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Zombi 4: After Death (1988)

Dir: Claudio Fragasso

A group of Researchers are doing experiments into a cancer cure on a remote island.
It seems their experiments have gone wrong though and the Daughter of the Voodoo Priest has died. Rather annoyed at this tragic event the Priest decides to raise the dead to kill off the researchers.
So he reads from 'The Book of the Dead', has a Woman sucked down into the earth (said Woman is then spat back out as a Demon/Zombie) and sure enough the 'door to hell' is opened!

As planned the researchers are all munched on by very boring zombies (where we are at least treated to a delightfully messy eye gouging/face ripping that is only let down by the dreadful acting of the victim. Something that sadly happens on almost all the kills) but a young girl named Jenny is given a strange necklace by her soon to be chewed on Mother and seemingly escapes the island by cleverly walking out of frame!

Suddenly it seems 20 years have passed (though you have no way of knowing this until later, as the way it's edited it looks like the whole thing is taking place at the same time) and we have a speedboat containing some 3rd rate mercenaries and a now grown up Jenny (Candice Daly) and friend heading towards the island.

At the same time three people (one being Gay porn star Jeff Stryker) are roaming the island trying to find out what happened to the researchers.
And all are destined to meet the undead….

 

Here we have a 'plot' that jumps all over the place in such a haphazard fashion that much head scratching ensures.
Unless my mind shut down (it could have, as an automatic defensive mechanism against the garbage I was unleashing upon it) some things are just not explained at all.
Like what these mercenaries are doing in a little speedboat with Jenny and what's Jenny is doing there in the first place, as the trip never seemed to be planned...It just seems to be luck that they end up at this island.

The other characters are just thrown into the mix from nowhere. The group looking into the missing researchers are indeed an enigma. Why are they trying to find out what happened to the researchers? Where did they come from? Why has it taken 20 years? Why does this investigation consist of what looks like three students with backpacks?

We have a 'door' to hell, candles that seem to never burn down (given the 20 some odd year time jump) that are meant to keep the door closed (though with all the Zombies around anyway what's the point), the aforementioned key to the door that Jenny wears, the experiments of the initial research group that are unexplained till very late in the film and the opening Voodoo curse.
All this stuff is thrown together into a big huge slop of story line.
Add to all this the fact that other plot points are covered in hurried dialogue exchanges between the next chase/attack scene and it's certainly obvious that no one here actually cared about the story.

The whole film was made in 2 weeks as a cynical money-spinner, and believe me, it looks and plays like it.

The characters themselves are all bland and unmemorable and all are stuck with very bad dubbing, much worse than in the earlier Euro Zombie fests.
The mercenaries are a sorry looking bunch as well, with two looking like they stepped out of a daytime soap opera, one sporting an hysterical 'Village People' moustache and one big beardy bloke (obviously an Al Cliver stand in) with such twisted and deformed teeth that we know instantly that he will be a Zombie, just because they won't have to spend money on making up his undead chompers.

The Zombies themselves are also all over the place.
Some zombies would seem to be the ones left over from the opening, some seem to be brand new ones who popped up when one of the three 'back-packers' read from the 'Book of the Dead.
Some seem to be mindless yet some seem to be able to reason, use weapons and speak.
They also seem to have their own personal fog machine, as no matter where they are they are shrouded in mist. Perhaps Fragasso was doing a late in the day "The Fog" rip-off? Who can say, I wouldn't put it past him though.

Some of the zombies on show are more to do with "Demons" than anything else as well.
The 'sucked into a hole' Female Zombie sports big crooked fangs, sharp talons and drips green goo. Definitely more Lamberto Bava than Lucio Fulci on display here.
The Zombies also tend to move at normal speed, acting more like your general madman than an actual re-animated corpse, so sadly all the superbly realised, almost 'E.C' comic, Zombie set-ups that were such striking highlights of the Fulci films, or even movies like "Burial Ground", are nowhere to be seen here.
The general Zombie make-up is also pretty lousy, with what simply looks like creased latex loosely stuck to the actors faces and a bit of talc, standing in for rotting flesh.
Again, a far cry from those wonderful creations in Fulci's "Zombi" or the wonderfully bizarre creatures in "Burial Ground" or "Zombie Holocaust".
And for some reason they all tend to walk about in black pyjamas.

The music, like the zombies also owes more to "Demons" in parts than any of the other Italian Zombie flicks, with a more funked up electro score, that's mixed overly loud, that comes across like a 2nd rate Simonetti/John Carpenter cover band.
But it's not that bad an instrumental score, if very soulless, the problem here (like in "Zombi 3") is that Al Festa and his Euro cornballs have been allowed to inflict stunningly bad Euro Soft Rock on us! And it's bad dear reader. Very, very bad.

As "After Death" was made at the arse end of the Italian horror boom, the 'look' of the film is more like a TV movie with none of the splendid cinematography and design that was seen in films like "Zombi" or "City of the Living Dead". But it also lacks that certain special 'feeling' and 'atmosphere' of even the cheapest Euro trash from the halcyon days like "Hell of the Living Dead".
But it's not only the outside cinematography and design that is lack-lustre, the sets used, especially for the 'caves', are amazingly shoddy.

The excellent aforementioned face ripping aside most of the gore on display is sadly cheap and simple in execution.
We have no actual bites, just blood dribbled from the mouths of the Zombies or blood simply smeared over the victims to hide the fact that there are no actual wound FX on display! Again, a far cry from such FX gems as the throat biting in "Zombi".
Quite simply put…the FX crews, that did such amazing jobs on such low budgets, that the Italian horror industry relied so much on in the late 70's/early 80's, have vanished along with the care that such scenes were once graced with.

It's not all negative of course, how could it be with a Euro Zombie flick even late entry dregs like this?
It's got lots of action, a fair amount of blood letting and a care free, fun attitude to its fantastical contents.
There is also a welcome, but short, atmospheric 'rising-up' burial ground scene and a (very confusing) ending that makes sure this Zombie film goes the way of almost all Euro Zombie films down that delightfully downbeat road.

But overall this is a rather sad relic of a film industry on its last horror legs, with all the hurried, careless and above all soulless content that goes with it.
Sure the old Euro Zombie flicks were cheap, but for the most part (a few scenes in some films aside) they tried to hide their budgets with a veneer of horror artistry (say what you like about Fulci, but his prime films are technically and even artistically sharp where make-up, music, set design and above all cinematography are concerned), that latter day stuff like "After Death" just could not be bothered with.

The market had dried up, the industry was failing, and to me it seems like all those involved in this movie obviously knew it and as such it seems they really couldn't care less what the final product, that staggered out for a few play dates before vanishing to video hell, was actually like.