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Zombi 3 (1988)

Dir: Lucio Fulci, Bruno Mattei, Claudio Fraggaso.

There are few films in our beloved genre that carry as much confusion around with them as this problem fraught production. For years, speculation on just who directed the film has been rife between horror fans.
The truth (as far as it is) is this. Lucio Fulci supposedly directed a feature of approximately 70 minutes, but was either (according to whom you believe) removed due to ill health or parted ways with the producers after editing/script problems that resulted in only a few scenes being usable.
The film was then rumoured to have been completed by infamous Hell of the Living Dead director Bruno Mattei. Later though "Zombi 3" screenplay author Claudio Fraggaso (who also wrote and Co-Directed "Hell of the Living Dead", a film to which "Zombi 3" owes a great deal) admitted he took over and shot most of the film. Whoever the culprit is though, they have given the world one of the most bizarre, inconsistent and down right silly zombie flicks in gut-munching history.

We start with a metal case being stolen from some scientists who work for the military in a Far East Country (the film was shot in the Philippines) The robbers are all killed except for one who, after the case has been opened and the mysterious contents contaminate him, hides out in a nearby hotel. Soon the staff who come in contact with him are contaminated and the military, now in protective suits (strong visual shades of Romero's "The Crazies" here) are swarming over the building with orders from the ruthless General Morton (Monty) to eliminate everyone there and cordon off the entire region. Morton, ignoring the advice of the scientists has the robbers body burnt and before you can scream "Dan O Bannon" the contaminated ash is released in to the atmosphere (strong shades here of course of "Return of the Living Dead").

Into this disaster comes three off-duty soldiers, Bo (Alex McBride), Roger (Richard Raymond, real name Ohaviano Dell'Acqua) and Kenny (Deren Sarafian) who meet up with a busload of girls and two boyfriends. Also driving into danger is Patricia (Beatrice Ring), and her boyfriend Glenn who come across some supposed dead birds on the road. Suddenly one of the birds pops back up and proceeds to peck away at Glenn's face. At the same time (to the accompaniment of some of the worst Euro-Metal ever heard) a whole flock of the crazy zombie birds are attacking the girl's bus.

Our soldier boys save the day but not before one of the girls suffers multiple pecks. Patricia meanwhile, seeing Glenn's wounds start to turn into pulsating boils, (shades of "Demons" here) attempts to drive to a hospital but first has to stop at a supposedly deserted gas station to fill her jeep up. Suddenly a vicious zombie (swinging a machete in a psychotic ninja style fury) attacks her.. The soldier boys and the bus passengers head for shelter and choose to go to the now ruined hotel, not knowing that the only guests there now are of the flesh eating variety....

 

Now, as you can see from the above plot rundown there are so many rip-off ideas in this film that even in the copy cat world of Italian horror this film takes the contaminated piss. Hardly anything in it is original in content. Check out this bit of dialogue when the now zombiefied Glenn says (yep, some of these undead's can speak) to Patricia "I'm ok, just thirsty, thirsty for your…blood" Exchange 'blood' for 'brains' and you have an almost exact steal from "ROTLD".

The whole escaped virus plot is straight out of "Hell of the Living Dead" and any questions about just how much of this Fulci did direct are answered by that film as well because "Zombi 3" is so like "Hell" in it's execution and general feeling that it can surely be no coincidence.

Talk of Fulci also brings us to the gore on show in general and to one completely bizarre sequence in particular that Fulci DID direct, namely the flying zombie head! Yes, a rotted head that flies out of a fridge and proceeds to rip the throat out of one of the bus passengers. Don't ask me how a radioactive virus can give a detached head the power of flight, it just can. This has got to be seen to be believed, it's amazingly shoddy from an effects point of view (the make-up effects handled by Franco Di Girolamo are rather poor all round in fact) and is such a preposterous idea that much unintentional mirth floods out of the astonished viewer.

If this is the kind of footage Fulci was Directing, perhaps it's a good job he DIDN'T shoot more of the film. How the mighty do indeed fall. Other gore is highly enjoyable, if simplistic and only a lack of any real gut-munching and limb-chomping lets the fun level slide. Highlights include a nicely messy hand chopping, an excellent exploding zombie head, some mushy skin ripping and the tour de force effect where one of the girls has her face mulched up in a torrent of blood by… an in the process of being born, zombie baby!

A bloody stake in the neck effect on a zombie also leads us to the wild inconsistency here when it comes to just how to kill the undead. For the most part they can be killed by simply shooting them in the body (no 'aim for the brain' orders needed here) but the zombie who gets staked carries on walking as if nothing has happened. General confusion about whether they are indeed zombies or just contaminated people is heaped on the viewer by scenes of the zombies not only talking but recognizing their friends and reacting directly to them. Add to this the way some of them (especially the gas station zombie who moves as fast as martial arts star) move around and attack using weapons and even ambushing soldiers by leaping off buildings and much head scratching ensues.

The Synth score by Stefano Mainetti is pretty good in parts but is dreadfully soulless compared to the expert work of Fabio Frizzi ("Zombie") or the sheer enjoyment of a score like Stelvio Cipriani's work on "Nightmare City". The worst part of the music on show here though are the truly hideous rock songs written by Mainetti and performed by a band called 'Clue in the Crew', who should have all their fingers broken and mouths stapled shut so they can never inflict this horror on mortal man again.

The dubbing is of a lower standard than a lot of Italian trash with none of that quirkiness so essential to making dub jobs bearable. Only the coloured characters entertain with their OTT 'black' voices raising the odd smile.

The film is burdened with a heavy-handed Ecology message as well. Patricia goes on about how wonderful nature is to a disinterested Glenn who comes back at her with a superb bit of dialogue; "Hey I understand, I smoke pot, but once in a while I like to piss on a bush" A radio DJ (an excellent example of the 'Black' cliché loaded dubbing) is heard spouting endless 'right on' speeches about pollution and mans mistreatment of mother nature, that's when he's not polluting the airwaves (and sensibilities of his unfortunate listeners) himself with more of that hideous Euro rock. This DJ character will later play a vital part in the unbelievably barmy, hysterical ending.

But let's not heap too much negativity on it. We do have a lot of enjoyable zombie attacks and fights and the odd gun battle between our heroes and the 'kill 'em all' military. The gore, although unexceptional, is plentiful and fun and it does pull-off some effective shock scenes. A sequence involving a strange bubbling, smoke enshrouded pool (there's lots of marginally successful smoke billowing atmosphere creating shots in this flick) leads to a completely unexpected gory payoff that's a hoot. It also follows one of the 'Joe Bob Briggs' rules of drive-in movie making' by giving the viewer the unsettling feeling that anybody can die at anytime. And they do, just as you think you have worked out who the hero types are…they're killed off!

So, it's enjoyable for sure (it's a gory Italian Zombie flick, how could it not be), but also a wasted opportunity on a massive scale. This should have been Fulci's rotted leap back to his glory days; instead it became yet another tragic failure. A failure that has to be heaped at the feet of three Directors who had either lost it, or never had it in the first place