Hey Mel Gibson,the outing of your private,Cookie Monster-esque tape recorded vitriol towards Oksana Grigorieva,the mother of your eight month old child and Russian D Lister with a failed music career may have made for some enjoyable listening the past few weeks,and inspired some dynamic new drinking games(Let's do a shot everytime Mel calls Oksana a "cuntwhore",and a pint for every time Mel pants like a Great Dane locked in a Mini Cooper with the windows rolled up on a mid-June afternoon in Phoenix),but the whole cry poverty angle is a bit much,brother.For someone with an estimated fortune of eight hundred and fifty million samoleans to claim to be busted really just bums me out,dude.Failed marriages,legal red tape,back arrears,unfulfilled promises,you should try those little numbers out being a mere working class slob who doesn't have a box at Lakers games.Hell,I don't have five million anything,let alone dollars.And if I did have five million of those little green doggies in a bank account,the last thing I'd be doing would be vein-buldgedly screaming in some eastern bloc floozy's ear about how she didn't give a blowjob when I wanted one.I'd be leading a marching band down Main Street,doing "76 Trombones" from The Music Man(1962),and throwing twenties at anyone who wanted them.Lighten up,Francis,as Sargeant Hulka used to say.
...which naturally segues into tonight's review,since several experts say Gibson's film career is essentially buried deeper than Etruscans in an Italian cemetery now.Andrea Bianchi,perhaps known best for his sleazy giallo,Nude per l'assassino(1975)and stylish 1972 thriller,Night Child,finally focused his lens on flesh-eating cadavers,a popular trend in Italy at the time,unwittingly giving audiences a riotous cult classic for decades to come.Known in some circles as "Continuity Errors of the Dead"(Not really.I just made that up.),Le notti is a numbskulled good time,unintentionally hilarious,with camera shadows appearing in shots,zombie masks not fully camoflaging actors' faces,misspelled titles flashing across the screen,and intelligent ghouls(ludicrously so) that pre-date Romero by four years.Did I mention Peter Bark yet?This is a must for your collection,which you'll revisit over and over again.
A dramatic prairie dog moment for an Italian midget in a toupee.
An archaeological professor(Renato Barbieri)who looks like Johnny Legend's Italian cousin is excavating an Etruscan burial site on top of which an Italian villa is built.He finds a plaque which,upon translation,knocks his proverbial socks off.He retreats to the underground dig site,and chips away at the wall where he discovered the tablet,and when a stone rolls away,he is overtaken by a gaggle of reanimated pre-Toscanans.I imagine the plaque must've falsely claimed to reveal the whereabouts of some Etruscan beard trimmers or something.The villa above belongs to George and Evelyn(Robert Caporali,Maria Angela Giordano),and uhh,her...son,Michael(Peter Bark).I'm thinking Michael probably isn't George's son,as he's an adult Italian toupee-wearing bug-eyed midget who's dubbed by another adult trying to sound like a young boy.He's probably the lovechild of Peter Lorre and Billy Barty.They are joined for a weekend of rest n' relaxation by Leslie(Antonella Antinori)and the moustachioed James(Simone Mattioli),Janet(Karin Well),and Mark(Gian Luigi Chirizzi).During their arrival to the newly purchased and remodeled villa,where Michael performs coitus interruptus midgetus on Evelyn and George trying to get their fuck on,and Leslie's sleep is being disturbed by precognitive nightmares where everybody dies in a horrible manner,the zombies do nothing.Why?They're plotting,I tell you.
The Etruscans pioneered the day cravat,apparently.
The next morning Mark ventures out to take some photos of Janet and ends up looking for his contact lens in the back of her throat with his tongue.James and Leslie don't even bother drumming up excuses,they put a blanket down and immediately start going at it.Evelyn and George take the opportunity to examine the professor's excavated artifacts,probably wondering whose bright idea it was to take the bald dwarf along.And then,without warning,it's fucking zombie time.The decaying ghouls all seem to be garbed in painter smocks or burlap and ascots,which leads me to ponder whether the Etruscan people were all aspiring twentieth century artists or just related to Fred from the Scooby Doo gang.Evelyn,George,and Michael find themselves trapped in the prof's workshop where George's gun pumps large,gore-splattered holes into the zombies with little effect,resulting in the sorry bastard getting his torso ripped asunder,and the zombies feasting on his entrails.The survivors try to make a break for the automobiles,but the zombies are standing guard(!),so they instead retreat to the villa.At this point,the two thousand year old corpses begin to use weapons and tools,like a scythe to remove the maid's head from a second story window(!!),and axes to gain entry to the villa that nobody bothered to secure or board up.Haven't you ever seen Night of the Living Dead(1968),people?Leslie gets dined upon,revives and chews Michael,the butler gets gnoshed by the revived weird-bearded professor,and the zombies outside pool their non-firing neurons and use a battering ram(!!!)to get inside.Evelyn,Mark,Janet,and James make a cross-country break for it(because the unguarded cars made too much sense,apparently),and after sleeping in an outbuilding,they cross a field to find a monastery inhabited by...Etruscan zombies in black robed disguise(!!!).Is there nothing these zombies won't think of?Michael returns as a reanimated corpse,and after several unnervingly incestuous moments while alive,chews his mother's tit off as a zombie,and the remaining survivors,trapped in a dead end room,all summarily end up as meals for the neckerchiefed dead.
"Everyday Italian" with Giada De Laurentiis was never like this!
When surrounded by zombies here,and it seems like the entire Etruscan race was buried in the same cemetery,mind you,all the characters seem to freeze and lovingly survey each individual shambling corpse,instead of running to the hills like Iron Maiden tried warning them to do.Either way,it's harmless(and brainless) fun for all cult afficionados to beat witness to.Bianchi stopped directing in 1993,with several nice genre pieces under his belt.None of the actors did much work of note afterwards,even the infamous Peter "Mother,this cloth smells of death" Bark only took some uncredited roles before disappearing altogether,perhaps in accordance with the misspelled "profecy of the black spider" which scrolls awkwardly at the end of the final reel,promising more "nigths" of terror to be burdened upon us,which,thankfully never came!Log this one as entertaining crap,with a scale rating of one wop,but enjoyability to spare!
The undead Michael(Peter Bark) comes face-to-face with his mother's living bobbler.
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