Zombie Holocaust (1980)

Hey? Did you like Lucio Fulci's film Zombi? Did you also like Ruggero Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust? Well it just so happens you might enjoy Marino Girolami's Zombie Holocaust! While sharing more similarities with Zombi than with Cannibal Holocaust, it still feels more like a half baked cannibal film disguised as a Zombie film.

Like zombi and Cannibal Holocaust, Zombie Holocaust starts in New York City. Where doctors at a university notice parts missing off bodies and appearing to have been eaten. This eventually leads them to go to a south eastern Asian island, where they encounter droves of cannibals and some harmless zombies

Harmless Zombies? Yes that's what I said the Zombies in the film don't kill a single person, the cannibals on the island do all the killing. Without reaveling too much about the plot, the Zombies in this film are more like the voodoo kind seen in early 30s and 40s horror films. Which I will give it that for being unique, esspecially for an Italian Zombie film. However the cons in this movie far outweigh the pros.

For one the beginning is poorly paced and it seems to take forever to get to the Island. Where as in Zombi even though it takes a while to get to the island, it still works well with the slow pacing of the film, whereas this movie has the pace become pretty rapid in the middle. Nonetheless, even with a decent enough middle. The climax is awful, as it's basically 5 minutes of the main character trying to cut a belt.

This movie is bad that's for sure. It's an obvious rip off of Zombi and Cannibal Holocaust. It's not that its a ripoff which makes it bad, but the overall laziness of the production. I will say on the positive side that it has some great gore effects, including a zombie being killed with a boat propeller. So overall it's okay to watch once, and maybe to put on if you need some background noise.

45/100