When it comes to zombie films we're used to flicks that are below standard, as most of its companions of that era Virus has become quite notorious. So in general, if you like horror and zombie films, check it out and judge yourself if it earns that reputation. I say no, and there are many reasons, mostly the goofs that continue throughout the picture, but also the technical flaws of it. The cast, as in all films of that kind, sucks. The acting is so wooden, I was wondering if Pinoccio would show up. Some of the Zombies struggle to keep a straight face. A major abominations are the scenes where one member of the special forces taunts the walking dead face to face and they do nothing. Zilch. Nada. Speaking about special forces, we are to believe that a special force of just 4 people in blue overalls and plain street shoes is sent to Papua New Guinea, armed with 40 year old Thompson MPs and similar old gunnery. Despite knowing that a headshot kills the zombies from the first engagement they unload their ammunition into the bodies of them over and over again with no effect. Not a smart bunch of people. But it gets worse than that. Owls and hawks fly through the air making the noises of apes, apes leaping through landscapes that look completely different to the setting the actors are in and the most ridiculous geographical good: A herd of African elephants stampeding through the savanna though it was said clearly that were in New Guinea! Hilarious. Well, when the special team storms the embassy we read "policia urbana" on a police car and something with "espanol" on the ambulance, so at least we know where it was shot. Explains also why the natives in Papua don't look like asians. Speaking about hilarious, this flick brings you the most ridiculous excuse for a boob scene ever, I don't want to ruin that "no they didn't!!!" experience for anyone who hasn't watched it, see for yourselves. Cause you wouldn't believe me anyways. There are lots of other goofs here and there, like the rat in the facility being the only animal affected by the virus in the whole film, that Geiger counter substitute whose indicator curiously goes to the right when you turn a rotary knob to the right, "zombies" pressing a piece of meat to another actors leg and pulling it through their fingers with their teeth to get the effect of ripping flesh off the bone. Another low point is the scenes ripped from a documentary of an actual funeral ceremony of a tribe, showing a real corpse with an already bloated body, needless to say when that man rises from the dead neither he, the rest of the tribe nor their village looks anything like the stock footage. Of course, we're not spared of footage of a tribe gutting and eating a real animal, in this case a Crocodile. Another example of clever but unconvincing editing is stock footage of an old tribe woman eating something, cut together with new shots of a hand picking maggots from a rotten human head. Counting up all those things you might think there is actually something happening in this film, but it isn't. Most of the time the group slides from one engagement with zombies to another location where the same thing happens again and the story fizzles out rather quickly. So when they finally, after almost 100 minutes reach the research facility and get finished off rather quickly after having survived for so long you ask yourself why on earth those ugly mutts weren't killed after 15 minutes so we wouldn't have to watch it. Seriously, we know that people like Mattei or his colleague D'Amato never did this for artistic reasons but for the money, and this kind of films were made cheap and quick to mooch of the success of Romero and Fulci. Still, there are so many moment ins this film that you wonder if there wasn't anyone in the crew or the casts who told their director "Dude, this isn't right no one will buy it". If I hadn't read that Mattei died this Monday (two days ago on the day I write this) I wouldn't have watched it, but it was the first of his films I found when I searched my collection.
Review of Hell of the Living Dead
