The October Zombie-Thon! - Day 29: Zombie Holocaust
Posted by Trevor Snyder on 10.29.2006
I'm not sure living tribesmen killing a few people constitutes a "zombie holocaust," but whatever...
ZOMBIE HOLOCAUST (1980)
Directed by: Marino Girolami Written by: Fabrizio De Angelis & Romano Scandariato Country: Italy
Forget school; everything I need to know about primitive, third-world tribes and cultures I learn from Italian horror movies. After all, who needs textbooks or documentaries when you have films like Zombie Holocaust, in which a character helpfully informs us that ALL primitive peoples practice cannibalism, without exception. And let's not forget the surprising fact – offered not only in Zombie Holocaust, but also in Day 7's Hell of the Living Dead – that these very same cannibal tribes, when confronted with a beautiful naked white woman, will not kill and eat her like the rest of the white people they encounter, but instead will eagerly accept her into the tribe as if she was one of their own. Why the cannibals in Zombie Holocaust go the extra mile and paint the nude woman up as if she was Goldie Hawn on Laugh-In, I'm not quite sure. But if Zombie Holocaust says it's so, it must be so.
After all, why would I have any reason not to trust a film like Zombie Holocaust? I mean, besides the fact that, despite its title, there are barely any zombies to be seen. The few zombies that are on hand don't appear until about an hour into the 85 minute film, and once they do show up they don't really do a hell of a lot. OK, one does have his face chopped to pieces by a motorboat propeller – which is cool and all, but certainly not what that zombie had in mind when he wandered onto the scene.
In fact, the zombies in Zombie Holocaust seem thrown in as a mere afterthought, in a desire to cash in on the at-the-time increasingly popular Italian-zombie craze. But, to be honest, Zombie Holocaust belongs more to another much-loved (or much-despised, for you moral majority readers out there) sub-genre: the Italian cannibalism film.
Throughout the ‘70s, infamous films like Cannibal Holocaust, Eaten Alive, and Cannibal Ferox set new standards in exploitative onscreen violence. But by the end of the decade the fad was beginning to die off. Producer Fabrizio De Angelis, fresh off his mega-success with Lucio Fulci's seminal Zombie, saw an opportunity to get one last breath of life out of the cannibal genre, by combining it with the emerging zombie rage he had helped create. Not content with just cannibals and zombies however, De Angelis even decided to take it one step further and throw in an evil, "mad doctor"-type villain. The result was Zombie Holocaust: part cannibal film, part zombie film, but pure, 100% Italian sleaze.
The plot, as it were, isn't much different than the rest of the Italian zombie/cannibal canon. A string of bizarre incidences of cannibalism in New York City is traced to an ancient flesh-eating tribe in Southeast Asia, and as a result an expedition sets off for the island of Kito, in hopes of finding answers. This group includes the usual Italian horror stock characters, including a detective (Zombie star Ian McCulloch), a reporter (because you can not have an Italian zombie movie without a reporter), and nurse by day/anthropologist by night Alexandra Delli Colli, clearly on hand more for her willingness to frequently bare all than any sort of legitimate acting ability.
Anyway, once on the island, the group's search leads them right into the hands of the deranged Dr. Obrero, who uses the island's native tribe both as his minions and the guinea pigs for his mad brain-transplanting experiments, which in turn has led to some of the tribe being turned into Obrero's zombie slaves.
Due to some similar scenes and its featuring a couple of that film's stars, Italian horror fans often unfairly condemn Zombie Holocaust as nothing more than a rip-off of Fulci's superior Zombie (an odd complaint, since Zombie was itself hastily thrown together in order to cash in on the success of Dawn of the Dead), but it's a pointless comparison. While Zombie actually managed a sense of real dread and unnerving horror, Holocaust is pure schlocky trash from start to finish. And besides, the entire idea of one film ripping off another is a moot point when it comes to both the Italian cannibal and zombie genres, as almost all the films borrowed ideas, sets, and in some cases even footage from one another.
So yes, Zombie Holocaust might feel somewhat similar to a slew of similar Italian films from the time, but that also just means it contains all the usual dumb-fun elements that make so many of these films such a joy to watch: a plot that is even more brain-dead than its zombies, an abundance of cheap but still-disgusting gore (here including autopsies, eviscerations, scalpings, and the usual loving close-ups of flesh-munching), gratuitous nudity, and some of the most awesomely bad dialogue you will ever hear – like the great moment when one of the expedition members tries to calm down the others, who are worried about encountering the island's native cannibals:
"I mean, the people we're looking for only like dead bodies. Now, I may be wrong, but everyone here seems alive. So we really have nothing to worry about as long as we stay alive."
Well, you just can't argue with that logic, folks.
Actually, I don't know why I'm even bothering to tell you all this, since I should just be content to inform you that Zombie Holocaust contains what may just be the most brilliantly idiotic moment in the history of stupid cinema. Now, I know occasionally using a mannequin instead of a stunt-person is nothing new for zombie films, but usually the filmmakers at least attempt to pull it off with some subtlety. Not so with Holocaust director Marino Girolami, who at one point uses a mannequin for a scene in which a man jumps out a window, and then keeps the shot locked on the stiff mannequin as it crashes to the ground below, complete with its arm breaking clean off! Girolami then simply cuts to the actor lying on the ground, covered in blood and with his arm miraculously reattached! In a film full of dumb moments, this one is a real doozy, and is pretty much enough, by itself, to cement Zombie Holocaust's status as a brainless blast of silly fun that any self-respecting lover of cheesy cinema should check out.
By the way, if any of this sounds a bit familiar, but the name isn't ringing any bells, it might be because Zombie Holocaust was originally released in a heavily edited form in the U.S., retitled Dr. Butcher, M.D. (the M.D. stands for Medical Deviate – hilarious!). Try to avoid that version – the Shriek Show DVD, which restores the film to all its gory glory, is the way to go. You wouldn't really want to be deprived even a single second of this genius work of art, now, would you?
The 411: It seems only logical that if you combine the exploitative excess of the Italian cannibal genre with the equally exploitative excess of the Italian zombie genre, you might end up with a film containing unparalleled scenes of violence and nudity. Unfortunately, Zombie Holocaust doesn't necessarily live up to that lofty expectation – oh, sure, it doesn't skimp on the boobs and blood, but it's tough to ignore the lack of actual zombie action and the fairly boring final ten minutes. Still, it does manage to combine both the best and worst attributes of each genre for a unique blend of extremely entertaining stupidity.
