A group of treasure hunters get their boat lost in some wicked fog and run aground on an island inhabited by the living dead. Yay, Bruno Mattei dusts of his Vincent Dawn pseudonym and returns to the genre that gave him his biggest hit (HELL OF THE LIVING DEAD) of his career. And don't think 25 years has changed his improved his style at all as this is as equally gory, stupid and amusingly dubbed. It is like he didn't miss a beat between this and his last collaborative effort ZOMBIE IV (1988). Technically, the film has more in common with his soap opera looking THE TOMB (2004) than his previous shot-on-film zombie entries. But the locations in the Philippines look nice and this allows Bruno to recruit some eager extras to be his zombies. There are some odd twists thrown in here like the zombies having fangs and some zombie ghosts (including one that does some Flamenco dancing!?!). Uncle Bruno also takes it easy on the "borrowed" footage this time, only using stuff from another film once during a flashback (a galleon battle that looks like it is from a 1960s film). This was Mattei's next-to-last film with his final film (ZOMBIES: THE BEGINNING) being a sequel to this. Color me blood red excited! The film ends with a dedication to veteran Italian character actor Mike Monty, who was the script supervisor on this and died while it was being made.
Review of Island of the Living Dead
