This Italian import finds a group of rich people dallying at a rural villa, while a professor nearby excavates a crypt, reanimating a hungry zombie horde.
The film is dubbed (badly, it must be noted), leading to quite the list of lines that go well with wine, starting off right when the doomed prof shouts “No! No! Stand back! I’m your friend!” as the undead descend on him.
If you're looking for cornball makeup, you've hit the jackpot. The makeup effects are homemade-halloween-costume grade, and frequent close-ups do them no favors. Dressing up the effects with maggots is nothing more than, as the proverb goes, lipstick on Sarah Palin. At one point, a zombie point-of-view shot shows what are obviously wooden hands approaching a victim.
The best and worst effect in the film are the bite wounds, which depicts skin tearing from the body like cotton candy. The slippery, realistic-looking guts are a bonus though, and the zombies tug at them like beef jerky.
Watching this film, you get the impression zombies hate when people make love outdoors, and anything more sordid than that? Well, we find out they also frown on mother-son couplings, as a "young boy," played by the decidedly creepy (and adult) little person Peter Bark, desires a sexual relationship with his mother. After letting him get way too far, she finally resists, but later, this particular subplot comes back up, leading to one of the more disgustingly memorable sequences you'll ever see in a horror film.
The acting reaches the apex of b-movie bad. Victims frequently raise their hands in terror as their attackers approach in slow motion, fall awkwardly at key moments, and otherwise clumsily come to their ends in the most inept fashion conceivable.
Apparently Italians often just point to spots on the ground to bury people, because the "Burial Ground" zombies emerge from what seem to be random, unmarked graves. Also, while these zombies are obviously inspired by the Romero-type slow-moving, shuffling zombies, they are skilled in manipulating and using weapons and tools, and even throw knives to dispatch victims. At one point they break down a door with a battering ram.
Director Andrea Bianchi pads the film with minutes of extended, pointless sequences of zombies loping and stumbling about, doing nothing in particular.
Finally, a the DVD contains a fascinating interview with the filmmakers, revealing among other things that the film was made because movies with sex and gore were making money at the time.
Rating: 4 Yaps out of 5