Zombi Holocaust (1980)

AKA Island of the Last Zombies, Medical Deviate, Zombie Death Cult, Zombie Holocaust,Doctor Butcher M.D., Zombie 3
Directed by Marino Girolami (pseudonym Frank Martin) Starring Ian McCulloch, Alexandra Delli Colli, Sherry Buchanan, Peter O’Neal, Donald O’Brien and Dakar
84 Minutes
Italy

This movie should have been the Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman, Freddy vs. Jason or Alien vs. Predator of the Italian Exploitation cycle. Zombies and Jungle Cannibals together in one film, how could you possibly go wrong? One’s alive and wants to eat your flesh, and the other’s dead and wants to eat your flesh. We know the zombies will want to eat the cannibals but will the zombies be too gross for the cannibals to eat? Boy that’s a viscous cycle. Well, what we get isn’t quite the clash of titans that gorehounds might have been hoping for, but it is a film with enough grisly gore and camp silliness to make it worthy of the time of any genre fan.

As with many Italian gore-fests the action begins in New York City. Late at night a mysterious person sneaks into a morgue and cuts the hand off a cadaver. The next day that same body is being used to teach a class of Medical Students about the functions of the stomach. The missing hand is immediately noticed and for some reason this group of students find it hilarious (“didn’t you say you needed a HAND to help you study!?”). The doctor giving the class finds the students mocking of the carcass’s missing limb highly inappropriate and he gets in a huff, dismissing the class. What follows is a brief exchange between the doctor and his assistant about the relationship between ‘savages’ and our so called ‘civilised’ society. “Something like this would make sense in a society of primitive savages, but today in New York city?” asks the doctor. “But doctor, do you really think we are that much different from savages?” his assistant asks, to which he replies: “I don’t know”. Such a discussion is nothing new for the Jungle Cannibal sub-genre, which a number of times used this argument over who is the real ‘savage’ as a justification for the horrific sights shown on screen, most famously in Cannibal Holocaust. However, whereas in Cannibal Holocaust that thread runs throughout the whole movie, here it is brought up abruptly minutes in and then never mentioned again! Again we see another hospital worker sneaking around the morgue in the middle of the night, only this time he extracts a heart from a cadaver and proceeds to feast on it, only to be discovered. He responds to being caught in a ridiculously over the top the way, by running and jumping out of the nearest window. Morgue assistant and Anthropologist Lori (Alexandra Delli Colli) recognises a tattoo on the body of the cannibal as being a symbol from the Asian Molucca islands where she grew up. Together with Dr. Peter Chandler (Ian McCulloch), she discovers that similar incidents have occurred in hospitals all over east coast of America where immigrants from the islands are working. Peter and Lori mount an expedition to the islands to investigate, along with Peter’s assistant George (Peter O’Neal), George’s aggressively eager journalist girlfriend Susan (Sherry Buchanan) and native boatman Molotto (Dakar). They are put out by Doctor Obrero (Donald O’Brien), an American professional there seemingly to help the natives. It isn’t long before the group begin to be hounded by the local cannibals, and it transpires that Obrero is hiding something equally sinister.

Zombi Holocaust is not a very well directed film. The film’s director is Marino Girolami, Enzo G. Castellari’s father, here going under the pseudonym of Frank Martin. I haven’t seen anything else that he’s made, so either his son turned out to be a much better director than he was or he just didn’t have the passion for a zombie meets cannibals meets mad doctor film. I’m gravitating towards the latter since, even though his wikipedia page tells us he has “gained a cult following for his Horror Movies”, he seems to have worked more in the Poliziotteschi and Sex Comedy genres. Anyway, this is one of those movies where when the characters enter a building, the camera watches them enter said building, and then very slowly and stiltedly pans upwards to give us a full view of that building. Quite an awkward way to pad out the running time, but it must be said that moments like this do lend the film a certain atmosphere. It’s difficult to explain, but it’s the kind of detached, absurd, ultra violent while simultaneously ultra ridiculous aesthetic that can only in be found in low budget 60s/70s/80s Horror of this ilk. A prime example of what I’m talking about occurs about 50 minutes into the film, when the titular zombies at long last make their first appearance. They just stand their in the bushes and stare at the characters, but their sub-Fulci appearance and the haunting groaning noise they seemingly without opening their mouths evokes a low budget terror atmosphere that the modern zombie craze could never emulate. It should be noted that Nico Fidenco’s score is one of the better aspects of Zombi Holocaust, especially the atmospheric theme song with it’s sinister droning.

It would be amiss to talk about Zombi Holocaust without mentioning the infamous re-titling and deceiving advertising campaign that the film was given for it’s American release. I suppose it’s logical when the Slasher genre was beginning to gain steam, and you have a film that features not only Zombies, Cannibals and a mad doctor, that you focus on the mad doctor aspect and describe him a “depraved sadistic rapist” on the poster. In one of the most iconic grindhouse titles ever, Zombi Holocaust was known in it’s North American release as “Doctor Butcher M.D.“. The fact that they did this is probably a testament to the performance of Donald O’Brien as Dr Obrero. The sincerity with which he imbues such delirious lines as “I could easily kill you right now, but I’m determined to have your brain!” makes me believe an actual Doctor Butcher M.D. focusing solely on him would have been a lot more entertaining then the half baked hybrid of Zombi 2 and Cannibal Holocaust that the film actually is.

Despite some good gore and effectively atmospheric moments, Zombi Holocaust never manages to live up to it’s title, though it could be said that the twenty minutes with Doctor Obrero’s crazy science and scenery chewing lives up somewhat to the Doctor Butcher M.D. retitle. Still it’s a must see for fans of Video Nasties, Italian sleaze and all that good shit.

(Originally published at https://tornfromthetomb.wordpress.com/2015/09/02/zombi-holocaust-1980/)