Zombie Holocaust

Some movies are so bad they’re good. Others are just bad. Zombie Holocaust splits the difference, landing somewhere in exploitation purgatory.

Director Marino Girolami’s cannibal-zombie mashup opens promisingly. A hospital worker munches on morgue meat in New York City. Ian McCulloch plays a doctor who, along with anthropologist Alexandra Delli Colli, traces the cannibal’s origins to the Maluku Islands, conveniently the same exotic locale where Colli’s character spent her formative years. What follows is a predictable expedition to the islands, complete with the requisite collection of expendable characters who exist primarily to provide the cannibals with fresh meat.

Yes, the gore flows freely. Hands get sawed off. Stomachs get sliced open. Cannibals feast on quivering organs with gusto. The practical effects convince, squishing and spurting with admirable commitment. But where’s the terror? These scenes unfold with all the dramatic tension of a cooking demonstration.

Compare this to Lucio Fulci’s Zombie, which wrung genuine dread from similar island carnage. Fulci understood that gore without suspense is just messy housekeeping.

The plot meanders. We spend considerable time watching our characters discuss cannibals, then watching them travel, then watching them discuss travel. The undead don’t even shamble onscreen until halfway through.

The American cut, retitled Dr. Butcher M.D. (Medical Deviate, if you’re keeping score), hacks away dialogue and character beats in an attempt to save the pacing. The surgery fails. A laughably obvious European insert sequence—complete with leafless trees on a “tropical” island—adds insult to injury.

McCulloch does his best with thin material. When he dispatches a zombie with an outboard motor to the face, you glimpse the grindhouse gold this could have been.

The film’s fatal flaw? It wants to cash in on Cannibal Holocaust and Zombie but dilutes both formulas. Making cannibals into unwitting pawns neuters their primal threat. Reducing zombies to brain transplant victims strips away supernatural menace.

Still, Zombie Holocaust offers enough splatter to satisfy less discriminating gorehounds. But a better movie would have pitted cannibals against tourists-turned-zombies. They could call it “Cannibals vs. Zombies.” At least that promises truth in advertising.