Hell of the Living Dead

aka Virus

1980
Starring
Margit Evelyn Newton as Lia Rousseau
Franco Garofalo as Zantoro
Selan Karay as Max
Directed by Bruno Mattei

Low budget Italian Xerox copy of Dawn of the Dead, except this machine is out of toner and keeps giving a “PC Load Letter” error. Large portions of this film are just completely ridiculous, and I’m not talking about the fact the dead is rising to eat the living. If I were to take out the stock footage, the film would be around twenty minutes long. The long scenes are made even longer by their consistent slow motion state. Why bring attention to the stock by dragging it out and separating it from the rest of the inane film? Italy is known for making low budget rip offs of US films, especially around this time when they were pumping out hundreds of films, most of which had quick lives if they even made it to theaters before they helped found the video cassette boom of the eighties. In this case, someone figured that if they took Dawn of the Dead and added a few cannibal scenes, they’d score two genres for the price of one! Instead, they got an incomprehensible mess that succeeds only in spectacular failure on all fronts. So put on a tutu and top hat, grab your cane, and get ready to live the Hell of the Living Dead!