Rating: B
Dir: Andrea Bianchi
Star: Karin Well, Gianluigi Chirizzi, Simone Mattioli, Pietro Barzocchini
a.k.a. Le notti del terrore
Also known in its home territory as Zombi 3, this Italian zombie film does a number of things right. Which came as something of a surprise, since my previous experience with the pasta-munching undead had been mixed, to put it mildly. Firstly, it doesn’t hang about. Barely has impressively hairy Professor Ayers started digging in a crypt, when reanimated corpses start pulling their way out of the grave. Why? Doesn’t matter, like many of the best zombie films, from Night to Shaun. Such concerns are irrelevant, just a distraction from the threat posed to the victims, three couples plus a child, visiting the nearby manor house at the invitation of the Professor.
Another impressive element is the look of the zombies. Rosario Prestopino’s masks are excellent: these look like they have been in the ground for decades. Their faces are decayed, riddled with maggots, and on the edge of crumbling. Each looks slightly different, to the point you start to recognize some, such as one still retaining an eye – albeit half way down its cheek, and pointing in a weird direction. And then, they use tools like axes, or even a battering ram to gain access their food. This changes the dynamic entirely, because you can no longer just hole up and wait to be rescued. They will break into your sanctuary, it’s only a matter of time. You need to deal with the situation on that basis.
Or not deal with it, because the six adults (I’m not including as humans the two servants, obviously) here are spectacularly inept in this department. It’s actually kinda nice to see people who are a bit shit at the zombie apocalypse thing. It goes as well as you would expect, with them being trapped, one by one, and torn apart in some gleefully depicted entrail chomping, courtesy of special effects by Gino De Rossi. Adding weirdness, the kid, Michael, is played by a midget (Barzocchini). This was apparently needed to get around legal issues in Italy, limiting children appearing in movie scenes involving sex ‘n’ violence. I imagine, in particular, the scene where zombie Michael chews off his mother’s breast might have been troublesome.
The “real” adults don’t make much of an impression. On arrival, they all seem more interested in having sex than anything of narrative interest. This is probably what you’d expect, given Bianchi’s filmography also includes titles like Exciting Love Girls and The Perverse World of Beatrice. Fortunately, it’s not long before the zombies arrive at the chateau (this was filmed at the Villa Parisi, also a location in Blood for Dracula and Immaculate), and nobody’s got time for aardvarking after that. Instead, it’s a near-constant stream of menace, exacerbated by the incompetence noted previously. There’s no pretense, no efforts to “elevate” the zombie subgenre, and is all the better for it. Unpopular opinion: it’s an improvement on any Lucio Fulci horror film.