How bad was it? Well, for starters, there are only a couple of zombies in the movie, and they're entirely incidental. They could just as well have not been in there at all. For the most part, the story is about some people on an island where there's a tribe of cannibal natives who aren't actually cannibals, since their diet is composed mostly of badly-molded wax dummies filled with pork parts. Sort of somehow leading them is a mad scientist who never took acting lessons.
How bad was it? Well, how about a guy who has been slain and mutilated but can still blink? Or a dead guy missing almost all of his chest cavity that still finds it necessary to breathe? Or a dude who falls out of a 20th-story window and has his arm fly off, but in the next scene has the arm back again? Or the reflection of the entire crew in someone's binoculars in detailed close-up? If your apartment had been burglarized and ransacked, you'd report it to the police, wouldn't you? How about if your friend the cop showed up (coincidentally) and ran around the place looking for the burglar whose footsteps you just heard... surely the cop would report the crime and call for back-up, or at least draw his gun, right? Well, not in this movie. The burglary was simply forgotten right after it happened and is never mentioned again, nor is the reason for it ever worked into the rest of the film. Or hey, how about this... if you found a maggot-ridden head on your bed, right next to an arcane symbol of evil scrawled on your sheets in blood, you'd be upset for at least a few minutes, right? Nah, not in this movie. Again, it's forgotten within a couple of minutes by all of the characters and has nothing to do with anything else in the movie. Maybe on a cannibal island, leaving a decomposed head on your bed is customary in the way that a good hotel in the US leaves a chocolate on your pillow. Nothing in this film makes sense, including the ending, wherein the cannibal natives suddenly decide to turn on the mad scientist for no apparent reason. I guess they were just in a bad mood that afternoon.
The worst part of this flick, though, is its none-too-subtle racist overtones. We can start with the black boat captain whose name is Mulatto (no, really, that's his name). Or we can look at the swarthy natives who are ruled by the one white person on the island, or the fact that the only person they don't kill and eat is a tall, blond, blue-eyed woman. Instead of eating her, they paint flowers on her naked body and worship her as a goddess. Or the dark-skinned cannibal medical student. It goes on and on. Rule of thumb for Zombi Holocaust: the darker your skin tone, the more evil and devious you are. And you still won't be able to act.
Now, I love cheesy horror flicks, but this was the wrong kind of cheese. Natives of Brooklyn may understand when I say that this is pure frummunda cheese. I won't explain that, so don't ask.
How bad was it? Well, how about a guy who has been slain and mutilated but can still blink? Or a dead guy missing almost all of his chest cavity that still finds it necessary to breathe? Or a dude who falls out of a 20th-story window and has his arm fly off, but in the next scene has the arm back again? Or the reflection of the entire crew in someone's binoculars in detailed close-up? If your apartment had been burglarized and ransacked, you'd report it to the police, wouldn't you? How about if your friend the cop showed up (coincidentally) and ran around the place looking for the burglar whose footsteps you just heard... surely the cop would report the crime and call for back-up, or at least draw his gun, right? Well, not in this movie. The burglary was simply forgotten right after it happened and is never mentioned again, nor is the reason for it ever worked into the rest of the film. Or hey, how about this... if you found a maggot-ridden head on your bed, right next to an arcane symbol of evil scrawled on your sheets in blood, you'd be upset for at least a few minutes, right? Nah, not in this movie. Again, it's forgotten within a couple of minutes by all of the characters and has nothing to do with anything else in the movie. Maybe on a cannibal island, leaving a decomposed head on your bed is customary in the way that a good hotel in the US leaves a chocolate on your pillow. Nothing in this film makes sense, including the ending, wherein the cannibal natives suddenly decide to turn on the mad scientist for no apparent reason. I guess they were just in a bad mood that afternoon.
The worst part of this flick, though, is its none-too-subtle racist overtones. We can start with the black boat captain whose name is Mulatto (no, really, that's his name). Or we can look at the swarthy natives who are ruled by the one white person on the island, or the fact that the only person they don't kill and eat is a tall, blond, blue-eyed woman. Instead of eating her, they paint flowers on her naked body and worship her as a goddess. Or the dark-skinned cannibal medical student. It goes on and on. Rule of thumb for Zombi Holocaust: the darker your skin tone, the more evil and devious you are. And you still won't be able to act.
Now, I love cheesy horror flicks, but this was the wrong kind of cheese. Natives of Brooklyn may understand when I say that this is pure frummunda cheese. I won't explain that, so don't ask.