid, the make up is cheap and pretty much everything about this film is very poor, but I still love it! The main characters are a beautiful lady who is very interested in primitive tribes who live in a island in which the story takes its place. The other main characters are a group of soldiers who land on that island in order to be eaten by the zombies lol. The version which I have on a DVD is the anchor bay release. This DVD release contains only English audio which is amusingly made. Anyway, Hell Of The Living Dead contains gore, nudity, zombies, cannibals and everything that a fan of b-grade horror movies needs! Just have some booze before you watch it and prepare your self for the creeping dead that devour the living flesh!

When I first saw this movie on Cinemax nearly 20 years ago, I thought it was very gory and scary. Having seen it again just recently, it's still gory, but it is quite possibly the worst movie ever. I'm convinced it would draw ridicule from Ed Wood.

The plot involves a reporter and her crew of morons meeting up with a crew of moron soldiers to figure out what zombies are doing on a remote island (don't you dummies know you NEVER go into the jungle, unless you want to be attacked by zombies or cannibals (and sometimes tigers)?). Then the zombies show up, and bad things happen. whoopee.

At least zombie movies in the 70's had the sense to be derivative of Dawn of the Dead (if you copy a good movie, you're bound to at least do something right). This movie doesn't bother with any of that; it's just a cannibal movie with zombies instead. And a bad one, at that! The huge, canyon-like gaps in logic are enough to make one commit suicide during a viewing of this film. One of the soldiers mentions that to kill a zombie, you have to shoot it in the head. Does anybody do that? NO!! They waste 5,000,000 rounds of ammunition shooting zombies everywhere but in the head!! And why don't they leave the island? They have a boat!! And why do they just stand there and let the zombies attack them!! The FX are not special, the dubbing is awful (the guy who does the voice of the lead soldier is in every English-dubbed Italian movie), and the lighting is often non-existent. This movie has two highlights: when the heroine decides to get naked for no reason, and her particularly gruesome death. The rest is all lowlights. Avoid at all costs, and destroy every copy you see. You'll be doing everyone a favor.

What to say about this movie? Where to start? I think I will begin with the title. I bought it as "Hell of the Living Dead". It is also known as "Virus", "Night of the Zombie", and "Zombie: Creeping Flesh". Out of these titles the creeping flesh one and virus fit, but the other two do not. Especially, the night one. Most of the zombie action takes place in broad daylight. Then there is the stock footage. I know many have commented on it, but man there is a lot of it. Here is a little advice to all film makers, don't set the movie in a location you can't film in. And if you must use stock footage at least use some different shots rather than just birds and monkeys in the tree tops. Then there is the music. When people say it is just like "Dawn of the Dead" they aren't kidding. It is exactly the same music and when it isn't music from Dawn it is music from a sci-fi movie called "Alien Containamation" and when it isn't music from it, it is a combination of both. Then there is the similarities between Dawn and this movie. The swat team, the reporters, the center at the end and the mall in dawn, the situation at the beginning where the swat team is first introduced, the elevator scene and so on. The zombies themselves aren't the best in the game. Well some do look rather good, but most of them have very little make up. Then there is the swat team who make it through horde after horde of zombie only losing one member, this team seems competent, then they reach the facilty and proceed to become very easily killed idiots. They aren't very distinct either, I think they are all dubbed by the same person.

A good point about this movie is the plot. It involves a leak a research facility called "Hope". Its nice to have zombies come to life for a reason and as bad as this flick is the end isn't to bad with plenty of gore effects. In fact after the "Hope" scene the movie cuts to two people attacked in the park and it is like wow this is looks like a better zombie movie about to start! But it is actually the end of this one. You can learn some lessons from this movie though 1) Zombies can only be killed if you shoot them in the head, but go ahead and shoot them in the body because it looks cool and you never run out of ammunition anyway 2) When going into an area of stock footage natives get the girl in your party to take her shirt off and dress up like a native, does it help, no! But if she's willing to do it let her (why didn't the horny soldiers not make one comment when she took off her shirt?) 3) If your friend is attacked by an apparently dead rat, don't lend a hand he deserves to die for being stupid enough to let himself get killed by a rat 4) Don't put your guns down and put on a tu-tu and top hat and pick up a cane when zombies are in the area 5) When on a beach it is possible to find boats just lying around 6) and finally, don't speculate on why everything is happening till you are out of the building where the zombies are, this just gives them a chance to gang up on you. In the end this is a bad flick with some areas that are OK. If you have a wicked sense of humor though and like making fun of films then give it a try.

A chemical leak at a plant in New Guinea causes the staff--and all of the natives--to turn into zombies. An anthropologist/TV reporter and a SWAT team are stuck on the island fighting for their lives. If there is such a thing as zombieploitation, this Italian movie is it at its worst. It "borrows" from "Dawn of the Dead" (and it sounds like it even uses snippets of the Goblin score), but leaves out or misuses all of the intelligent things that made DotD such a success. The plot and characters are so incredibly inconsistent and the editing is horrendous. It does have a high disgusting gore factor, and some impressive make-up effects (but some awful ones too). The child zombie in the beginning munching contentedly on his father's insides was simultaneously hilarious and sickening. What makes this the most bizarre zombie flick is that the footage of the New Guinea people is apparently taken from some old anthro documentary. One moment the picture is grainy and you see people performing their tribal ceremonies, the next the picture is clear and they are zombified and attacking our "heroes." Sometimes it is inappropriate (a woman eating something is edited to become a woman eating human flesh), and other times it is simply boring and filler (countless shots of animals in the wild). All that said, I think zombie movies are like pizza, and if you think so too, you'll find this one entertaining enough and it might even be funny with a buncha friends. And alcohol. My Rating: 3/10

This is not Dawn of the Dead. It's not Night of the Living Dead. It's a low grade 70's Italian zombie gore flick. The acting is not great, the story is shaky, the dubbing is bad, and the clips of animals are completely off of the story. But you have to take this movie for what it is. It's got some good gore and is a fun movie if you're into zombies. It's not Shakespeare. It's campy and schlocky and goofy, and if you're looking for a true quality horror movie you should go elsewhere. But if you enjoy the Italian zombie genre, you'll enjoy this one. Just don't expect Oscar caliber.

Quite simply the worst acting of any Italian Zombie film I've seen. From the onset the cast have a habit of staring. The gore is pretty good, but not on a par with the better known classics.

'Zombie Creeping Flesh' (as it was originally entitled here in the UK) was one in an entire glut of zombie flicks to follow the success of Romero's endeavours into the (zombie) horror genre.

In it's entirety 'Creeping Flesh' is a decidedly 'weak' film. The acting is crass, macho and hilarious at times. And the fact that the film must consist of at least (I assume) 30% stock-footage gives the impression that director Bruno Mattei really wasn't that enthusiastic about making the film whatsoever - either that or he was severely lacking the funding that it so desperately needed.

Having said that, the film is an entertaining enough affair; in the sense that the comedy and violence is enough to keep most horror fans interested, if not glued to the screen. The idea that zombies, and cannibalism, are a sort of metaphor for Third World hunger is a somewhat unusual idea for a zombie film and I guess this is a sort of reflection surrounding the anxieties in the era in which it was made.

I personally don't believe that this film is as bad as some people have made out. It is, by no means, on par with any of Romero's or Fulci's work yet I don't feel it deserves to be totally written-off. 'Creeping Flesh' is certainly a lot more fulfilling than 'Zombie Holocaust', for example, and a great deal more 'gung-ho'. It just fails though because it is alarmingly 'corny' and very derivate of so much that stood before it. The fact that a fair portion of the soundtrack was originally used in 'Dawn of The Dead' just goes to prove this. If you thrive on gore, zombies, cannibalism, and insane violence then try and check this film out: just don't get your hopes up too high.

When it comes to zombie films we're used to flicks that are below standard, as most of its companions of that era Virus has become quite notorious. So in general, if you like horror and zombie films, check it out and judge yourself if it earns that reputation. I say no, and there are many reasons, mostly the goofs that continue throughout the picture, but also the technical flaws of it. The cast, as in all films of that kind, sucks. The acting is so wooden, I was wondering if Pinoccio would show up. Some of the Zombies struggle to keep a straight face. A major abominations are the scenes where one member of the special forces taunts the walking dead face to face and they do nothing. Zilch. Nada. Speaking about special forces, we are to believe that a special force of just 4 people in blue overalls and plain street shoes is sent to Papua New Guinea, armed with 40 year old Thompson MPs and similar old gunnery. Despite knowing that a headshot kills the zombies from the first engagement they unload their ammunition into the bodies of them over and over again with no effect. Not a smart bunch of people. But it gets worse than that. Owls and hawks fly through the air making the noises of apes, apes leaping through landscapes that look completely different to the setting the actors are in and the most ridiculous geographical good: A herd of African elephants stampeding through the savanna though it was said clearly that were in New Guinea! Hilarious. Well, when the special team storms the embassy we read "policia urbana" on a police car and something with "espanol" on the ambulance, so at least we know where it was shot. Explains also why the natives in Papua don't look like asians. Speaking about hilarious, this flick brings you the most ridiculous excuse for a boob scene ever, I don't want to ruin that "no they didn't!!!" experience for anyone who hasn't watched it, see for yourselves. Cause you wouldn't believe me anyways. There are lots of other goofs here and there, like the rat in the facility being the only animal affected by the virus in the whole film, that Geiger counter substitute whose indicator curiously goes to the right when you turn a rotary knob to the right, "zombies" pressing a piece of meat to another actors leg and pulling it through their fingers with their teeth to get the effect of ripping flesh off the bone. Another low point is the scenes ripped from a documentary of an actual funeral ceremony of a tribe, showing a real corpse with an already bloated body, needless to say when that man rises from the dead neither he, the rest of the tribe nor their village looks anything like the stock footage. Of course, we're not spared of footage of a tribe gutting and eating a real animal, in this case a Crocodile. Another example of clever but unconvincing editing is stock footage of an old tribe woman eating something, cut together with new shots of a hand picking maggots from a rotten human head. Counting up all those things you might think there is actually something happening in this film, but it isn't. Most of the time the group slides from one engagement with zombies to another location where the same thing happens again and the story fizzles out rather quickly. So when they finally, after almost 100 minutes reach the research facility and get finished off rather quickly after having survived for so long you ask yourself why on earth those ugly mutts weren't killed after 15 minutes so we wouldn't have to watch it. Seriously, we know that people like Mattei or his colleague D'Amato never did this for artistic reasons but for the money, and this kind of films were made cheap and quick to mooch of the success of Romero and Fulci. Still, there are so many moment ins this film that you wonder if there wasn't anyone in the crew or the casts who told their director "Dude, this isn't right no one will buy it". If I hadn't read that Mattei died this Monday (two days ago on the day I write this) I wouldn't have watched it, but it was the first of his films I found when I searched my collection.

I'm getting rather sick of seeing uncomplimentary reviews of this truly classic gorefest. Yes it does contain poor acting, yes it is a cheap rip off of some of the genres other classic titles, yes it does contain stock footage, yes it is low budget, yes it does contain moments of pointlessness and yes it is pure cheese! I'm unsure what some of the unhappy viewers were expecting when they got this film as it is obviously primarily a zombie film that is fast paced with absolutely loads of blood guts and gore practically all the way through the film. If you want an in depth meaningful life affirming film then look elsewhere. If however you want a highly entertaining fast paced ultra bloody zombie gore film that doesn't let up its relentless assault on the senses until the final reel then wait no longer.

OK... So your gonna make a Zombie Flick... Well first you need Zombie music to set the mood, get Goblin from Dawn of the Dead. In fact, use the same music. And while we are ripping of Dawn of the Dead, let's have a SWAT team.

Now.. set it in a remote location with some natives like Fulci's ZOMBIE

OK... so CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST is a pretty famous flick and Cannibals and Zombies both eat people, so let's get some Cannibal Footage to through in and some pretty wild life stuff too... we can rip that off of that Shockumentary 'Death Faces' which features all the New Guinea cannibal tribes.

Now we have to stir in a large amount of gratuitous gore and go heavy on the eye violence...

Now sprinkle lightly with nudity...

And there ya have it...one gory zombie epic sure to please any die hard zombie gore fan. (but probably no one else will like it)

An outbreak at a research lab takes the world by storm. Within the first 10 minutes you see zombies chomping down into some defenceless victims. A group of soldiers lead by Jose Gras (or Robert O'Neil), who looks like The Six Million Dollar Man Lee Majors and two reporters investigate the new zombie problem and try and survive. Just remember, because the characters in this movie can't seem to get it, just shoot them in the head.

George A. Romero's DAWN OF THE DEAD was a monster influence for this film. To the point where it seems like just a bad remake. The band Gpblin did the music, but most of it was taken right out of the Romero zombie classic. The music works though, extremely well in fact, but it was taken from other films. Never boring, but silly and repulsive. Perhaps undemanding zombie lovers might enjoy this movie.

On a final note it becomes beyond ridiculous when reporter Lia Rousseau (Margie Newton) decides she is going to go into a nearby village within the jungle alone due to her experiences in living in such a village for a year. She strips down in front of five men (four of which are pretty much strangers) and with the quickness of the unbuttoning of a blouse she is suddenly transformed into being able to mix in with the jungle tribe. Face paint and bottoms made from plants included.

When someone says a movie is so-bad-it's-good, they usually mean that it's unintentionally comedic. "Virus" is so inept that it is enjoyable in a way it was not intended to be, but it doesn't fit the traditional so-bad-it's-good classification. (Actually, there was one scene in Virus that I thought was really funny. It involves breasts--you'll know it when you see it.) Here's why I liked Virus: all the ridiculousness adds together to form a fascinating and impossibly cohesive whole. The final product is sort of like a surrealist meditation on human insignificance.

The ridiculous, slow, editing; the idiotic behavior of the characters; and the meandering plot combine to make the movie like a sort of gentle nightmare. It's really like nothing else I've ever seen. There are these lazy, extended struggles with zombies where a bunch of guys just stand back and watch nervously. Most of the heroes are soldiers, and there's an officer, but they are all equally helpless and profoundly "alone." There's a laziness to everything that gives the film an appropriate sense of inevitability. The plot is ambiguous, like in a dream. You get a general sense of what's going on but it's also rather aimless, and only when the characters got to their "destination" did I realize that they had any objective at all. The simple beauty of the animal stock footage provides a startling contrast to the bleakness it surrounds.

I don't mean you have to watch it like it's T. S. Eliot and analyze everything you see for meaning. It is, of course, a meaningless mess of incompetence. But if you sit back and just soak it all in, you will find it hypnotic, bleak, and beautiful.

Another stupid Italian zombie movie. They are all the same really. The story is confusing and mind-numbingly stupid. There are a couple of really disgusting violent moments although overall it is unimaginative and formulaic man with a gun and zombies munching shoulders. Terrible dubbing and poor acting. Don't bother with this trash.

This is a terrible film that had the opportunity to have been considerably better. It has an admirable start with Goblin's electronic music mixed in with story narrative, this gives it a modern feel. As the movie begins we are at a chemical plant that is not as secure as they thought. A rat is found in one of the rooms, though it's not dead as the workmen first think. It attacks one of the workmen killing him, unfortunately, he doesn't stay dead. As the trouble progresses the noxious gas starts to leak out of the facility and infects the air... bringing on an extinction event.

From here on it should have been an awesome film but the Directors, Bruno Mattei (who used the name Vincent Dawn) - this action speaks volumes - and Claudio Fragasso (who also co-wrote the story with Jose Maria Cunilles) decided to go an entirely different route than you would ever imagine.

The viewer is then subjected to some really bad over-the-top acting (more than usual for an Italian horror) as we are introduced to a crack army assault team who stop a siege at an embassy. This ten minutes is a waste of time as it's really bad and is only there to let the audience know their next mission is in New Guinea.

It appears the location was only introduced into the story so the director could hop onto the tribe and animal cruelty bandwagon, as they weave stock film of death rituals into the movie. Once again, these are not actually required and are not relevant to the film. However, it does mean the lead lady can get her boobs out and they are nice boobs.

Another handicap is the speed of the Zombies, these are your old-time shambling dead. Even Richard Briars on a Zimmer-frame could out run these stiffs (Cockney's V's Zombies). It's even played up in the film. Even the zombie make-up is poor most are just covered in light blue powder and any other embellishments are large, bulky, and unrealistic.

The twist at the end is a nice one and again if they hadn't gone the wrong direction with the story then, it could have been an outstanding Zombie movie.

I wouldn't recommend this one to anybody as there are much better Zombie flicks about, my favourite being Return Of The Living Dead... "Brains... We Need More BRAINS!!!"

God-awful zombie movie that very well might be the WORST Italian horror production ever, and that's saying a lot with all those numberless "Dawn of the Dead" rip-offs and Lucio Fulci wannabes. This movie is incompetent in every possible aspect. It's so bad that it even comes close to ruining the memory of all the good movies it's inspired on! The story: a factory, strategically located in the middle of the New Guinean jungle, suffers from a complete meltdown and the poisonous gas that escapes causes the native tribes to transform into walking flesh-eating corpses. Two journalists team up with a S.W.A.T team that is sent to the jungle and together they have to kill a whole lot of zombies before they can reach the factory. Naturally, this zombie romp is extremely gory, with brutal massacres and other types of pure filth every 5 seconds. But the make-up effects are pitiful and evoke more chuckles than feelings of disgust. Inspired by the almighty "Cannibal Holocaust", director Bruno Mattei (who's my pick for Italy's worst horror director) stuffs his film with images and footage of real jungle wildlife, only here it's very misplaced and completely pointless. In all honesty, there is ONE good scene involving a child-zombie that effectively illustrates the infection and the impact of the virus on human beings. The acting is terrible and the script contains a countless amount of stupidities like, for example, a detailed course of how to properly chew tobacco. Avoid, unless you're looking for a good laugh and don't mind wasting 100 minutes of your precious life with it.

When I first saw HoTLD, I was about 7 years old when my sister's boyfriend rented it on VHS, oh those good old days of the VCR era. So after watching it on a Friday night, I have to admit that it scared the living hell out of me. There was something about it that terrified me, maybe the grainy look or the ominous music or the gory zombie scenes, but whatever it was I couldn't sleep for days. Back in 1997 I found a copy on the now late Suncoast video store and without thinking it twice, I bought it. Has it ever happened to you that when you're a kid and you see a movie and you like it to the bone then you see the same movie as an adult and it's a total disappointment? Well, this is one of those cases, heck I even returned the movie. So I Haven't seen it since then until just a few weeks ago a friend of mine gave me his collection of cheap zombie flicks from the 80s and there it was "Hell of the Living Dead."

The story takes place somewhere in New Guinea where a research facility called "Hope" is developing some type of chemical that accidentally leaks out thanks to an infected rat turning most of the scientist into flesh eating zombies and the others into their happy meals. Meanwhile, somewhere else, a team of trigger happy commandos are sent to stop a group of environmental terrorist that have taken hostage an American Embassy, I think it was the American Embassy, and are demanding that all the Hope facilities be shutdown. The team storms the embassy eliminating the entire terrorists without much effort but not before the leader of the group says his last prophetic words about them being devoured or something like that. Then that same team of commandos is sent to New Guinea where they meet a group of reporters investigating, God knows what. There they find that the world has been overrun by zombies as they make their way to the Hope facility to find the answer of this Virus.

What makes this movie so memorable is not the story or the F/X nor the acting, but the amount of material they ripped-off from the much superior Romero's Dawn of the Dead. Director Bruno Mattei, who credited himself as Vincent Dawn, shamelessly used the same type of uniforms used by the SWAT team in DoTD for the team of commandos in HoTLD, and even the same gas masks. But if that wasn't enough, he used the exact same music composed by Goblin for DoTD without their permission. Also Mattei used a lot of old wildlife and news stock footage that didn't fit the scenes or the story. The script is incoherent at worst and the zombie scenes are totally illogical to idiotic. There's even a guy who dresses up in a tutu and starts dancing while a horde of zombies storms the room, but most idiotic is when the ultra slow zombies approach their victims, they just stand there screaming. Although I have to say, the beginning is gory and entertaining, but after the embassy scene, the movie pretty much goes downhill from there.

Okay, I'm not going to lie. It was a guilty pleasure to watch this retro junk again after so long and even with all its atrocities, it deserves some level of merit and it does delivers some horror value, well at least when it was released back in the 80s. Interesting note is that this movie has many different titles such as Virus, Night of the Zombies, Zombie Creeping Flesh and of course, the ultra generic title Hell of the Living Dead. So, if you haven't seen HoTLD and you don't mind the trashy story, the DoTD rip-off or the lame stock footage then you should check it out, at least for the gore.

Bruno Mattei's "Virus", a.k.a. "Hell of the Living Dead", a.k.a. "Night of the Zombies", is an agreeably gory and ridiculous Italian zombie shocker that unfortunately goes on a little too long for it to completely hit the spot, but it's packed with enough laugh out loud moments to make it consistently palatable.

The story is nothing new: an accident at a chemical plant unleashes a virus that infects the recently deceased and turns them into shambling, flesh craving zombies. An elite SWAT team is hired to get to the bottom of things and they travel to New Guinea where the plant is located, hooking up with a bombshell reporter (Margit Evelyn Newton) and her cameraman, and encounter danger every step of the way.

"Virus" benefits from a couple of elements. First off, it's got the standard hilariously terrible vocal performances that we know we'll often get with these things. It's also got a hell of a hammy, delicious, eye rolling performance by Franco Garofalo, playing Zantoro, a member of the SWAT team who loves to taunt the zombies when he gets the chance. The goofy screenplay was co-written by Claudio Fragasso, whose credits include "Zombi 3", "The Other Hell", and..."Troll 2". It includes one hysterical, memorable sequence wherein another member of the team finds some clothing and decides the time is right for a little cross dressing, and launching into a Gene Kelly routine. The music by Goblin is great fun. Newton bares her flesh in one sequence, knowing this is one thing that the local tribe (and viewer) will appreciate. And the action is often intercut with utterly pointless - and thus very amusing - stock animal footage.

It doesn't have the atmosphere of Fulci's horror films of this period, but it's a nice diversion just the same. The faithful will be satisfied if they stick with it. It would be just about impossible to resist any zombie flick where one of the last characters standing gets their face ripped apart in loving close-up.

Overall, not bad.

Seven out of 10.

Night of the Zombies was release in 1981 along with several other bad horror films. Horror films were at their peak in the 80`s. I could live with myself after watching this film. Before, I rented this trash when was about to buy Blade Runner(one of the greatest science fiction films ever made, but it was box-office disappointment). I had seen Blade Runner at least thirteen times at that point, so decide to go in the direction of Night of the Zombies. At time, I was about ten or eleven years in the fifth grade. What can you say, This movie sucked so bad I thought that Dawn of the Apocalypse was around the corner. I`ve seen elementary students who could write a better script than this awful movie.

I am a huge gore-fan. And my favorite director is Lucio Fulci. I have seen gore from Fulci to Argento to Raimi to Itenbach to Schnaas to Romero to Lenzi to etc... But for some reason alot of people hate movies with the name "Bruno Mattei" on it. Hell of the Living Dead has been put down and made fun of by so many. Why? I saw "Night of the Zombies" years ago on VHS and was hooked. The movie, written by Claudio Fragasso [Zombie 3, Rats, Beyond Darkness, AfterDeath, etc..] is a complete rip off of Dawn of the Dead, with Goblin Music [taken from Dawn of the Dead & Luigi Cozzi's Toxic Spawn], a swat team, etc. So its a rip off, Who cares. The movie is awesome. Where else are you going to see a swat member dress up in drag, only to be eaten by zombies. The characters are hilarious! My favorite member is the swat member with long brown hair ["Guess I'm not on the menu after all!"]. The dubbing is so bad it rules! The acting is hilarious and fun. The story is basically the same "Government project gone wrong" story. FX are cheesy, yet fun to watch. This title is pure cheese, but great cheese!Thank god Anchor Bay decided to pick up some Bruno Mattei flicks and re-release them on DVD. This and Bruno Mattei's "Rats: Nights of Terror" are now out, and they are definate "Must Have" titles. If you want a serious zombie flick, look elsewhere. But Hell of the Living Dead rules! Now, if Anchor Bay can pick up the Lucio Fulci/Bruno Mattei "Zombie 3" rights and put it on DVD!!

Would someone please explain to me why the hell anyone would consider something like Dawn of the Dead or Lucio Fulci's Zombie's 2 superior to Bruno Mattei's masterpiece, Hell of the Living Dead. What I've mostly read about this movie is criticism. Hell is ten times better than anything Lucio Fulci ever did, bold statement? I don't think so. Lucio Fulci's work is boring, the gore scenes are literally the only positive thing. Most Italian horror is a bit on the boring side anyway, even Beyond the Darkness, the grim masterpiece that it is, is a tad boring, Hell of the Living Dead is not boring, for 70's standards, as well as todays. The fact that the score is very "borrowed" means nothing to me, I mean, who the hell cares? Stealing Goblin tunes was a stroke of genius. So, don't believe the nay sayers, Hell of the Living Dead is quality horror.

With that out of the way, Hell of the Living Dead, although far superior, fits in quite nicely with it's peers. Besides being better and longer, it's a lot darker, with a powerful apocalyptic vibe. We begin with some sort of horrible accident at a nuclear plant in New Guinea, so naturally, a world wide virus breaks out, bringing the dead back to life. This nightmare follows a female reporter and some swat team guys trying in vain to make a little sense out of all this. while making their way through the stock footage-filled jungles, it takes these people a little longer than usual to figure out that you have to shoot them in the head, although they pick it up soon enough. Our desperate crew now encounters a grieving bunch of natives that have lost loved ones to the plague of the dead, this is where Hell of the living dead kind of turns into a cross between Day of the Dead and Cannibal Ferox, so if you still feel the need to criticize this gory nightmare of an epic, then just run along and go watch The Transformers, or something. Hell of the Living Dead is a buffet of bad dubbing, cheesy violence, stolen music, and amusing stock footage, but none of those things take away from the fact that this movie is dark, hardcore, and absolutely hilarious. For a more than low-budget, Italian horror movie to accomplish all that, considering everything else, is quite miraculous. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure very little effort or money went in to this, but sometimes movies end up with positive qualities that they weren't meant to have if things didn't go how they were originally meant to. That's why they call it a diamond in the rough, you know, like The Chooper. Hell of the Living Dead, along with the title and score, among other key elements, truly feels like the end of the world. And for a horror movie, you can't ask for much more than that. Hell Of The Living Dead was a good idea. Long live Goblin. 9/10

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.