leagueofstruggle

Redundant zombies film that never even bothers to try to cover new territory. The film suffers from lackluster filmmaking that plods along as if a zombie were actually doing the filming. The film follows the basic outline of Night of the Living Dead and only deviates slightly to show some nudity. The film was made in 1988 so surely Bill Hinzman (the first zombie seen in the original NOTLD) was not living in a cave and had surely seen the bar for the zombie genre has been raised a little. As much as Bruno Mattei's Hell of the Living Dead was a rip-off of Dawn of the Dead it still had a few nuggets of original thought. Flesheater wallows in its complete lack of originality. Watch for Bill Hinzman doing the groping every time nudity is involved. Marvel as bland, boring, and brain dead actors walk through their lines as if in a daze. Your jaw will drop at the dull, plodding action. This film is the true essence of the mediocre of the horror genre. Truly that makes it even more awful in some ways than Bianchi's Burial Ground (Peter Bark rules!) and a lesser contender than After Death by Claudio Fragrasso (kung-fu ninja zombies!). Little wonder this film has managed to stay under the radar for so long. Remember to watch for Hinzman's attempts to steal the limelight as the king zombie throughout the film. He'll just pop up whenever anything interesting is happening or involves a female and make sure the camera focuses on him. A zombie vanity movie, who would have thought?

A movie of such bombastic ineptitude it's not unlike watching Sam Raimi try to direct a movie while at the same time being gang beaten by a group with electric cattle prods until he's stupid. And even then that's probably giving Bianchi more credit than he deserves for this film. Burial Ground also goes down as the only living dead movie where the zombies are more intelligent than the protagonists although Nightmare City by Umberto Lenzi comes close. Certain considerations must be given to Bianchi on this film however. He doesn't flub the living dead film formula like the modern counterpart directors that try ineffectively to make living dead films these days. He is confident enough in the makeup FX to film the zombies in broad daylight. In this case the DVD reissue that cleaned the film up didn't do the movie any favors as the previously murky VHS release partially masked some of the more pathetic zombie FX. The plot falls on its face in most cases and could be a case example of choices a protagonist in a horror film should never make. The characters just continually make so many wrong choices you may find yourself rooting for the zombies. Then again if the characters made the right choices the movie would have been over in twenty-five minutes. Of course all these horrible choices have consequences in that characters do drop like flies throughout the film and meet one messy end after the other. The death scenes are creative and Bianchi at least stretched his imagination a little to give some interesting deaths to the characters in the film, ludicrous as some of them may be. As usual for standard B-movie fare the dubbing is weak at best, an insult to eardrum at worst. Dialogue suffers a similar fate, in this case it just stretches between illogical, silly, or plain sleazy. The dubbing doesn't help the representation of the characters' intelligence either.

The graphic violence is excessive in almost every case, a plus for those seeking grue and crimson splashes. The best actor in the film by far is Peter Bark who is a twenty (thirty?) something that plays the role of a ten-year-old boy. This was due to child labor laws in Italy at the time and Peter Bark shines in his role of the Oedipal boy, Michael. It adds so many levels of sleaziness to the film Bianchi is to be applauded for tackling this difficult social issue. The climax of the film is a guaranteed disappointment as the film feels more like it either just ran out of budget and closed shop or Bianchi just ran out of ideas. The ending is not unlike reading a book only to find out someone ripped out the last ten or fifteen pages, it ends that abruptly. The pacing of the film up to the end is decent, being that the characters are one step above an amoeba on the evolutionary scale we aren't bothered by such things as characterization or advancement of personality. From the moment the dead rise it's just a series of encounters where the protagonists make horrible judgment calls and pay the price for it. If anything the breakneck pace of the film keeps a person entertained rather than bogging down. Seriously, if the characters are not fornicating they are battling the living dead. It at least keeps the action, one way or another, flowing. If you enjoy the Italian living dead genre Burial Ground will not disappoint, others are probably better turned away.