Dawn of the Dead (1978)

Dawn of the Dead (1978) [European Version]
Directed by George A Romero
Starring Ken Foree, David Emge, Gaylen Ross
119 mins; Not Rated; Colour

Previewed Release: R1 Anchor Bay 4-Disc Ultimate Edition
Tagline: When there’s no more room in hell, the dead will walk the Earth.
Country of Origin: USA/Italy

The Film:

When George A Romero directed Night of the Living Dead in 1968, the face of horror was changed forever – zombies as credible on-screen nemeses were introduced. They had been committed to celluloid before in thirties Universal horror films and experimental European cinema, but Night was by far the most successful of these films. Ten years later, Romero directed Dawn of the Dead, his most profitable and influential film, perhaps even more so than Night.

The fundamental plot of Dawn is one which would become emulated in every zombie movie ever filmed. Some form of virus hits a community, turning its occupants into flesh-eating ghouls. The virus is transmitted when one of the infected bites a human and the only way to dispatch the zombies is to shoot ‘em in the head! Dawn opens not with the introduction of this disease, but with the immediate aftermath and the fear among uninfected civilians. After violent panic erupts in a news studio, Stephen (Emge) and Francine (Ross), escape in a helicopter with two SWAT officers, Peter (Foree) and Roger (Scott H. Reiniger). The four land the helicopter on the roof of a suburban mall, which is surrounded by the undead and, after securing the centre, they decide to remain there. Their every desired supply has been taken care of, and the niche they have found seems secure. Before long however, other people realise the potential security and prosperity of the mall and the quintuplet find themselves pitted against both zombies and, in a climactic finale, a mob of anarchistic bikers.

This European cut of Dawn of the Dead is unavailable in Australia and can be found in R1 on a single-disc DVD and Anchor Bay’s 4-disc Ultimate Edition. This version, which was cut by Romero’s European distributor Dario Argento, makes the film more action-oriented, and many of Romero’s themes of capitalism and consumerism have been lost in this cut. Interestingly, some of Romero’s more notable gore set pieces, including the death-by-helicopter of one of the zombies, have been cut also, though the hilarious say goodbye, freak! scene is still present. The film runs some 10-minutes shorter than Romero’s preferred theatrical cut, and Argento removed some of the original score music and replaced it with further tracks by popular Italian exploitation film musos Goblin. The European cut is my favoured version of Dawn, as its pacing is considerably tighter than the theatrical and Cannes cuts.

The Release:

Fucking magnificent. This is the only release a Dawn fan should consider getting, and it’s one of the most comprehensive releases of any one film in the history of the DVD format. Four discs, with the theatrical, Cannes and European cuts, as well as documentaries, TV spots, trailers and much much more. The audio is presented in 5.1 and sounds terrific, and the picture is in a 1:85:1 aspect ratio. A simply amazing set.

The Verdict:

Although it hasn’t aged particularly well, Dawn of the Dead undoubtedly marked a defining moment in horror cinema, and was massively influential – it spawned three Romero-helmed sequels, Italian rip-offs (most notably Lucio Fulci’s Zombie), a remake and parodies. The European cut has, from memory, better pacing than the theatrical cut which is available on DVD in Australia. Romero seemed too busy lacing his film with unneeded pretensions and his focus on metaphorical meaning made Dawn convoluted and dated. However, a review of Dawn of the Dead could not be completed without mention of Tom Savini’s visual effects, many of which are delightfully crowd-pleasing and sickeningly gory. A three-star film that’s well worth watching in order to ascertain where many of the modern-day zombie film’s influences derived from, though the amazing set in which this film comes gives this review a five-star rating.

The Descent (2005)
Directed by Neil Marshall
Starring Shauna Macdonald, Natalie Mendoza, Alex Reid
99 mins; MA15+; Colour

Previewed Release: R4 Icon Home Entertainment (Rental)
Tagline: Scream your last breath.
Country of Origin: UK/USA

The Film:

Horror has, since the mid-nineties, been a dead genre. Since Scream in 1996, unoriginality has been the order of the day for mainstream American horror films, with the bulk of them being sequels, remakes and rip-offs. From the Herschell Gordon Lewis torture porn emulation found in Saw and Hostel and the Texas Chain Saw Massacre/Hills Have Eyes hybrid of the Rob Zombie films, precious few truly original horror films have hit cinemas and the home video circuit. Give a true horror fan the name of a film made in the past ten years, and they will tell you its sixties, seventies or eighties counterpart, and usually one that was considerably better at that.

The Descent is the notable exception.

One of the most innovative films to come out of the horror genre in a very long time, The Descent defies categorisation. This 2005 feature is the second film directed by Neil Marshall, who also helmed the British werewolf film Dog Soldiers. It is clear that Marshall is one of the great horror talents of this modern age – forget James Wan, Rob Zombie and Eli Roth; Marshall is the most successful and talented name in the Splat Pack.

The Descent begins with a devastating prelude that sees young adventurer Sarah’s (Macdonald) husband and young daughter is killed in a horrific car accident. Fast-forward a year, and some of Sarah’s old and new friends, led by Juno (Mendoza), organise a caving expedition in the Appalachian Mountains in order to motivate the depressed widow. The journey begins smoothly however, when down in the cave, disaster strikes – a rock collapse blocks the tunnel in which they have entered. When it is revealed that the cave is in fact a new and unexplored system, the women must fight claustrophobia and panic to find another exit. However, there is something else down in the caves – something far more sinister than what the women can imagine. Before long, it is more than just the darkness the women must worry about and they find themselves stalked and preyed upon by someone – or something.

The best thing about The Descent, aside from its originality, is the fact that you don’t know what kind of film you are watching – it quickly morphs from an adventure, to a psychological thriller, to a gory horror film. The scares come thick and fast, and the atmosphere is almost claustrophobically intense. Highly recommended.

The Release:

This rental release of The Descent comes with no special features, though a Special Edition has been released for retail on R4. There is one English soundtrack – English 5.1 – and it sounds excellent. The picture is presented in anamorphic widescreen 1:78:1 and the picture is clear and sharp, though much of the film is intentionally enshrouded in darkness.

The Verdict:

One of the best horror films of this modern age, The Descent is a rare breed – original, intense and very scary. It’s been a long time since the horror genre has brought out such an innovative film and, in our current era dominated by sequels, homages, rip-offs and remakes, this is a refreshing encore for the scary movie. If Marshall moves to Hollywood, then modern horror will be turned on its plagiarising head. But until then, Britain is the place to watch.

JOE D’AMATO
1936 – 1999

I was once asked why I like bad films – 'bad' referring to low-budget, bad gore and, generally, Italian Eurotrash type films. I’ll address this in more detail later on, but one of the answers is Joe D’Amato: filmmaker, businessman, pornographer. Whatever you care to call him, D’Amato is one of the landmark names in Eurotrash cinema, and his skills extended to derivative gore films, the Black Emanuelle series and hardcore pornography. Born Aristide Massaccesi on 15 December 1936, Joe D’Amato was one of Massaccesi’s many pseudonyms, though he frequently went by the name David Hills for Western audiences.

Nicknamed ‘The Evil Ed Wood’ (undoubtedly a testament to the films he would go on to direct), D’Amato was introduced to the world of filmmaking in 1953, when he worked as a still photographer for a comedy/drama film The Golden Coach. After working as a director of photography for a number of years, D’Amato made his directorial debut with the erotic comedy More Sexy Canterbury Tales. After helming a number of similar films and Spaghetti Westerns, which were popularised around the world by Leone’s Dollars trilogy, D’Amato made his mark on the horror genre with Death Smiles on a Murderer (1973), a giallo.

After the phenomenal success of the X-rated Emmanuelle, and the subsequent rip-off Black Emanuelle, D’Amato turned his eyes to this softcore franchise starring Indonesian model Laura Gemser. His first entry to the Black Emanuelle series was in 1975 with Emanuelle’s Revenge. This film was not considered one of the ‘true’ Emanuelle pictures, due to the notable absence of Gemser, and D’Amato followed this with a Gemser Emanuelle production Emanuelle in Bangkok. These two films gave D’Amato so much success that he directed three more in 1977 alone – Emanuelle Around the World, Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals and Emanuelle in America. The former two films were softcore adventures, with Last Cannibals deriving much from the Italian cannibal gut munchers of the time. However Emanuelle in America was different – the film contained graphic sex, extreme violence (with some of the most realistic snuff footage ever filmed) and one scene that even had the jaws of even the most jaded of filmgoers drop to the floor. Immediately touted as a perverse classic, Emanuelle in America had audiences (or, rather, the few who saw the uncut product) screaming for more.

In 1979, D’Amato returned to horror, directing Beyond the Darkness. The film was immensely successful, and its blend of the giallo and some truly perverse themes (a taxidermist stuffs his dead wife and remains, er, amorous with her) made it a sure-fire hit worldwide. In 1980, D’Amato followed through with another horror effort Anthropophagus and, while it wasn’t as successful, this film still retained Beyond the Darkness’ shock value. D’Amato directed a sequel to Anthropophagus in 1981 and it gained some notoriety after being placed on the British Board of Film Classification’s video nasty list. Its banned status remains in force and it is unreleased in Britain to this day.

In 1980 and 1981 respectively, D’Amato puzzled many of his fans by directing two truly weird hardcore pictures – Erotic Nights of the Living Dead and Porno Holocaust. The former starred Gemser (who didn’t partake in any hardcore activity, and never did in any of her films), and Porno Holocaust, another zombie film, was co-directed by Bruno Mattei. These two films polarised moviegoers and the films’ blend of graphic violence and hardcore sex assure them a banned status in Australia. In 1982, D’Amato directed Caligula II: The Untold Story, a sequel to the successful Penthouse production Caligula (1979). D’Amato changed tack and turned towards adventure when he directed Ator, also 1982, which was an entirely blatant cash-in on the Arnold Schwarzenegger film Conan the Barbarian. Regardless of these similarities, Ator remained popular in Italy and spawned three sequels, two of which were directed by D’Amato.

D’Amato returned to softcore in 1986, when he directed Eleven Days, Eleven Nights, a rip-off of the Mickey Rourke film 9½ Weeks. Although he harked back to his horror roots briefly with films such as Killing Birds (1987), D’Amato remained in the porn genre, and he directed Italian straight-to-video hardcore until his death on January 23 1999 of a heart attack.

Although the bulk of his almost-two-hundred films were restricted to the porn category, Joe D’Amato is best known, and indeed appreciated, for his horror work and films for the Black Emanuelle franchise. Many of these have gone on to be distributed by leading DVD companies including Shriek Show and Blue Underground, who gave a sensational release of the seemingly untouchable Emanuelle in America. D’Amato’s death resulted in a great loss for Italian cinema and the cult director left an enviable legacy upon the fans of exploitation cinema.

So back to the question I was asked and my perceived ‘bad’ taste in film: D’Amato is a perfect example of why people love Eurotrash cinema. His blend of sex, violence, gore and depravity are depicted with graphic relish, and make the antics of the Saw, Hostel and Hills Have Eyes films of today look tame. In reality, many of these films aren’t allowed to be released on DVD today, let alone made – in the filmography selected below, more than a dozen films are banned, or have been banned, in Australia. The fact was, in the exploitation and grindhouse era, people enjoyed being shocked by realistic footage. Some of the effects were considered so realistic that directors such as Jacopetti, Prosperi and Deodato were tried by Italian courts, accused of murdering their actors on-screen (it should be noted, though, that they didn’t and were acquitted – Deodato, however, remained charged with the animal cruelty depicted in his 1980 film Cannibal Holocaust). The PG-horrors of today (The Grudge, Boogeyman, Disturbia et al) would have been laughed upon by these men. The films of Joe D’Amato are bona fide shockers, and are a perfect antidote to those bored with the sanitised mainstream films of today. Joe D’Amato, we salute you. Until anyone has the balls to make something as outright repulsive as you did, horror will remain a genre where superficial scares and censored gore remain the norm.

Selected Filmography (as director):

1972 – More Sexy Canterbury Tales
1973 – Death Smiles on a Murderer
1975 – Emanuelle’s Revenge
1976 – Emanuelle in Bangkok
1977 – Emanuelle in America
1977 – Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals
1977 – Emanuelle Around the World
1978 – Emanuelle and the White Slave Trade
1979 – Images in a Convent
1979 – Beyond the Darkness
1980 – Anthropophagus
1980 – Erotic Nights of the Living Dead
1981 – Anthropophagus 2 (aka Absurd)
1981 – Porno Holocaust
1982 – Caligula: The Untold Story (Caligula II)
1982 – Ator the Invincible
1984 – Ator the Invincible 2
1986 – Eleven Days, Eleven Nights
1987 – Killing Birds
1990 – Quest for the Mighty Sword (Ator III)
1990 – Troll 3

BRUNO MATTEI
1931 – 2007

Bruno Mattei is undoubtedly one of the Italian horror genre’s greatest filmmakers. The director of films such as Hell of the Living Dead, Violence in a Women’s Prison and Rats: Nights of Terror remains highly acclaimed in cult horror circles, and was working on Italo-exploitation films until his untimely death in 2007. Mattei went under many pseudonyms, most notably Vincent Dawn (a tribute to Dawn of the Dead) and his prolific output made up a great deal of the best of Italian exploitation cinema.

Born in Rome on July 30 1931, Mattei’s introduction to the film world was with his father, who owned a film editing studio. Mattei’s first work on a feature film was as an assistant editor on the independent comedy Non è Vero…ma ci credo (It’s Not True… But We Think…) in 1952, when he was aged 21. Mattei’s directorial debut was the little known drama film Armida, il dramma di una sposa (Armida, The Drama of a Marriage; 1970). After a six year hiatus in which Mattei dedicated his time to editing pictures, he directed SS Girls and Women’s Camp 119, both in 1977. These ‘Naziploitation’ films, which depicted Nazi camps in graphic detail, entrenched Mattei in the low-brow, exploitative niche he would later become famous and most appreciated for.

In 1978, Mattei co-directed an instalment of the Black Emanuelle series Emanuelle and the Erotic Nights with fellow Emanuelle alumnus Joe D’Amato, whom he would collaborate with a number of times throughout his career. However, in 1980, Mattei directed the film he would become most famous for – Hell of the Living Dead. Also known as Night of the Zombies, Hell of the Living Dead had the kind of low-budget, gore and sleaze that the punters would come to expect from every Italotrash film. The acting was weak, the effects terrible and the film was a colossal rip-off of similar US films, however Hell of the Living Dead held an undeniable appeal and the film has generated a cult following worldwide.

Mattei directed two rip-offs of the highly successful Roman Empire porn film Caligula in 1982. These were Caligula and Messalina and Nero, the latter of which chronicled the depraved life and times of the titular Roman emperor. 1982 and 1983 saw two more Emanuelle/Laura Gemser films, Violence in a Women’s Prison and Emanuelle in Prison. Violence was thought-of in particular high esteem – while puritans didn’t consider it a true Emanuelle film (though it starred Laura Gemser as ‘Emanuelle’ and alternate titles market it as such), it was considered one of the finest women-in-prison films ever made. In 1984, Mattei directed Rats – Nights of Terror, a futuristic gorefest.

After a number of sub par action/sci-fi rip-offs, Mattei came on board the Zombi series, started by Lucio Fulci with Zombi 2 (aka Zombie and Zombie Flesh Eaters, a cash-in on George A Romero’s 1978 film Dawn of the Dead). Fulci had originally signed up to direct Zombi 3 in 1988 when, after suffering a stroke, he pulled out. Mattei and long-time collaborator Claudio Fragasso were enlisted to finish the job, and the finished product of the film has approximately fifty minutes of Fulci’s footage, and forty minutes of Mattei and Fragasso’s. The film marked a much anticipated return to form for Mattei, whom fans feared had stopped making such films altogether. From then, Mattei’s output declined, and was restricted almost exclusively to ripping-off Hollywood big-budget films of every genre (including a film called Terminator II [1990], incidentally released one year before the James Cameron blockbuster of the same name). Interestingly, some of Mattei’s best work was in the 2000s, and all were direct-to-video releases in Italy and have become exceedingly rare to find. He directed a number of cannibal films, including Nella Terra dei Cannibali (In the Land of the Cannibals) and Mondo Cannibali, which was marketed as Cannibal Ferox 3 in the UK in order to cash-in on Umberto Lenzi’s enormously popular 1983 film. In the year leading up to his death, Mattei returned to the zombie genre, directing Island of the Living Dead and Zombies: The Beginning, the latter of which sounded like one of Mattei’s best films to date. It is as yet unclear whether he died before its completion, however many of his later films remain unreleased.

Mattei died in Rome on May 21 2007 but, among cult fans, his legacy has lived on. Mattei may not have had the technology and budget to be considered a talented film maker, however his films have gone down in the annals of exploitation classics. Perhaps what is most indicative of this is a simple search of ‘Bruno Mattei’ in the horror/exploitation online retailer Xploited – 28 hits are wielded, accessible to people worldwide. His untimely death meant only one thing to B-grade Italian horror cinema – it would never be the same. This is particularly true when you look at the frequency of which Mattei was making movies – between 1970 and 2007, he had directed over fifty films. However, while major DVD distributors such as Anchor Bay and Vipco continue to release his films, the films of Bruno Mattei will be appreciated for generations to come.

Selected Filmography (as director):

1970 - Armida, il dramma di una sposa
1977 – SS Girls
1977 – Women’s Camp 119
1980 – Hell of the Living Dead
1980 – The Other Hell
1982 – Caligula and Messalina
1982 – Nero
1982 – Violence in a Women’s Prison
1983 – Seven Magnificent Gladiators
1983 – Emanuelle in Hell
1984 – Rats: Nights of Terror
1988 – Zombi 3
1990 – Terminator II
1994 – Eyes Without a Face
2003 – Snuff Trap
2003 – Nella Terra dei Cannibali (In the Land of the Cannibals)
2003 – Mondo Cannibali (Cannibal World)
2004 – The Tomb
2006 – Island of the Living Dead
2007 – Zombies: The Beginning