The power of Zombi - or as we call it in the U. S. Dawn of the Dead - in Italy is unquestioned. Not only did Lucio Fulci take it further, grosser and harder with Zombi 2, it led to an entire industry of films that were inspired by it, fueled by both the past mondo and cannibal films inside their DNA.
Becchino (Renzo Montagnani, Joe D'Amato's Il Ginecologo Della Mutua, Maluc in When Women Had Tails and When Women Lost Their Tails) is working in a graveyard when he finds a book of voodoo, which seems to place this as much in the realm of Evil Dead - or as they call it in Italy, La Casa except it's a few years early - as it does the works of Romero, which always beat around the bush as to what caused the outbreak.
The spell he reads brings back an entire group of the dead back from the brink, including Ciclista (Cochi Ponzoni), Buonanima (Gianfranco D'Angelo) and Mercante (Duilio Del Prete). They soon kill Becchino and bring him back as one of them. All head off to a hotel where they drink and sing old songs like "The Captain's Testament" while luring people into their hotel and, well, eating them.
We never see any of that, by the way. The budget probably didn't allow for it. It's probably for the best, as nearly every scheme never pays off, like a traveling salesman that is missing most of his internal organs because of various illnesses or when they accidentally bring back a woman's first wife - with the help of her son, no less, what is this, Burial Ground? - and she dies of a heart attack.
She being Nadia Cassini (the Woodstock, NY born actress that somehow came to Italy and ended up being in a lot of movies only I would care about, such as When Men Carried Clubs and Women Played Ding-Dong - yes, Italian sex comedies were fixated on cavemen for some reason - as well as Starcrash, one of the Schoolteacher movies once Edwige Fenech quit making them, Sergio Martino's Spogliamoci così, senza pudor (Sex With a Smile 2) and, strange enough, two 2Pac videos, "California Love" and "How Do u Want It"), who the zombies bring back to life to have some of the pleasures of the slowly turning green flesh, at which point she does one of the wildest bump and grinds you've ever seen as she can barely stand up and do a zombie shuffle at the same time. It's honestly worth watching this entire movie just for this scene.
At this point, the army - alerted by the boy who tried to bring Cassini's first husband back to life - attacks the hotel, forcing the dead to head off to what is supposed to be a shopping mall but really looks like a grocery store.
If you're keeping a list of zombie movies with grocery store scenes, you can always start with this, Messiah of Evil and Pathogen.
Anyways, it all ends as a dream, with the gravedigger still digging that same grave.
Once you watch Nello Rossati's other films, like the absolutely deranged Top Line, this all makes a lot more sense. The script comes from one of that movie's writers, Roberto Gianviti (who also wrote Murder Rock, The Psychic, Five Women for the Killer, The Sensuous Nurse, A Lizard In a Woman's Skin and so many more), Paolo Vidali (the second AD on The Sister of Ursula and the writer of Don't Touch the Children! And A Woman In the Night) and Rossati, who I always forget was the man who directed and wrote Django Strikes Again. How did a guy who mainly made sex comedies get two movies out of Franco Nero?
This is a curiousity but there are no subtitles and if you've never watched commedia sexy all'italiana, the chances that you will hate every moment are quite high. Then again, I say take a chance. You never know what movies may work for your taste.
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