The October Zombie-Thon! - Day 2: Burial Ground
Posted by Trevor Snyder on 10.02.2007
Hey, a sleazy Italian zombie flick? Who would have ever thunk it?
BURIAL GROUND (THE NIGHTS OF TERROR) (1980)
Directed by: Andrea Bianchi
Written by: Piero Regnoli
Country: Italy
Well, it's finally happened. It's taken years of watching zombies movies, but I've finally find the one that gives me the absolute willies. Oddly enough, though, it's not the zombies of Burial Ground that creep me out. Rather, it's the bizarre, near-incestuous relationship between a mother and her pre-teen son, that eventually results in the two taking a break from fleeing zombies to sit down and let the son run his hand up his mother's dress and tell her how much he misses the joys of breast-feeding.
Now, that's icky enough, but add on the fact that the boy in question is not even played by an actual boy – but rather a short, rather-odd looking 25 year-old-actor named Peter Bark. Watching a young boy fondling his mother is bad enough, but when the supposed boy actually looks like a miniature version of Dario Argento? That, my friends, is the stuff of nightmares.
But wait, the pure horror of these sequences has caused me to get ahead of myself – I suppose I should probably tell you about the movie itself. The film centers on a group of wealthy, decadent friends gathering at the mansion of an archeology professor they all know for a weekend of standard debauchery. Unfortunately for them, their arrival comes just after the professor has unwittingly awoken a group of pissed off, bloodthirsty Etruscan zombies, who are soon coming after the revelers armed with scythes and pitchforks.
If you squint hard enough, you can kinda make out some actual witty and intelligent satire here, regarding the underclass zombies rising up against the vain, party-obsessed bourgeoisie. But let's not kid ourselves here. At the end of the day this is still just another Italian zombie exploitation flick primarily concerned with delivering violence and sex.
And man, do these people love to have sex. The characters are barely at the castle for more than two minutes before all three couples have jumped into bed to get it on. Once they're finished, they all promptly go outside to the fields, where they proceed to get it on, again! No wonder these zombies are pissed – I imagine it's pretty difficult to rest peacefully with these morons constantly bumping uglies on your burial site.
Speaking of the zombies, let's talk about them for a bit, shall we? Sure, they look neat and all, but man, are they sloooow. I don't know where you fall in the whole "fast zombies vs. slow zombies" debate, but I think any sensible person would agree that they should be a little quicker than this. Seriously, if one of these things was coming at you from across a field, you'd probably have time to do your taxes and take a quick power nap before it became absolutely necessary to start fleeing. I mean, I'm sorry, but if you get caught and killed by these things, you deserve to die.
That's certainly the case with the characters in this film, one of the biggest groups of yahoos ever to face off against an undead invasion. Trust me, these bozos are just asking to be murdered. Take, for instance, the moment where one of the couples is interrupted by a zombie while – what else – getting ready to have sex. You'd think they would quickly get up and run away, right? Well, that would be the sensible thing to do, but instead these two morons just nonchalantly scoot slightly out of harm's way and debate what the creature is (granted, the zombie doesn't really earn himself any points either, given that he proceeds to just stand there and watch them have this discussion, rather than attack them). And then there's the scene when one of our "heroes" decides to arm himself with a pitchfork to fight off the oncoming zombies. Of course, rather than do something useful with the pitchfork, like, say, stab the zombie, the schmuck just gently waves it around in front of the creature's face, as if he expects the mere idea of a pitchfork to give the zombie a fatal heart-attack or something.
Whenever our "heroes" do finally grow some stones and decide to fight back, they find it relatively easy to kill the zombies – it pretty much consists of walking casually up to the creatures, lightly bonking them on the head with a rock, and that's that. And yet, despite this, everyone still pisses their pants in terror anytime another zombie plods onto the scene. Hey everyone, you've managed to destroy a few of these things by exerting about the same amount of energy as I use to make toast – maybe you don't need to be that scared.
Now, I know I'm making this sound pretty terrible – and it is – but let me be clear: it's the best kind of terrible. Like City of the Dead or Zombie Holocaust, Burial Ground is an Italian zombie flick that succeeds because of its cheesiness, not in spite of it. No hardened horror fan is going to be scared by this one (hell, I doubt even a horror novice would feel their pulse quicken), but thanks to the film's peculiar tone, copious gore (including a great bit where the zombies use a scythe to slowly decapitate a victim hanging out of a window), and awkward mixture of sex and violence, cheesy movie fans should have a field-day with this one.
In fact, the film's most off-putting element – the aforementioned incest subplot – will probably only serve to make the film even more appealing for a particular kind of audience. And, no, I'm not talking about incest supporters, but rather those filmgoers who like their movies to take that one little extra step from "pretty darn strange" to "batshit insane." Watching the film, you can pretty much guess at the filmmakers intentions here: "you know, I'm not sure this film is twisted and over-the-top enough…I bet if we throw in some mother-son lovin' we can really kick this thing into high gear." Well, it worked, even if the casting of Bark makes it even more icky than it needs to be (not that I'm advocating that they should have used an actual child actor, but…actually, I better just stop here, before I dig this hole much deeper).
All in all, Burial Ground isn't the best cheesy Italian zombie flick out there, but it's up there. Get together with a group of friends, make sure the alcohol is close by, and get ready for a fun time. Just don't try to watch it with your mom – that might raise all sorts of unwanted issues.
