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![[Zombi!]](terrore.gif)
Here is perhaps my first useful contribution to online horror geekdom. I searched all over the place for a page on this lil' gem with no luck whatsoever.
Now I know many of you will give me shit for this. Everybody seems to hate it. It's yet another shabby Italian Romero rip-off, It's blasphemy to review it on the same page as Dawn of the dead, etc... As Judy said in Night of the living dead "I know, I know all that". But I love it. Plus, I just saw a site that raved about City of the walking dead, and Burial ground (AKA Zombie Horror, Zombie 3-you gotta love those Italian fake sequels-, and Le Notti del terrore) is Dawn of the dead in comparison.
Burial ground is certainly short on plot, even by Italian zombi standards. A bunch of vacationing Europeans and a kid come to a mansion in the country. In the meantime, a professor (of something- one of the guests said he was working on "something about the survival of the dead") relative has found an ancient text that revives the dead. Then zombies attack them, forcing the living to (gee!) barricade themselves in the mansion. Unlike traditional post-Romero zombies, however, these undead Italians use tools, and work together, in the scene where they use a battering ram, for instance.
The living who survive the first siege escape the house, and seek help. In one wonderful scene, one of the men finds his way to a monastery. He enters a room full of monks with their backs to him. He starts to approach them, saying "I'm sorry to disturb your meditations..." The monks are no help, being undead themselves, and they attack him. His friends will later find the monks feasting on him, and escape to take final refuge in a workshop.
The effects are of course extremely gruesome, thanks to Gino De Rossi, who gets more respect from his work with Lucio Fulci, and the whole film is very visceral. Like Bring me the head of Alfredo Garcia (which will be reviewed here soon), this film makes you want to take a shower.
On a more social level, one element of this movie that really cranks up the unease, is the semi-incestuous relationship between the mother and her son. During the siege of the house, the mother comforts her frightened son (who looks like he was played by a midget instead of a child, creepy in itself), who gets increasingly touchy-feely. When he tries to suck her breast, she pushes him away in disgust. He is later killed by a zombified guest.
On to the "depressing ending". Very shortly after the survivors take shelter in the workshop, zombies enter through a back entrance. They are briefly beaten back, but quickly multiply in number. The now undead child enters, and heads for his (still living) Mother. She violates rule number one on the list of ways to survive a zombie movie (from my upcoming zombie "scream"), and fools herself into thinking he's alive. Apparently feeling guilt over her previous rebuke, she bares her breast so that he can suck it "just like you used to". The child bites her nipple off (ewww!) and all hell breaks loose. The film closes as our last two survivors are about to die. The man is being dragged by zombies, who are pulling his head toward the blade of a table saw, and the film freezes with a shot of the woman's screaming face framed by reaching zombie hands. Over this is placed a phony prophecy ending with "..and there shall be the nights of terror".
One of my favorite Z-grade Italian zombie movies, Burial ground deserves to be seen by all who have a taste for trashy Euro-gore.
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the zombie to order this film from Graveside Entertainment.Back to Craig Stephenson's home page
