Night of the Zombies (1980)

As a kid, trips to the video store meant many things to me; aside from renting something cool, above all, I absolutely loved perusing the Horror section and checking out all the incredible covers!  Of course, there were many, many covers that stuck out and either slightly scared me or made that internal voice inside me shout "COOL!"  One in particular belonged to Night of the Zombies, a film which I didn't actually get to see until about 1996 or so when I picked up a grey-market bootleg release from Creature Feature.

Of the many titles this movie has, this is the most common.

Let's get something out of the way right off the bat:  Night of the Zombies (or Hell of the Living Dead, as it's more commonly known on digital media) is not a good film...at all.  It's poorly acted, has shoddy direction, mind-numbing dialogue, baffling editing choices (hello random jungle stock footage), a ripped off soundtrack and, depending on which version you're watching, has a horribly murky picture!  But it's oh so much fun!

Dawn of the Dead comparisons be damned!

What little story there is begins at a top secret research facility where some scientists are developing something called Operation Sweet Death.  Of course, all Hell breaks loose and, the entire facility is gassed by their newly created chemical, effectively killing everyone.  This all starts when a zombie rat bites one of the scientists!  From there, we move to an "elite" commando unit (ie: a no-budget version of Dawn of the Dead's SWAT team) attempting to thwart some local hippies who demand research facilities such as the one we just saw get shut down.  Our crew of wanna-be tough guys shoots first and asks questions later, apparently being the best of the best so to speak. 

I can't wait to see Ethel's face when she finds this in her soup!

Our heroes are soon informed that they've been assigned to investigate the facility seen at the start since communication has been lost.   Along the way, the commandos run into a journalist and her cameraman who have just been attacked in a local village by several zombies -- including a zombie child!  From there, our four commandos and their new journalist friends (hmmm...sounds like a familiar combination from another zombie movie we've all seen, no?) continue their journey to the research facility.  Along the way, there are seemingly endless shots of wild animal stock footage, multiple zombie attacks (and decent gore), as the film plods to its inevitable conclusion.

Hey! Anyone got any extra tickets?

Notorious Italian director Bruno Mattei (under the pseudonym of "Vincent Dawn"...see what he did there?) handles the action here, which I guess could be called successful . . . in that I've seen much, much worse films and shot-on-video movies.  However, when combined with a poor budget and a weak script, it's hard to believe even George Romero could've gone for the win here! 

I don't think this is how to make kids' lunches healthier!

While watching Night of the Zombies, the first clue that we're in familiar territory comes in the fact that this film straight-up lifts portions of Goblin's scores from Dawn of the Dead and Contamination!  While I'm not sure exactly how that happened (or how it got by Richard Rubenstein), it does make for some jarring musical cues that ultimately get quite repetitive; much like the Dario Argento cut of Dawn of the Dead, there are only so many times one can hear "Zombi" before it gets boring.  Of course, the team-up of commandos/journalists is also borrowed from Romero's classic . . . why does it seem that so many Italian zombie movies ALWAYS have a journalist involved somewhere and/or start out in New York City? 

Seen here:  Geraldo Rivera speaking with protesters at the DNC.

As I said earlier, this film REALLY plods along . . . in fact, I've often thought about doing some slight editing to it to drop some of the endless stock footage (borrowed from Nuova Guinea, l'isola dei cannibali) and tighten up some of the sequences.  When the group reaches a native village, the film suddenly becomes like a mondo pseudo-documentary due to the abundance of stock footage, which paints the indigenous people as some sort of cannibals.  In fact, this footage doesn't even match the actual footage Mattei shot; the actual natives are clearly emaciated, while the zombified dead who attack are muscular and have current hairstyles!


Do you have a moment to talk about our lord and savior "Uggh"?

At its heart, there's a pretty decent story here, but for me, the action really doesn't start to get good until our heroes encounter an abandoned house -- which is soon overrun with zombies in a pretty cool attack sequence.  Here, the action significantly picks up with glorious zombie attacks and lots of gore! 

"Wait, you mean we're not in a sequel to Dawn of the Dead?"

The Dawn of the Dead "borrowing" continues in the final scenes at the research facility, as the last remaining commandos are picked off (one even in/on some sort of elevator!) and another is bitten and returns, to lead a heard of zombies back to the last survivor!  


Easily one of the coolest shots in the entire film!

The zombie makeups are all over the place.  Make-ups range from the grey/blue skin tones of Dawn of the Dead to purple and green tones and then, some kinda grizzly-looking specials that might be at home in a Fulci picture.  It's almost as if several different effects people worked on the film at different times! 

A good portion of the budget must have been spent here!

While Night of the Zombies/Hell of the Living Dead/Virus is often a mixed bag, it's still a gory hoot that is truly a product of its time and must have been awesome to see in the grindhouse theaters of Times Square back in the day!  If you're looking for a tastelessly fun movie night, this is the one for you!