The Erotic Nights Of The Living Dead
The Erotic Nights Of The Living Dead is a big false advertisement. While there is plenty of what a dictionary might be forced to define as 'eroticism,' the living dead aren't getting any of it. I pity them. All the time, they only get to munch on intestines, eventually to be shot in the head or dismembered. I want them to get lucky, just once.
Well, at least this movie provisionally delivers what the title promises, and you oughtn't feel ashamed for being curious about it. Sex and death have been linked historically for centuries. But only the 1980s could bring the two together with this degree of miscalculation. Why, oh lord, why?
Director Aristide Massacessi (Joe D'Amato to most folks) displays rudimentary filmmaking skills for the most part, but it's hard to tell, as the low-rent print I watched seemed to be breaking down before my eyes. From what I could gather, some rich guy who likes to have lots of boring soft core sex sails to a Caribbean island with his girlfriend and this one creepy sailor who would like to have lots of boring but super-aggressive soft core sex, which he is seen getting once in a hospital at film's open, and once again at the end. It is the scariest part of the film.
A black cat and mysterious woman prowl the island, and at the end, a bunch of stoic, scarf-wrapped zombies rise from the sand to bite people in the neck.
This last lengthy sequence, surprisingly, is somewhat effective. Weird electronic music with tons of layered, clanging bells accompanies the relentless, if lugubrious, zombies as they stiffly rise from their sandy graves, inexorably closing in on their victims. The scenes have an eerie poetry and dignity, (why not dignified zombies?) and as the surviving couple rush hither and yon, zombies begin popping up everywhere. They rise ominously from the waves, loom among the sand dunes, and even leap from the trees. But these memorable images, even zombie oral sex (not pleasant) is not enough to save the unsalvageable.
The 3rd generation copy of this Italian shocker that I watched was from a very poor quality print, and had no dubbing or subtitles. But this rare, crappy duplicate says something about the lack of acceptance for this movie. It nearly disappeared forever, heightening its forbidden allure. Makes perfect sense, too, since horror and porno aren't very well received by the public, why not put them together in the same movie? I should mention that there is more than one version of this movie, and I got the lame one. There is another foreign-release version with hardcore inserts (nyuk) that seems to be available on DVD, perhaps in a PAL version, but who can say? (I can, a complete and uncensored DVD version from Media Blasters is now available. ~ Ed.) And you real freaks out there can also seek out D'Amato's other opus, Porno Holocaust, for more of the good stuff.
Exploitation complete-ists and historians such as yours truly can handle this type of burden. You can't. Stay away form The Erotic Nights Of The Living Dead.
