 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 | 🎙️ EPISODE 538: 08.23.22 This is an insane, plotless Italian zombie movie from the apex of the English-dubbed era. It features a 26-year-old in the role of a child who wants to have sex with his mother. That is the only notable item in what is otherwise just a sequence of zombie attacks. These zombies and the wrath they unleash are the show and the special effects makeup person, Rosario Prestopino, worked on a bunch of Lucio Fulci and Dario Argento productions. Live maggots and earthworms are incorporated throughout! And while that is certainly where the focus of the filmmaking intended to lie, the only thing you will remember after watching this is the completely batshit of performance of little person Peter Bark as Michael, an adult playing a child to skirt Italy's labor laws who has an extremely unhealthy relationship with his mom. There are Oedipal complexes and then there's this (check out the #Supercut). But I'm getting ahead of myself. |
That guy gets attacked by the undead soon after and isn't seen for 80% of the movie until he returns himself a zombie. The bulk of the action surrounds three vacationing couples at an isolated country mansion. We've got mustache man and nondescript brunette, tall guy and blonde, and this couple: Evelyn, played by the only actor of note here (Mariangela Giordano), her husband and their son, the infamous Michael, lurking in the back of the car...
I'm basically going to clip out every single scene with Michael (in addition to the #Supercut below). Because... look at him! He is not of this earth. And we do not deserve his magic.
The voiceover work in these films usually isn't great, but this is atrocious on a whole other level. Of course it just adds to the experience. Evelyn makes sure Michael is asleep before sneaking off to have sex (everyone is boning before the zombies attack lol)...
This, my friends, is nightmare fuel...
So, naturally, Michael walks in on his mom boning and it's a whole awkward thing. Also, the majority of this movie is just fast zoom ins and outs, and they are amazing...
Mom is not happy and Michael looks upset...
The next morning, Evelyn and husband and a reluctant Michael go off to check out some of the artifacts the "professor" has found (who is the long beard dude from the beginning? who lives there too??). Who cares. Just another excuse to close in on Michael's weird face! ...
Meanwhile, the other two couples frolic off in the garden grounds to do some photography and get horny. These sex jokes just hit differently when dubbed in...
Back in the house, FOR SOME REASON, Evelyn's husband decides to give her a shooting lesson (?!). This upsets Michael and we get our first real taste of this extremely unhealthy relationship...
Out in the garden, blonde girl and tall guy are hooking up when they get interrupted by some zombs and we see closeup the excellent effects work with these maggot-laced masks...
From here on out, the entire film is a just a series of zombie encounters. There's no more exposition about the curse or why they've awoken or anything. Minus the incestual subplot, it's just zombies zombies zombies. And, you know what? That's fine! It actually felt good to just turn my brain off and dig into this mindless abyss.
While — we'll learn later — that these monsters are not your average undead ghouls, they are slow as shit in that classic zombie way. So the make-out couple escape easily. But back inside, Evelyn's husband isn't so lucky. He gets eaten alive. But not before Michael finds a rag that smells like a death, and he pumps a few bullets into these things which causes them to leak ooze in slow-mo . A trio of clips for you...
Ah that totally unnatural bright red blood! Gotta love it. So RIP Evelyn's hubby, who sacrificed himself for his wife and her weird-ass son.
Mustache man and his lady are also getting horny in the garden when they're attacked by zombs and director Andrea Bianchi deploys some more A+ zooms...
Blonde chick gets her foot caught in a bear trap (!?) LOL...
In the mansion, Evelyn and Michael get trapped in some kind of storage room so they torch not one but two zombies and I think a stunt person might have actually been burnt alive during this scene...
Just SLIDE to the RIGHT!...
So they all meet up back inside the house and board it up. And the zombies fall back, as if summoned away. A maid goes lurking alone and finds an open window. Then a zombie IMPALES HER HAND AGAINST THE SHUTTER WITH A FLYING DAGGER SO ANOTHER ZOMBIE CAN CHOP OFF HER HEAD WITH A MASSIVE SCYTHE (!!!)...
I told you these were not your average zombies. They know how to use weapons! LOL. The soundtrack in this is also rad as hell, a mixture of bombastic jazzy tracks with wonky discordant synth-laded ones.
Mustache man finds the maid's headless body and flips it out the window for the zombs to feast. Then some of the other ghouls organize, all armed with various household tools as weapons, before mustache man shoots like ten of them in the head with a shotgun...
The horde leaves just as he runs out of bullets. And mustache man's wife gets killed when she's grabbed through a window...
Using all the various weapons and a large pole as a battering ram, the zombie flock break into the house. Lucky our remaining characters find themselves in a room full of ancient weaponry! This moved so slowly at times it almost felt like a parody. But when you realize that the entirety of the film is just this, you understand why they're taking their time. Like when the hobbled blonde who got her foot stuck in a bear trap (that was really an underrated unintentional comedy moment) chews up well over three minutes of screen time fending off an attack before help arrives. Here that is sped-up...
Did I mention that the amount of real maggots used here is unsettling? Because it is. Then Michael's mom decapitates a zombie in front of him to end this particular battle sequence...
Now comes the moment you've all (read: NOBODY HAS) been waiting for: Michael, clearly distraught, decides to make a move on his own mom. And JESUS FUCKING CHRIST I'm so sorry for posting this but it has to be seen (does it???)...
The most fucked up part about that is that she seems like she's into it for a second???!?!? There's still twenty minutes to go, folks. So let that absolutely insane moment sink in while we get to the rest of this nonsense.
Michael, looking like one of the twins from The Shining in this hallway, encounters the brunette lady who is now a zombie. And... RIP Michael! ...
His mother stumbles on the gruesome scene of that lady eating his detached arm. So she bashes her head in against the tub...
The professor / scientist / long beard guy from the beginning who we haven't seen all movie shows up as a zombie and eats the butler ...
It's so fucking gross!
The remaining four survivors all escape and then, the next day, they stumble upon a church inhabited by a bunch of monks but oh no all the monks are actually zombies and they eat mustache man...
Then the remaining TRIO find an abandoned workshop where someone had been building miniature scale ancient ruins? Sure, why not. This is the final set-piece. After some more painfully slow encounters, one in which the tall guy beats up a zomb with a tiny pillar before tossing him over a balcony...
...we get the final weird-out of all weird-outs to send the audience packing. Honestly, I feel like I might get arrested if I clip this whole thing but what happens is essentially this: **takes a deep breath** Zombie Michael enters the scene and mother Evelyn, for some reason — for some GODFORSAKEN reason — exposes her tit and offers it to him. AND THEN HE FULLY CHOMPS OFF HER ENTIRE NIPPLE. I will not be posting that madness, but here's the lead-up ...
Yup. That happened.
The movie ends on an infamous quote with multiple misspellings, attributed to the [sic] "Profecy of the Black Spider." It also includes the typo "nigths" instead of "nights" ...
Just the absolute kicker to this beautiful disaster. As good of a "So Bad It's Good" movie as they get, folks. Check it out if you dare.
BONUS CONTENT! It's the Michael #Supercut on YouTube...
CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ EPISODE 537 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 539 ⫸
⫷ EPISODE 537 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 539 ⫸
Burial Ground (original title: Le Notti del terrore, also known as Nights of Terror, Zombi Horror, The Zombie Dead) is an Italian grindhouse zombie movie directed by Andrea Bianchi. It is one of several films released under the alternative title of Zombie 3. It was released on July 9, 1981.
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