Xtro was another successor to Ridley Scott’s vaunted Alien (1979) and liberally borrowed from John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982), as director Harry Bromley Davenport crammed a multitude of ideas and influences into his film’s strangely atmospheric eighty-two minute run. This low-budget UK feature presented an incoherent narrative held together by a series of episodic accounts, yet remained unusually inventive, throwing in scenes of nudity, an excess of gore and a dwarf dressed as a clown as the schizophrenic alien malevolence conspired to draw upon the audience’s compassion. The imaginative set pieces would include a bizarre alien rape scene and a disgusting birth that defied the film’s meagre budget, leading to a grotesque finale. This excess would acquire Xtro a very unfavourable reputation, which is not entirely in keeping with much of the film’s buoyant tone. The UK’s DPP, however, were quick to seize on its gruesome content, listing it as yet another loathsome video nasty even though it had been released uncut to cinema with an “18” certificate. It was later caught up in the tabloid uproar and confiscated in Manchester, Birmingham and Newcastle. The tapes, however, had to be returned when the BBFC indicated that they had previously passed it suitable for cinema release without cuts. When the video was released in 1987 and again in 1992, the ending was altered to make it somewhat downcast when compared to the upbeat spirit of the original.
With his film having become a cult success in the ever-expanding video market of the 1980s, Bromley Davenport returned to direct two sequels Xtro II: The Second Encounter (1991) and Xtro 3: Watch the Skies (1995) and then in 2010 announced Xtro 4 was in production, which promises a return to form in being even stranger than the original.
IN A BEAUTIFUL locale, very close to Venice, self-destructive Oliviero (Luigi Pistilli) struggles to write his next novel and in his descent into madness he becomes obsessed with the image of Mary, Queen of Scots. His drunken rambling is plagued by the memory of his dead mother and he thinks nothing of publicly demeaning his long-suffering wife Irina (Anita Strindberg). In the privacy of their villa, he also sleeps with his maid Brenda as well as having an adulterous affair with an ex-student who works in the local bookshop. When she is hacked to death by an unseen assailant, Oliviero immediately falls under suspicion, for she was on her way to meet him. Soon after, his maid is butchered as she enjoys herself garbed as the ill-fated Scottish Queen. Even with a killer in their midst, both Oliviero and his submissive wife lie to the authorities, claiming they had to let Brenda go. Then they have the unexpected surprise of having their beautiful niece, Floriana (Edwige Fenech), come to stay with them. She begins to play with the couple’s fragile marriage, seducing both and sowing the seeds for their demise as the murders continue and a silver-haired stranger watches in the distance. All the while Oliviero’s black cat, Satan, surveys the scene, forever tormenting the downtrodden Irina.
Sergio Martino’s bizarrely entitled Il Tuo Vizio è Una Stanza Chiusa e Solo Io Ne Ho La Chiave was the fourth in a series of five gialli he worked on between 1970 and 1973. The title followed from his first, Lo Strano Vizio Della Signora Wardh also known as The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh (1971), but was never intended as a sequel. This particular entry, which adopted an uncharacteristic experimental approach to the traditional giallo structure, also went by the names Gently Before She Dies, Excite Me and the highly appropriate, Eye of the Black Cat. As Martino’s giallo reached its final half hour it drew upon the Gothic elements of Edgar Allan Poe’s tale The Black Cat and led to a finale that skilfully twisted the great writer’s original. This masterfully tense feature was to deliver some rather graphically illustrated murder scenes and immerse them in a sensuous ambience of licentious erotica that was prevalent in Italian cinema at this time. Martino had worked with his cast on many occasions, among them Eurocult actress Edwige Fenech, who was a regular in his films and was no stranger to sex romps and the gialli of the period. She went on to star on chat shows before moving into film production and later made an appearance in Hostel II (2007).
SOMEWHERE IN AN outlying region of Kansas City, a nuclear research reactor, which was constructed over an Indian burial ground, is going into melt down. Two years later, the complex has been completely demolished and the network of subterranean tunnels has been secured. The reactor has been replaced by a thriving up-market housing development. While the families above the ground carry on with their day-to-day lives, the atomic zombies bide their time. Their patience is rewarded when some of the youngsters attempt to film in what was once the main access into the reactor complex. When they fall through a damaged section of the passageway into the tunnels below, the growling zombies are presented with a golden opportunity to escape their two years of imprisonment and wreak havoc on the streets above. Three families now band together in a bid to stop the carnage.
Todd Sheets has over thirty films to his name, all produced on a micro-budget, ready to go to video. While his enthusiasm knows no bounds, he been constantly criticized for his ham-fisted approach to filming and scripting. Thankfully this has never stopped him and he has acquired something of a cult following. Such is his standing that when he set out to make this film, he had over 700 volunteers turn up to play the parts of the zombies. The acting leaves much to be desired, but Sheets makes up for this by pouring on the gore, with intestines constantly being torn out and the unfortunates being dragged away by this mindless horde. His adoration of George Romero’s work is there to be seen; it’s just a shame no one will give him that little bit of guidance and an ample budget.
This feature would be the first in a trilogy, followed by Zombie Bloodbath II: Rage of the Undead (1995) and Zombie Bloodbath III: Zombie Armageddon (2000). They were later released as a shot-to-video triple pack, but the first feature still remains the director’s favourite.
ACHEMICAL LEAK AT the Hope Centre in Papua New Guinea has started to spread and infect the staff at the plant, turning them into flesh-eating zombies. As these slow-moving zombies begin their mindless rampage, an anti-terrorist team led by Lt. Mike London (José Gras) and including Vincent (Josep Lluís Fonoll), Zantoro (Franco Garofalo) and Osbourne (Gaby Renom) arrives on the island. As they travel across the island, they come upon the news reporting team of Max (Selan Karay) and Lia Rousseau (Margit Evelyn Newton), who are trying to explain a series of attacks on the tribes of the island. The whole country is being overrun by this zombie infestation and the government is on the verge of collapse. When two of the group are consumed by the living dead, the survivors are forced to journey further inland only to face further attacks by this deranged mob. Their investigation reveals the chemical leak wasn’t an accident and the zombie plague is about to spread to throw the western world into utter chaos.
Zombie Creeping Flesh started life as Virus, a script written by José María Cunillés, that was then turned into a more extravagant venture by Claudio Fragasso and his wife Rossella Drudi. Adolescent cinemagoers had already developed a taste for zombie gut munching following the success of George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978) and Lucio Fulci’s Zombi 2 or Zombie Flesh Eaters (1979), and were now craving more. Two studios associated with low-budget horror, Dara Films in Spain and Beatrice Films in Rome, now looked to take advantage of this new demand. The original script set in Africa with entire ships crammed full of zombies was going to be too expensive to produce, so Bruno Mattei, a master of low-budget sleaze, was brought in as director with Fragasso assigned as his assistant. The project was beset by numerous problems; the filming that had taken place around Barcelona proved virtually unusable. With neither the time nor money available to re-shoot, the movie ultimately bewildered its expectant audience. The feature was further damaged when a series of sets were built to match the stock footage taken from La Vallée (1972), none of which were successfully edited into the finished cut.
In keeping with its exploitative roots, Inferno Dei Morti-Viventi was to enjoy life under several different names, each designed to cash in on the success of the increasingly lucrative zombie phenomenon. In the United States,
it was released as Hell of the Living Dead and then came Cannibal Virus, Night of the Zombies, Zombie Inferno, Zombies of the Savanna, Zombi 2: Ultimate Nightmare, Zombi 4 and Zombi 5: Ultimate Nightmare. No matter which title the distributors used, there was no disguising the fact that this film was a blatant plagiarizing of the critically acclaimed Dawn of the Dead. Further to this, Mattei adopted the pseudonym of Vincent Dawn and then garbed his team of anti-terrorists with the same uniforms as Romero’s Philadelphia SWAT team. As with Romero’s film, the only way to take one of this breed down was a gunshot to the head, although this outfit rarely seemed to get this right; but when they did, the head-exploding scenes were a delight for its eager viewers. While it remained true to its low-grade European origins principally with the prerequisite nudity and cannibalism, it also contained some excellent gory flesh ripping which was the match of its putrescent predecessors, splattering a copious supply of blood and guts along with extreme scenes of corpse devouring. The budget, however, didn’t always run to effective zombie make-up, with some of the cast looking as if all they had done was rub mud on their faces, while others succeeded in chilling the audience to the very bone.
When the film was submitted to the BBFC prior to its UK release, it had already been edited to safeguard its distribution with an “X” certificate. However, when it was released to video it appeared as the pre-cut cinema release and an uncertified shortened version in October 1982. This would lead to its ban as a video nasty in July 1983 after a successful prosecution in Brighton. It wasn’t dropped from the list until July 1985, but then ran into further problems in 1993 following the appalling murder of young Jamie Bulger. It was finally released uncut in 2002.
IN A SCENE that was added to the original footage, a couple of Coast Guards board a deserted boat which has been borne into New York’s Hudson River harbour. As they search through the disarray below decks, the zombie captain of the vessel erupts onto the scene. One of the boarders is savaged to death before the shambling monstrosity is brought down by a gunshot; it then collapses seemingly dead. Soon after in the morgue the creature begins to exhibit the faintest signs of life.
The boat, up until recently, had been in the possession of a scientist who was reported missing months ago as he was making his way to the Caribbean. His daughter, Anne Bowles (Tisa Farrow), is determined to find out what happened to him along with a journalist, Peter West (Ian McCollough), who desperatly needs a scoop to improve the mood of his demanding editor (Lucio Fulci). When they eventually discover the Island of Matuul, they learn Anne’s father had succumbed to a mystifying illness. They become acquainted with Dr David Menard (Richard Johnson) and his scornful wife Paola (Olga Karlatos), who is anxious to depart the secluded island. The zombie attacks that have been reported across the island have left her petrified, but her foolhardy husband is overly eager to undertake research into these macabre occurrences.
Menard should have been mindful of his shrew of a wife; the zombies soon rise from the earth to initiate their vicious assault. The most memorable attack comes from an aquatic zombie, who seizes a scantily clad female crewmember by the throat, then, its frenzy unabated, rips into a Tiger Shark. Paola meets her end as she is dragged by the hair through a closed door by an unseen zombie. In probably the most shocking scene in this bloodthirsty debacle, she is subjected to an impalement to the eye. The survivors are marooned on the island, their boat damaged by an enraged shark. They soon learn the only way to kill these zombies is to shoot them through the head. Only Peter and Anne are able to make an escape. As they enter New York’s Harbour, they listen in horror as a radio broadcast warns of a zombie plague that has gripped the entire city. The finale is widely acknowledged as one of Fulci’s finest moments, although, as with the prelude, it was added to the original reels following the success of George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978). The film now turns full circle, training on the droves of walking dead as they mindlessly trudge across the Brooklyn Bridge heading for Manhattan.
Zombie Flesh Eaters has since attracted a multitude of aliases, Zombie, Zombi 2, Island of the Living Dead, Zombie Island, Gli Ultimi Zombie, Island of the Flesh-Eaters, L’enfer Des Zombies, Sanguelia and Woodoo, and in its wake bestowed Fulci, whose career had begun to wane, a newfound iconic status. Dawn of the Dead was still to see release in Italy and at this point few people had been subjected to hordes of zombies on the rampage since Night of the Living Dead (1968) and to a lesser extent in Hammer’s The Plague of the Zombies (1966). With a very limited budget, effects man Gianatto Di Rossi breathed life into a host of frightening creations, whose sole purpose was to leave the audience quaking in their seats. Fulci’s film later saw an Italian release as Zombi 2, suggesting it as a sequel to Zombi, the country’s title for Dawn of the Dead. Two more sequels also carried the Zombi moniker, neither of which had anything to do with this or Romero’s original.
On its 1979, UK release, Zombie Flesh Eaters was issued to cinemas on the condition that two minutes of the original footage was removed. This didn’t prevent its remaining gory content from being severely criticized; among the disparagers was the recently elected Conservative government. When it went to video, it became a cult favourite, but disappeared from the video stores when it was branded as a video nasty following the introduction of the 1984 Video Recordings Act. It wasn’t until 2005 that the UK got the chance to see these grisly proceedings as Fulci had originally intended.
The Directors:
Blood on their Hands
Dario Argento
(September 7, 1940–)
Dario Argento was born in Rome; his father was a film producer and his mother a photographer. While still at school he worked as a film critic and began writing for various magazines. At the age of twenty he had turned his back on the chance to go to college and opted to become a screenwriter, and in the years that followed worked with Bernardo Bertolucci to write the screenplay for Sergio Leone’s western Once Upon a Time in the West (1967). His exploits during this period brought him to the attention of Goffredo Lombardo, which led to his directorial debut on the groundbreaking The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970). His admiration of Alfred Hitchcock was evident during much of this film, which was extraordinarily graphic, but Argento has never been afraid to portray violence although he prefers to use it poetically.
Following this success, he continued to work with the increasingly popular giallo, returning with The Cat o’ Nine Tails (1971), where he strived for a macabre air to his narrative that mirrored the aura of Edgar Allan Poe, and then resumed with the similarly acclaimed Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1972). After an involvement with several television dramas, he returned to film to direct the first of his true masterpieces, Deep Red (1975), a work still considered by many critics as the finest giallo ever made. Here he discussed his ideas with the special effects technicians to produce a film that would go on to inspire some of the finest horror directors of the period. For all of the cleverly conceived effects on show in his films he maintained a preference for the careful orchestration of nerve-tingling suspense. This became obvious with the release of his next movie, the almost surreal Suspiria (1977), where any notion of plot and characterization became secondary to the atmospherics of sound and vision. This would be the first in his “Three Mothers Trilogy” followed by Inferno (1980) and The Mother of Tears (2007).
Profoundly impressed by Andrzej Zulawski’s Phenomenon (1981) he set to work on the giallo-styled Tenebrae (1982), which resulted in severe editing across the globe and condemnation from countless censors. He returned to scriptwriting, principally on Lamberto Bava’s Demons (1985) and Demons 2 (1986), before directing Opera in 1987, set in Parma’s Regio Theatre. This was a welcome return to the opulence observed a decade before in Suspiria and then Inferno, although this was to be a very sad time in his life as his highly influential father passed away.
In 2009 he released the aptly entitled Giallo and then prepared to begin work on a remake of his masterpieces from all those years ago, Deep Red and
Suspiria. Dario has spent almost half a century in film, and the enormity of his achievement makes it almost impossible to adequately measure his impact on the genre, having had such a profound influence on so many of his fellow creators and having produced so many works of visionary magnificence.
Mario Bava
(July 31, 1914–April 25, 1980)
Born in San Remo, Liguria, Italy, Mario Bava was the son of Eugenio Bava, a sculptor who ventured into the movie business in 1906 and became one of the most innovative cameramen of the Italian silent era. As a young man Mario had ambitions to be a painter, but found it difficult to make enough money to survive, so in 1934 he followed in his father’s footsteps and joined the film industry, working as an assistant to some of the most esteemed cinematographers of the day, among them Massimo Terzano. He was also in the employ of his father, who managed the special effects department at the then Fascist-backed Istituto Luce in Rome.
The Mammoth Book of Slasher Movies (Mammoth Books) Page 48