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Released by: Severin Films
Released on: November 26th, 2024.
Director: Bruno Mattei, Claudio Fragasso
Cast: Margie Newton, Franco Garofalo, Selan Karay, Robert O'Neal
Year: 1980
Purchase From Severin Films
Hell Of The Living Dead – Movie Review:
Bruno Mattie's Dawn Of The Dead knock off, Hell Of The Living Dead (also known as Virus and released in the US at one point as Night Of The Zombies), is a film that Mattei shot in Spain - which explains why there are a lot of Spanish people in the cast. At any rate, when the movie begins there's a leak at a massive chemical plant somewhere in New Guinea. The works find a dead rat in an area meant to have stayed sterile - that's not good. Turns out that this rat has come back to life and he's hungry for human flesh! Not too long after that happens, the plant workers have all turned into zombies.
Somewhere else in New Guinea there's a small army of terrorists holding a building full of people hostages. Some paramilitary types wearing the same sort of jumpsuits you see in Dawn Of The Dead show up lead by Lieutenant Mike London (Paul Gras, credited as Robert O'Neal and beloved to all as the male lead in MAD FUCKING FOXES!!). They take out the bad guys and then turn around and head into the jungle to figure out what's going on at the chemical plant. Meanwhile, a female journalist named Lia Rousseau (Margit Evelyn Newton) and her cameraman are travelling with a husband, a wife and their young son. They stop in the jungle, the son turns into a zombie and kills his dad and the mom wanders into an abandoned building to get attacked by a weird zombie priest (Victor Israel). The military guys show up and kill the zombie kid and then they team up with Lia and her cameraman and retreat into the jungle.
At this point, things really go off the rails. Lia decides to strip down to her birthday suit and lead the dudes into the heart of a native village, figuring her showing up there naked will set their primitive minds at ease. It works and everyone is getting along just fine until some other native guys show up - zombies! Will Lia and the surviving military guys make it out of the jungle alive or will they wind up as dinner for a bunch of stock footage inserts and dudes in bad pancake makeup?
In typical Bruno Mattei fashion this wretched turd of a movie was put together fast and cheap and using whatever was available at the time - if that means lifting soundtrack bits from Dawn Of The Dead and Contamination and reusing stock footage already seen in Mattie's Libidomania and Real Cannibal Holocaust made some years before, so be it. The show must go on! The acting is bad, the dubbing is even worse - all of the military guys sound like they wandered out of a discount store in Brooklyn for some reason. Robert O'Neal, however, he's got it going on. Never mind that he can't figure out to shoot the zombies in the head or that he appears both smug and slow moving throughout the film and it's many 'action' scenes because we love him anyway. Mad Foxes will do that for a man's career. The rest of the cast? Pretty dire. At least Margit Evelyn Newton gets'em out for the boys. It serves the plot not one iota and is a wonderfully obvious example of gratuitous nudity in the truest sense of the term but it was good of her to show off the goods.
The makeup effects are all over the place. There are a few scenes where the zombies are kind of cool looking and just as many, if not more, where they're obviously just guys shambling around in thrift store leftovers and cheap pancake makeup. Some of the gore is pretty solid and occasionally fairly strong but the pacing here… my God… Hell Of The Living Dead is the kind of movie that will make you want to smash your face off of your coffee table until you black out. And for that, Mr. Mattei, we thank you.
Hell Of The Living Dead – UHD/Blu-ray Review:
NOTE: As this review is based on an online screener provided by Severin Films for review purposes, the technical portion and the extras review for this release will is not complete. If/when finished product is made available, we’ll update this review accordingly.
The stream offered for review presents the movie in a 1080p high definition transfer, framed at 1.85.1, while the UHD would, obviously, be a HVEC encoded 2160p transfer “scanned in 4K from the original camera negative.” As you’d expect, the compression on the stream is less than perfect but putting that aside, there’s strong clarity here and excellent color reproduction, especially when it comes to the red blood on display throughout the film. Skin tones look nice and lifelike and we get decent black levels too.
Audio chores on the stream are handled by an English language 2.0 track with optional subtitles in English. The finished product should also include an Italian language track 2.0 track. The English track is free of any audible issues. You’ll have no problems understanding the performers, the dialogue is clear and the levels properly balanced. Gun shots pack a nice punch, as you’d expect, and there’s good power behind the film’s score when the movie asks for it.
Finished product will be a two-disc set with extras spread out across the set as follows:
Disc One (UHD):
The only extra slated for the UHD is the film’s original theatrical trailer.
Disc Two (Blu-ray):
-Go To Hell – Interview With Director Bruno Mattei
-The Beauty And The Zombies – Interview With Actress Margie Newton
-My Big Chance – Interview With Actor Franco Garofalo
-Lt. Mike London Is Back! – Interview With Actor José Gras
-My Son Is A Zombie – Interview With Actor Pep Ballester
-Producing The Apocalypse – Interview With Producer José María Cunillés
-Papua New Guinea In Barcelona – Locations Tour With José Gras
-Peter And The Test Tube Babies' "Zombie Creeping Flesh" – Interview With Punk Singer Peter Bywaters
-Trailer
This release is also listed as containing the film’s entire soundtrack on an audio CD.
Hell Of The Living Dead – The Final Word:
Hell Of The Living Dead is as dumb as a bag of rocks but so too is it ridiculously entreating. Those who appreciate the more absurd side of Italian horror films will get a huge kick out of this one, and from the looks of things, Severin’s new UHD edition is the way to go for fans wanting to own this one in the best edition possible.