despite the subject matter Shock Waves is pretty solid as a spooky castle type movie, not so much as trash splat zombie movie.
Yeah,
Shock Waves itself has a pretty good rep so Im not worried about that so much as the other two in the list.
Anyway, back to the shitwheel I go with the chronologically latest entry in the vaguely accepted Zombi series,
Zombi IV: After Death
Premise: A Voodoo priest starts a zombie outbreak on an island, with the only survivor being a little girl. Years later she returns with a bunch of mercenaries to figure out what happened. Something about a magic necklace too.
Execution: Open with dramatic narration and 80s music before we cut to a half voodoo cave/half catholic crypt satanic temple where some shaniqua suffers an epileptic seizure while a satanic dark darky priest prays.....I think. His voice is kinda drowned out by the soundtrack. Meanwhile we get shots of armed group of crackers moving through a cave. Eventually the satanic/voodoo priest fires magic at shaniqua who starts to vomit before being swallowed uyp by the ground. Moments later said crackers arrive and accuse him of starting a zombie outbreak, which he admits along with saying he sent his wife to hell just now for unspecified reasons. Cracker Team Six want to kill him but their leader wants to vomit exposition first about how they were there as medical researchers n shit, while the priest counter-exposits about he opened a satanic voodoo door to hell and they all be fucked, this goes back and forth until one of the crackers gets bored and empties a magazine into him.
Right on cue his now zombified/demonified shaniqua fucking mario jumps out of hell and up through the floor and slaughters half the group, forcing the rest to flee. Cut to parents and kid running slowly through the jungle being chased by zombies. Acting happens and it becomes clear that the child actor is unfortunately the least shit actor in the scene. Eyy and the zombies are running....I guess. Shaniqua finishes off the group in the temple/crypt and kid's parents get killed while the kid runs off with a magic necklace after her mom decides she's bored of carrying her or something....and we instantly cut to years later without any warning where grown up kid is returning in a speedboat with mercenaries as the title song blares.
After some badly dubbed chit chat, Lead Chick randomly starts babbling about how she knew an island like this full of zombies and a bunch other clumsy exposition about her necklace. On said island a couple randos are walking through a ruined village, and we cut back to the boat where they suddenly hear a bunch of canned spooky moans which Lead Chick declares "the souls of the dead" and the boat magically steers itself towards the island. Randos already on the island continue the unbroken chain of badly dubbed and acted exposition about the zombies on the island. Lead Chick wants to leave....and i'm suddenly wondering why any of them are here if she never actually wanted to go to this island, or was it pure coinkydink she was on a speedboat with mercenaries right next to said island.
One of the mercenaries sees a zombie sneaking around the treeline and immidiately gives chase as the zombie sprints away, eventually catching up and punching the shit out of him....like the zombie didnt even do anything he was just there and gets chased down and beaten. Merc sees the zombie's rotting face and freaks out long enough for the zombie to bite him before running off again. The rest of the group find him and upon returning to the boat its completely vanished, and they head for the island's former hospital. Randos stumble accross the temple from the start and despite hearing the zombies moaning and being fully aware of whats in there they decide to go in anyway for bragging rights or something. Finding the abandoned hospital the main group looks around, finding a bunch of lit candles and a bigass box of M16s and grenades while the Bit Merc slowly dies.
The randos continue exploring the zombie temple and ask the actually valid question why this abandoned island is full of lit candles everywhere before finding the big book of zombies and we get more badly translated exposition before they read the "summon zombies" spell which surprisingly enough summons zombies who quickly devour two of them, with the survivor running away. Starting to notice all the zombies seem to be dressed as ninjas. Back at the hospital and the zombies are rising from the rather pathetic graveyard, and the toothless merc on guard duty is distracted by a random romantic moment with other chick and gets jumped by one of the zombies who manages to kick the crap out of the assembled mercs until the Rando Survivor jumps into the scene and instantly headshots him while taking command of the group as a swarm closes in on the hospital.
Other chick gets killed by the now turned Bit Merc while Lead Chick completes some anti-zombie ritual that...does nothing and she gets jumped by the Merc Zombie, however stabbing him in the shoulders with a pair of scissors makes him randomly disappear in time for another zombie to jump her before another merc saves her. Eventually they light a bonfire outside the front door which kinda spooks the zombies who seem to randomly be stopping and moving every other cut. The cutting in this movie is so confusingly bad its hard to describe. Mercs eventually corner the Bit Merc Zombie despite the efforts the cinematographer to randomly make him vanish out of scene and headshot him. This drives Toothless Merc berserk as he charges outside to poke zombies with his fully loaded rifle before remembering its loaded and casually wiping out the whole swarm, before the now zombified other chick bites and kills him.
Back in the hospital ninja zombies jump the group in sync from all directions like this is a fucking power ranger episode and...huh they killed him incredibly quickly and are now burning all the corpses on the bonfire. We get more exposition from Rando Survivor about the scientists on the island making a miracle cure for everything and....oh I guess the zombies are back and are just standing outside menacingly. Chick randomly states the zombies want her and how she knows all about what happened on the island. Rando Survivor asks the logical question of why the hell she didnt interrupt the exposition at any point to tell them this and she replies that she had forgotten about it. Now she takes over the exposition which devolves into a clipshow/flashback from earlier. Apparently her anti-zombie necklace is the key to close the door to hell opened in the first scene....by which I think they mean the hole which Shaniqua Zombie bounced out of.
Next day and Lead Merc is hunting the zombified Toothless Merc who talks about how awesome being a zombie is before just fuckin shooting him in the gut and biting him. More zombies are now rising from the same graves they rose from earlier and they take the Lead Merc back to the hospital where he eventually dies, and despite having seen and been told repeatedly about how bit niggas turn, they just leave him under a bedsheet without headshotting him. However when they see the repeated shot of zombies standing outside, Black Merc remembers and goes to shoot him, pulling back the sheet to reveal the now zombified lead merc randomly spawned a rifle which he uses to shoot down Black Merc as the zombies forget they can run and slowly swam in. The dying black merc distracts the swarm while Lead Chick and Surviving Rando flee, eventually detonating the grenade box to destroy the building and the zombies inside. The two survivors fight their way through more zombies and run off into the night.
Next day they are napping by a tree next to the temple from earlier and decide they aint got anything better to do than go inside. Lead Chick picks up the big book of zombies which tells her to sacrifice her soul to stop the zombies, which prompts her to throw the phenomenally useless anti-zombie amulet into a random opening, causing it to explode and as Rando Survivor is fisted through the spine by a zombie, lead chick turns into a mutated old lady zombie and the movie ends.
Analysis: Can certainly smell the Fragasso Fragrance on this one.
- Cinematography: Another of the "random cuts thrown in everywhere" school which does an already bad movie no favours. Shots are reused ad nauseum but I guess the lighting is competent during the night scenes....kinda damning with faint praise here.
- Soundtrack: Not terrible in and of itself by too loud and too aggressively used at the slightest excuse.
- Effects: Shaniqua zombie who looks like an offbrand Demoni and the turned toothless merc who looks okish for a zombie aside, pretty bad makeup effects which resemble soup skins/stained plastic wrap glued to the zombies faces and the zombies are all dressed in half ninja outfits. Gore in the first scene is acceptable but afterwards becomes barely passable.
- Acting: Possibly the worst yet and the dubbing is like some shit you'd see from 1960s translated spanish b movies. Zombies act like generic villain goons rather than zombies.
- Story: The weak premise is stretched to its utmost and never developed in a halfway passable way. The scripted lines are just an endless spew of badly retranslated exposition, and the pacing is all over the place
- Characters: Nobody memorable in their own right or interesting enough to mention specifically. The mercs were less insufferable than I thought they would be though which was neat.
- Innovation: I guess the inconsistent use of sapient and intelligent zombies (i.e. they can shoot and talk to their victims) is notable, even if this ground was already trod by the time this movie came out
- Scares/Kills: No scares, and probably the best kills were the ones in the first scene
Conclusion: Pretty terrible all round, and its failures are not amusing enough to be entertaining unlike Fragasso's more famous
Troll 2
Anyway, on to yet another
"not actually a zombie movie but has something freaky that eats people so we will label it zombi in random countries" entry with
Zombi IV: Panic
Premise: A dumbass scientist infects himself with the ugly mutant disease which turns him into an ugly mutant who starts eating people in a small town.
Execution: After some silent credits we open on what I instantly recognised as the dreary streets and backalleys of suburban bongland. Inside a research lab as the soundtrack has a conniption rats are being tested on as we get a bunch of random closup shots of them fighting. Suddenly an alarm goes off and blonde science lady sees on the warning screen the same footage of caged rats fighting which apparently qualifies as a "serious risk of contamination". Moments later a bunch of guys in gasmasks roll up and we see the rats managed to smash the glass of their cage offscreen and are now dead as a random guy wails with his face and hands covered in pondscum lookin green paint, meaning he is now infected or something.
Next day CEO of evil science wants to cover the whole thing up...whatever it was. Outside on a street I swear to god I have been before but cannot for the life of me place random guy picks up random girl, cut to night time in an alley and they are starting to fuck while something watches from outside their car. Said something smashes the window open and drags the man outside and kills him in some unspecified way that leaves his neck covered in blood without any wounds. Girl runs off to hide but is quickly found and killed by a POV shot. Back with the CEO they are discussing how the green guy from earlier vanished along with a guinea pig who is apparently now the size of a dog or a lion. Meanwhile in rome the doctor lead from
The Beyond is receiving further exposition from some unspecified intelligence department and I guess he is now tasked with investimagating.
Speaking of which, the car of the dead couple has been found by the cops along with the dead chick whose body has been torn apart in a kinda confusing and badly staged way. Also her right hand was torn off but the dismembered hand next to her is a left hand...ah fuck it im just being petty. Male lead checks in with Blonde Science Lady to investigate and the two randomly head off to the missing scientist's country estate in a suspiciously italian looking part of bongland. Checking around the house they find another corpse in a chimney. Cut to a creepy ass priest throwing candy at choirboys...and back to the lab Male Lead is talking to the cops and the CEO from earlier. Pretty sure one of the other scientists in this scene was a nazi prevert in
Gestapo's Last Orgy but aside from this there is nothing beyond further exposition about the missing scientist and why "operation ugly mutant killers" needs to be covered up. When the CEO and scientist leave the office, Male Lead accurately declares them to be "dreadful actors" and starts talking to the cop about how there may be a connection between operation "ugly mutant killers" and the random killings.
Cue nude shower scene with bleach blonde chick who looks like she just fled from an insufferable 60s bongland comedy movie. One psycho ripoff later and she gets killed offscreen. Coroner casually drops his opinion the killer is a radioactive mutant when talking to the cop the next day and we cut back to totally-not-italy where unspecified government figures discuss what is apparently an outbreak and how they may have to nuke the town. Back in said town....ok I may have to see if there is any info on the filming locations I keep recognising these nondescript little streets they are shooting in....soldiers are now on patrol. By which I mean we get a vehicle POV of someone driving through the obviously britbong streets intermixed with cuts of army surplus jeeps driving through obviously italian streets. Also the soldiers seem to be dressed as Imperial Officers from
Star Wars.
Male Lead is given explicit licence to use his rooty-tooty-point-and-shooty, for some reason they really emphasise this despite him already waving it around, in order to prevent people leaving town which is kind of a lot to put on one guy. Phone lines are cut off and the town is quarantined and cut off from the rest of the country in a montage. For some reason they show a power plant labeled "BBC television central generator" being shut down which is funnier than it should be. Male Lead and Cop investigate a random derelict building and find something unseen yet shocking under a manhole. Meanwhile our second fodder couple go and watch a movie, intermixed with poorly cut shots something hobbling slowly through sewers and a different derelict building and with zero fanfare we get our first clear look at the mutant and he doesnt actually look too bad, albeit he has something of a "hobo deep fried in peanut oil" vibe about him.
It turns out the derelict building the mutant is stumbling through is at the back of the theater, and when the music gets loud he starts chimping out and smashing random boxes before tearing through the screen, causing everyone to run out in panic despite him not actually doing anything scary yet beyond looking badly burned and hairy. For some reason Female half of fodder couple stays behind and gets her hair pulled to death, and the monster randomly dumps her on a box at crotch height while standing between her legs...erm ok probably a good idea to cut to the cops showing up. Wait nvm he is just drinking her blood, thought shit was gonna get freaky here. Male Lead and cop show up and find the corpse, and the extremely italian looking and sounding and smelling britbong mob start panicking.
Apparently this is all it takes for the nuke option to be taken, and back in the now doomed town the public is rioting. Creepy priest from earlier is interrupted taking the choirboys to the local bathhouse by the mutant and killed while they escape. Civilians try to drive through the road block, we get a pointless scene of some asshole trying to shoot his way through and his car getting blown up and male lead saving him. CEO, who failed to get his family out now grabs an elephant gun and starts patroling his kinda small house until the mutant shows up, as apparently the guy's basement is directly connected to the sewers and accessible via a nice and convinient air vent. Naturally as we still have half an hour left the gun does jack shit and he gets killed while his kids watch in mild concern. Back in the lab and blonde science lady reveals the only way the infection is spread is through physical contact so if they kill the guy the outbreak ends since all the victims are dead. Male lead heads to CEO house and finds the sewer entrance, eventually emerging back at the theater where the town drunk's corpse is lying, and he almost gets killed by the mutant until the cops scare him off.
We get an Ed Wood tier "cockpit" shot as the nuke plane prepares to take off, and back in town apparently they managed to airtight seal the entire sewer system with enough drywall to trap the mutant, and plan to flood it with poison gas. More exposition and pointless talk about how bad it is to nuke the town, and Male Lead has to force a scientist at gun point to hand over a bucket of "necron" gas which is apparently radioactive given the symbols on it. Next scene he has it loaded into a radioactive gas gun and they head into the sewer. 10 minutes of confusing shots later (
both the cops/lead and the mutant walking along the same stretch of tunnel repeatedly...as in the exact same one the other is walking in) and the mutant eventually emerges from the sewer while the cops/lead decide the place they have been wandering without issue is now full of poison gas and start to suffocate, one cop even tripping and breaking his leg for no reason
Mutant runs into Blonde science lady who wants to save him or fuck him....kinda unclear. She shows absolutely no reaction to his manled face and the blood covering him and is about to hand over a convinient anti-mutant antidote before he hears Male lead approaching and chimps out, only to be eventually taken down by the suspiciously fire extinguisher looking/sounding radioactive necron gas (
a cop also gets a facefull of it but doesnt seem to mind) and we randomly get a coundown on the bottom of the screen as they tell the gubmint the mutant is dead, cancelling the nuke without any question as the movie ends.
Analysis: Pretty much certain that this was a half finished film that lay in a vault a couple years until being completed with newly shot scenes to pad out the run time given how janky this was.
- Cinematography: Yet anuddah random fast cut fest, although a lil more competent in general shooting this time. Unfortunately this is not nearly enough to disguise how often the movie cuts from random italian place to random bongland place.
- Soundtrack: Not great...or even good.
- Effects: Makeup on the mutant ok, gore effects passable but unimpressive
- Acting: Boring bad. Nothing positive to say in any direction
- Story: Anaemic premise is dragged out tediously through endless exposition, and paced as ploddingly as it gets.
- Characters: Easy enough to distinguish but too bland to name.
- Innovation: Nada.
- Scares/Kills: Pedo Priest's death was kinda ok but thats about it. Most kills are just generic mottled slimy scabs over the neck.
Conclusion: Just plain boring to be honest. The exposition and endless shots of people/the mutant moving around made this real hard to sit through and the gore/kill payoff was mediocre as hell.
