Zombi 3

God praise DVDs and the modern age! Your task for the week, my lovely readers, is to run out and buy up a DVD player so you can start enjoying high-quality prints of ridiculous crap like Zombi 3. That’s right, the continued deification of our collective, wretched past is both a boon for nostalgia-heads and one of the many signs of the doom of our society. We look to the past for another sign of impending doom in the form of the jive-talkin’ Filipino zombie DJ Blue Heart from the righteous Zombi 3. You see, when even the national media becomes zombie-sponsored, you know you’ve got trouble.

In fact, Zombi 3 was such a troubled production that it earns extra schlock-points for needing to be directed in parts by Lucio Fulci and Bruno Mattei. When a top-secret death-virus escapes from a government lab, Filipinos across the countryside start suppurating to beat the band, staggering around looking for fresh nosh, then leaping into kung-furious action when dinner is on the table. Fulci apparently turned in a too short, yet too slow piece with little going for it save enraged zombies popping out all over the place. Mattei was summoned to direct new scenes that would fill the movie out to feature-length while supplying an actual plot on which to hang the zombie mayhem.

To that end, what might have been just another tedious gutmuncher, (albeit with high-flyin’ zombies) turns into a number with enough interesting plot twists (two) to keep even the most jaded zombie-head’s eyes open. Which is, of course, just icing on the cake; what we want is mayhem and entrails. There may be few scenes of actual offal scoffing, but there are exploding heads aplenty, tons of bullets tearing into torsos, legs eaten, flying zombie heads, a zombie birth, and much more.

At times all of the undead popping out of cupboards and leaping into the fray from the rafters recalls a funhouse ride, which reminds us that these movies are made by and for adolescent boys (mostly trapped in adult bodies). This sophomoric attitude covers up the potentially distressing message of the movie, making you miss the doom-portending shamblers of Zombie (Zombi 2) but you can’t quibble because you’re having a bloody stupid good time.

This is the video you’ve looked at questioningly but never had the nerve to rent for fear it would be some repackaged piece of boring dreck from 1962. Go ahead, you can rent it, and then maybe you can explain why in that one scene, the five guys armed with machine guns choose to engage their two gun-less foes in hand-to-hand combat?

DVD: Shriek Show’s uncut, anamorphic, widescreen edition of Zombi 3 looks great considering the chequered story of its making and its low position on the film totem pole. It’s mostly crystal clear with nice color and fine handling of all the dark, smoky scenes. It looks like a patchwork, though, since many of the scenes of gore seem culled from a far lesser quality print. Extras include a stills gallery, the theatrical trailer plus trailers for 3 other cheesers, and interviews with Bruno Mattei, writer Claudio Fragasso, and actors Ottaviano Dell’Acqua, Massimo Vanni and a super-looking Marina Loi. It is painful to sit through the interviewer’s halting attempts to speak Italian, but, you gotta do what you gotta do.