Zombie Holocaust (1980) Back in another life I
saw this movie under its American pseudonym, Dr. Butcher M.D. on a beat up VHS tape. Now, years later after seeing it under its original
Italian moniker on a widescreen DVD from Shriek Show, two things become
abundantly clear. One, this movie wasn't as bad as I remember it being (and by
that I mean I didn't want to grind my teeth down to nubs while it played) and
two, this movie was much stupider than I ever gave it credit for. Much, much
stupider.
By now you should realize that being lumped in the stupid category is as close
to an endorsement as these movies can ever hope to get. In our business,
"stupid" is preferred to "boring" by dentists we surveyed more than 3 to 1. A
boring movie usually involves a lot of ugly Italian people standing around
talking to each other, more often than not in a castle (unless the people in
question are English, then they usually yammer about the local monster in a
pub). By contrast, a stupid movie is distinguished by its variety of
individually boring elements. For example, instead of people wandering around a
post-nuclear wasteland looking for virgins, they'll be wandering around said
wasteland looking for virgins in a souped-up station wagon with an ape-man
riding shotgun (see 2019: After The Fall Of New York). Zombie Holocaust is a similar movie because it isn't content to just be about zombies slogging
through some low budget jungle while guys with beards stand around speculating
about what caused the jungle to be overrun with slogging zombies. In fact, this
movie doesn't even start out in a jungle (but don't worry - we'll eventually
get there). Like another zombie movie released the year before (Zombie), it starts out in New York City. And also like another zombie movie released
the year before (Zombie), it stars Ian McCulloch! Of course, considering how well Ian did in his first
go round with the living dead, I wasn't exactly rushing out to my bookie to bet
my rent money on him. But a familiar face always makes these things go down
easier.  So what are we doing in NYC? Before we can get to any bona fide zombie action,
we're going to warm up with some icky monkeyshines at the local hospital. Seems
there's an ongoing problem with the corpses they store there for research and
teaching. Whenever they need these things for anatomy class, someone is always
going around hacking off the hand of the hapless cadaver or taking the five
finger discount on its heart. In fact things get so bad that they actually
catch some dude ripping out the heart of a stiff and taking a big bite out it.
Sounds to me like they need to take a look at changing the menu in the hospital
cafeteria, or at the very least start running a daily lunch special.
After being confronted by the staff, the guy eating the heart jumps out a
window and crashes to his death. Just before he croaks for good though, he
manages with his last breath to utter just the clue we need for the nosy
reporter, bored health inspector, amateur anthropologist and the nosy
reporter's boyfriend to get started on an investigation that will take them to
a mysterious jungle island where the usual mysterious jungle island things are
going on. You know, stuff like cannibalism, zombie rampages, brain transplants,
and body painting. A zombie movie with body painting? I know what you're saying: "Well, that sure
sounds stupid, MonsterHunter, but I'm from Arkansas and in addition to having
bad teeth and a half sister who is also my mom, I also need a little more
convincing." Shoot, I understand that. You don't think I'm going to place this
in the stupid pantheon with the likes of 2019: After The Fall Of New York based merely on some body painting, do you? After all, what if I was to tell
you that the body painting was just to prepare the gal for a little human
sacrifice? And that the painting involved some pretty flowers? I'm not even going to rely on those lame hippie/cannibals though to make my
case. Ian McCulloch spends the whole movie making it for me. First of all, I
wasn't ever sure what his job was! I actually went back to his first scene to
try and figure it out thinking that I had missed it because I was still reeling
from the bad jokes the internists were telling during their anatomy class
regarding the missing hand.  Ian plays a guy named Dr. Peter Chandler and he has an office that has an
American flag behind his desk, so I was guessing that he had some government
job (that and the fact that his job didn't seem to involve more than
entertaining sexy doctors with gory slide shows of forbidden native rites from
southeast Asia. I would recommend that he put together a nice PowerPoint
presentation in the future - the ladies really like a little pizzazz with their Faces Of Death slide shows). He also made a vague comment about how the health department
wanted him to look into this rash of heart-eating going on at the hospital. I
suppose it's a nice break from picking rat turds out of the soup at the corner
diner.
A woman doctor from the hospital named Lori, who also holds an anthropology
degree, is seeing Dr. Peter about all this and relates what she knows about
things. The dying guy whispered the word "Keto" to her which means something or
other, but eventually turns out be the name of an island. She also happened to
have her ceremonial human sacrifice dagger that was hanging in her living room
stolen from her apartment. (That's why I usually just go with a Jasper Johns
print or something on my living room wall and keep all my ceremonial human
sacrifice daggers locked up in a glass display case in my den.) It had a symbol
on it that matched a symbol on the dead guy or from somewhere else. Somehow
everyone traces it all back to this island group in the Pacific and the next
thing you know the New York City Health Department is paying Dr. Peter and his
three nosy pals to fly down there and investigate. Investigate? Investigate what? That some people in New York have emigrated and
brought their barbaric customs with them? What are they going to do once
they're down there? Confirm that the goofs in New York eating hearts follow the
same customs as the skinny dorks in loin clothes hiding in the jungle with
their body art kits? I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that the
"person" who authorized this boondoggle was a Health Department credit card
that Dr. Peter liberated from his boss's purse after a three martini brunch.  Once down in this island group, they meet up with Dr. Obrero. Obrero is
compared to Dr. Albert Schweitzer for his work helping the natives overcome
their health problems (human hearts can really give a fellow the runs if he
doesn't watch himself) and you immediately peg him as the heavy that is behind
all this madness (mainly because of his oversized eyeglasses - the scariest
thing in this movie, I might add). Though any connection between him, his
experiments, and the geeks running around New York area hospitals like they
were Taco Bell drive-throughs is strictly speculative, because like all great
stupid movies, once this one is done with an idea and has moved on to another
one, it doesn't have time to actually connect the two.
Obrero provides them with a boat and guide and the next thing you know they're
having engine trouble and have to make an emergency landing on an island other
than Keto. Naturally, it turns out that they have landed on Keto by accident
and to his credit, Dr. Peter is quick to realize this once he has a bunch of
scantily clad native guys trying to take a bite out of his rump. The last twenty minutes of the film seem to be little more than an excuse to
showcase some scalpings and nude body painting, but I ask you, do you need any
more excuse for the last twenty minutes of a movie than that? Luckily for all
concerned, Dr. Peter is the one involved with the scalpings while Lori is the
one involved with the nude body painting. If they really wanted to kick it up
few notches on the gross-out level, they could've switched that around on us.
Thankfully, good taste prevailed. They follow the kitchen sink philosophy in this one which compensates for the
lack of coherence. There was no reason for Dr. Peter to go down to this island
in the first place. There was no reason for him to stay. There was no reason
for Obrero to be doing brain transplants on the natives and there was no reason
as to how Lori safely escaped from becoming a human sacrifice as the natives
were waving her stolen dagger in her face while she was on some dais. And how
in the hell did they get her dagger? And just how did they know she even had it
in the first place? I guess she did mention that she was raised on the island
as a child (huh?). There's an interview on the DVD with one of the special effects guys who says
they were inspired by Zombie, but admits he's never seen Zombie Holocaust so he couldn't judge how well the special effects turned out. Then in the next
sentence he pronounces them mediocre! It was very refreshing to see someone not
praise work that is obvious tripe and in fact assume that it was no good even
though they never wasted their time seeing it. If only there had been an
interview with Ian McCulloch waxing nostalgically about his brief run as a
zombie superstar in the late seventies. Surely he would have remembered
something since he had two tours in this genre. At eighty-four minutes, this one doesn't waste a bunch of time with frivolous
stuff like explaining just what is happening and why. And really, is there any
explanation that could make any of this make sense? Basically this one takes
the template of Lucio Fulci's Zombie and mixes in those jungle cannibal movies we all despise for a delectable
little gore stew that won't leave you sitting on the can all night long. For
undemanding fans of both Italian zombie and cannibal movies. For demanding fans
I would suggest abandoning both genres all together.
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