The swan song of exploitation legend Bruno Mattei, Zombies: The Beginning starts with Dr Sharon Dimao being airlifted to safety, the woman claiming to be the only survivor from a salvage ship that ran aground on an island of zombies. After a week in hospital, she goes back to work but loses her job, her employers disbelieving her story about the reanimated dead. The next six months are spent recuperating at a Buddhist temple, but Sharon still suffers from terrible nightmares (well, the same nightmare several times over).
When a man from the Tyler corporation visits Sharon, telling her that he believes her story and that he wants her to act as a consultant on a mission to another island that might be overrun by the living dead, she decides to confront her fears. Accompanied by a platoon of tough, gung-ho marines, she travels to the island where she once again comes face to face with the ravenous zombies (which look a lot more like Lamberto Bava's demons than anything to be found in a George Romero movie).
In short, Zombies: The Beginning is James Cameron's Aliens, but with zombies (that look like demons).
This might be the final effort from a director whose career has spanned four decades, but Mattei proves that he has lost none of his magic: his last film is just as clumsy, cheesy, gory and downright hilarious as anything from his heyday. Sure, it's got a nasty shot-on-video aesthetic that makes it look even cheaper than 'classics' like Rats Night of Terror and Hell of the Living dead, but all of the director's trademarks are there: dreadful dialogue, terrible performances, unconvincing special effects, and lots of unintentional hilarity.
The real fun, however, is in spotting the countless ways that this film apes Aliens. Mattei has zero shame in copying everything he possibly can from Cameron's classic: marines equipped with motion detectors, a tough female soldier, flamethrowers for roasting the enemy, a stomach-burster, a treacherous company man, and an ending that sees Sharon strip to her vest to destroy the zombies' nest, where people are being used for breeding.
In a last-ditch effort to inject just a smidgen of originality, Bruno throws in some cone-headed zombie children with bug eyes, and a disembodied brain in a jar that has been planning to take over the world. Dumb doesn't even begin to describe it.
A tough one to rate: it's embarrassingly bad, and unlikely to appeal to the average Joe, but fans of Mattei's particular brand of trash will have a blast. I'll play it safe and give it a middling 5/10.
When a man from the Tyler corporation visits Sharon, telling her that he believes her story and that he wants her to act as a consultant on a mission to another island that might be overrun by the living dead, she decides to confront her fears. Accompanied by a platoon of tough, gung-ho marines, she travels to the island where she once again comes face to face with the ravenous zombies (which look a lot more like Lamberto Bava's demons than anything to be found in a George Romero movie).
In short, Zombies: The Beginning is James Cameron's Aliens, but with zombies (that look like demons).
This might be the final effort from a director whose career has spanned four decades, but Mattei proves that he has lost none of his magic: his last film is just as clumsy, cheesy, gory and downright hilarious as anything from his heyday. Sure, it's got a nasty shot-on-video aesthetic that makes it look even cheaper than 'classics' like Rats Night of Terror and Hell of the Living dead, but all of the director's trademarks are there: dreadful dialogue, terrible performances, unconvincing special effects, and lots of unintentional hilarity.
The real fun, however, is in spotting the countless ways that this film apes Aliens. Mattei has zero shame in copying everything he possibly can from Cameron's classic: marines equipped with motion detectors, a tough female soldier, flamethrowers for roasting the enemy, a stomach-burster, a treacherous company man, and an ending that sees Sharon strip to her vest to destroy the zombies' nest, where people are being used for breeding.
In a last-ditch effort to inject just a smidgen of originality, Bruno throws in some cone-headed zombie children with bug eyes, and a disembodied brain in a jar that has been planning to take over the world. Dumb doesn't even begin to describe it.
A tough one to rate: it's embarrassingly bad, and unlikely to appeal to the average Joe, but fans of Mattei's particular brand of trash will have a blast. I'll play it safe and give it a middling 5/10.