Virus

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.

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

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.

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.