The average 80s Italian zombie movie usually arrived on other shores armed with the odd alternate title, but even by these standards, Hell Of The Living Dead seems to have more aliases than Jason Bourne. Racking up a list of titles that include Virus, Nightmare Of The Zombies and (my personal favorite) Zombie Creeping Flesh, this blatent cash-in on Dawn Of The Dead seemed to prove that the whole alternate title thing must have been pretty catching as the film’s director got into the act. But while christening yourself Vincent Dawn to helm a shameless ripoff of George A. Romero’s beloved zombie flick may seem like a weird flex, director Bruno Mattei made his career aggressively emulating other, more inspirational titles.
While his later movies blissfully stole from the likes of Jaws, Rambo, Indiana Jones, Predator, Aliens and Terminator (often in the same movie), Hell Of The Living Dead – or whatever you care to call it – proves to be an extra cheeky, undead example.
While working on a secret project with the rather alarming title Operation: Sweet Death, a top secret research facility located in Papa New Guinea named Hope Centre #1 experiences a catastrophic setback when a chemically zombified rat causes a fatal leak. The result is the staff of entire plant sucking in some heinous chemicals that subsequently turns them all into the living dead and soon they’re spilling out into the surrounding jungle and infecting the townsfolk living nearby.
Meanwhile, in Barcelona, we’re introduced to a quartet of Interpol commandos as they eliminate a bunch of eco-terrorists who have taken the US Embassy hostage; but as Lt. Mike London, Osborne, Zantoro and Vincent take them down, the dying leader utters a garbled warning about the world being g forced to eat itself. However, before you know it, the group has been sent off to their next assignment which sees them – you guessed it – tasked with infiltrating Hope Centre #1 in order to find out what happened. However, even though the facility is probably accessible via sea, the commandos opt to travel for days through steaming jungles and brush shoulders with native tribes. Thankfully, they encounter journalist Lia Rousseau and her faithful cameraman, Max, who help them negotiate the hazardous journey despite the two groups having very separate agendas.
Of course, making the mission vastly more difficult is the fact that the flesh eating zombie epidemic is growing at an alarming rate and even though these undead fuckers move slower pace than my autobiography, they still prove to be something of a major threat. Can the commandos make it to facility with their sanity and flesh intact and even if they do, what are they expecting to find there other than a fiendishly gruesome death?
Anyone who is familiar with the works of Mattei probably knows what to except from his entry into the crowded area Italian producers trying to leech off of the success of Dawn Of The Dead. For a start, his liberal interpretation of “being influenced by” seems to translate as steal as much as you can and while this means that the Interpol commandos are dressed suspiciously like the SWAT guys in Romero’s classic (who the hell invades Papa New Guinea in blue jumpsuits?) the director fmgoes even further and co-opts a bunch of music cue from the band Goblin, even though they didn’t actually write a single note for the film. However, while the movie devotes it’s opening aping another movie by introducing the commandos in the midst of a previous mission (while slitting throats of terrorists who have already been captured and relinquished their weapons), Hell Of The Living Dead suddenly turns into a somewhat unpleasant edition of National Geographic as the story gets sidetracked by a visit to a lost tribe. This means not only do we have to contend with endless stock footage of various wild animals to drive home the fact that we’re not actually in Spain, but Mattei also chucks in footage cribbed from an
documentary about actual cannibal tribes from New Guinea.
This means that in the middle of our grotty little zombie flick, Mattei starts showing us footage of actual animal mutilation and genuine funeral ceremonies that means we get to stare at real corpses before the fake ones start shambling into frame. It’s a bizarre method to take, but then it’s also one that fits the filmmaker to a tee who later edited unauthorised footage from Jaws into a killer shark movie. However, like many projects from the guy, Hell Of The Living Dead casts something of a bewitching spell that makes you unable to tear yourself away from the gung-ho dubbing and endless ridiculous movies that’s ingrained itself in virtually every scene. The dialogue is so awful it’s borderline hypnotic with the actors lurching between the kind of tough guy talk that sounds like it’s been written by a fifteen year old (“When did you start worrying about our balls, chief?”), to dime store eco-anxiety (“Why should nature start breaking it’s own laws?”). Of course, scattered in-between are numerous salty comments by the super-horny commandos and even a stunning instance when one of their number, in an attempt to woo the pretty journalist, convinces her to quit smoking in favour to switching to chewing tobacco. I’ve never tried that one before…
In addition to half-assed horror and half-assed charactization, the film also lends itself to some half-assed politics as well; but weirdly enough, they somehow manage to contain a worryingly accurate grain of truth. Do I believe that certain governments are engaging in secret experiments subtly called Operation: Sweet Death in order to cull the expanding population by causing us to eat each other? No. But, a moment set in a UN crisis meeting that sees an outraged representative of the infected country give an impassioned (if rambling) plea to beg people to stop fucking up the world, only to be curtly brushed off by a stuffy white dude calling an end to the meeting with a disinterested “Well, that’s all we’ve got time for.” feels fairly (if accidently) timely.
Still, this doesn’t even Hope to stave off the stumbling oddness of it all. One guy meets his end by halting his sweep of a deserted house by donning a tutu and top hat and pretending to be Gene Kelly; another shows up how worthless the almost static zombies are by literally prancing and joking within an inch of them without getting bitten. Some performances are way over the top, some barely register and I don’t mean to be rude, but the members of the commando unit are so strange to look at in the looks department, they frequently distract from the zombie effects – which are predictably iffy.
Part ripoff, part stealth snuff film, part stock footage extravaganza, whatever you want to call Hell Of The Living Dead, you can’t call it competent. However, like all movies from this era of filmmaking, I just can’t fully write it off as my love of trash (correction: video nasty trash) means that I do garner a large amount of enjoyment as I watch on in amusement as Mattei does his thing. Undead, unbelievable, borderline unwatchable.
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