Good flesh-eater flick from some of Italy’s finest rip-off artists. Every time that director Bruno Mattei swipes from Dawn of the Dead, take a drink—if you want to get really, really, really drunk. Mattei even reuses the familiar music score by Goblin for maximum shamelessness. Today, it’s acquired a certain desperate charm. For all of its flaws, it’s still a fast-paced zombie apocalypse flick made from a distinctly Italian blend of outrageous gore, gratuitous nudity, a jungle setting (Spain passed off as New Guinea), heaps of stock footage and over-acting. Also, despite the low budget, the producers do splurge on a couple of very nice zombie make-up jobs. Most of the rest of the undead meanwhile are painted a near Amos ‘n’ Andy shade of dark brown for some reason.
Best character: Franco Garofalo as Zantoro, the shaggy-haired military man who’s already a kill-happy psycho at the beginning and only becomes more unhinged when the zombies rise.
Best death: A great tongue-ripping, eyeball-popping moment that must be seen to be believed.
In true grindhouse form, this movie goes by a whole mess of different titles, most of them pretty great. Hell of the Living Dead seems to be the most common one, but there’s also Night of the Zombies, Zombie Inferno and Zombie Creeping Flesh.