10 Zombie Movies That Prove The Italians Did It Best

10 Zombie Movies That Prove The Italians Did It Best

Italian zombie flicks just stand out from the rest. These classics prove that Italian directors are in a different league when it comes to the undead.

You Are Reading :[thien_display_title]

Despite giving rise to their own styles of creeping terror in the 1960s, Italians have often been labeled as knockoff artists by genre fans and critics. This isn’t untrue. Due to the looseness of copyright laws in Italy and the fact that the country’s filmmakers were doing everything they could to compete with Hollywood product, the late ’70s saw a boom in unofficial sequels that sought to capitalize on successful American movies. Having put their stamp on the Western a decade earlier, Italian directors brought their own wild spin to the Zombie film, and spaghetti splatter was born.

Though ostensibly created to ape the films of George A. Romero, Italian zombie films are their own strange animal, featuring intense gore that never would have squeaked by American censors, titillating sexuality, and prog rock scores, among other idiosyncrasies. Below, we list ten of the weirdest, grossest, most delicious Italian zombie films to add to your streaming list.

1 Let Sleeping Corpses Lie (1974)

In rural England, a policeman pursues a hippieish duo believed to have committed a murder, Manson Family-style. The real killers? The living dead! Reanimated by pesticides, these shambling corpses wander the countryside looking for supple human flesh to gnaw on.

A Spanish-Italian riff on Romero’s Night of The Living Dead (1968), Jorge Grau and his screenwriters pepper this zombie flick with counterculture vibes and a dusting of environmentalism, resulting in one of the more restrained and effective shockers of this era of zombie mayhem.

When a mysteriously unmanned boat drifts into New York harbor, a young woman (Tisa Farrow) worries that her father’s research expedition in the Caribbean has gone awry. Enlisting the help of a reporter (Ian McCulloch), the two journey to the far flung island of Matul to find the doctor…if there’s any of him left to find.

Though he continues to exist in the shadow of Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci has come to be regarded with a similar reverence by horror fans, and Zombi 2 may be his finest work. Titled to capitalize on the success of George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (which was known as Zombi in Italy), Zombi 2 is an absolute gold standard Italian horror film and did as much to fuel the country’s zombie craze as the Romero original it was cribbing from.

Audiences might have expected Umberto Lenzi–the father of the oft-maligned Italian Cannibal subgenre–to offer up a similarly gory take on the undead, but Nightmare City is among the more ridiculous features on this list, which also means it’s one of the most entertaining.

A group of anthropologists land on a remote island searching for a lost tribe of cannibals, only to discover that the isle has been taken over by the mad Doctor O’Brien and his army of reanimated corpses.

Also known as Doctor Butcher M.D., Marino Girolami’s Zombie Holocaust is one of the few films of this cycle that attempted to introduce elements of the Italian Cannibal movie into a zombie narrative, giving viewers a taste of two reviled sub-genres for the price of one.

A sleazy land developer and his girlfriend take a trip to a tropical island they’ve purchased to scope out locations for a new luxury hotel. Upon arrival, they meet a shaman who warn them to turn back, lest the Voodoo cursed undead of the island claim their lives. Unfortunately, the shaman’s grandchild, Luna (Laura Gemser) directs her amorous attentions toward the land developer, distracting him from the danger.

Even among his fellow provocateurs, director Joe D’Amato is considered especially sleazy. However, he doesn’t get quite enough credit for what he does well, namely, the bold mixing of sex and violence on display in Erotic Nights of the Living Dead.

One of the more infamous Italian zombie titles (largely for diminutive adult actor Peter Bark’s turn as a creepy kid), Burial Ground hits the ground running, and although the gore and mayhem alone aren’t really enough to sustain the runtime, director Andrea Bianchi keeps things lively with inventive set pieces and perverse sexual tension.

A journalist named Stefano (Gabriele Lavia) purchases a secondhand typewriter that once belonged to a scientist who studied the restorative power that some types of soil have relating to dead bodies. With his interest piqued, Stefano seeks to probe the validity of the theories, only to collide with a cabal of radicals intent on reanimating deceased tissue using the theories.

Pupi Avati’s underrated effort borrows liberally from his country’s crime cinema for a deliberately-paced, giallo-infused take on the zombie film

RELATED: The 5 Most Unique (& The 5 Most Derivative) Zombie Movies Streaming On Netflix

Whether it was illness or production disputes, Lucio Fulci left his in-name-only sequel to Zombi 2 in the hands of Bruno Mattei, a much less talented genre stylist. Still, Zombi 3 makes fine use of its Philippines location and offers up plenty of muscular 1980s action spectacle to go with the gut-munching.

When a woman hires a group of mercenaries to accompany her to the island that claimed her parents lives, they incur the wrath of a voodoo priest with the power to bring the dead back to life.

Directed with even less ability and panache by Zombi 3 screenwriter Claudio Fragasso (co-creator of the infamously terrible Troll 2) Zombie 4: After Death certainly has less going for it than its predecessor, but with steamy jungle atmosphere and a turn by legendary porn star Jeff Stryker as an oiled-up commando, there are worse ways to wile away an afternoon.

Groundskeeper Francesco Dellamorte (Rupert Everett) is fed up. Overseeing a cemetery where the deceased keep rising, he seeks help from the local government who disbelieve his claims that everything they bury he must put down a second time. Relief from this gruesome drudgery comes in the form of a gorgeous widow (Anna Falchi), but it’s only a matter of time before the restless denizens of his graveyard come between them.

Showing up too late to be rightly regarded as the “last gasp” of the Italian zombie boom, Michele Soavi’s supernatural romance feels more indebted to perhaps Peter Jackson or Sam Raimi than Lucio Fulci. However, it is gentler than either of those influences, and with its moribund whimsy and bone dry, humorous approach to dispatching the undead, Cemetery Man is easily the last great Italian Horror film of the 20th century.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/best-italian-zombie-movies/

• 90 Day Fiancé Arielas Mom Shares Update On Avis Health After Surgery

• 10 Best Silent Characters In Movies & TV Shows Ranked

• Apple Planning Apple Watch Series 8 New SE & Rugged Models For 2022

• 1000Lb Sisters How Amy & Tammy Afford So Much Food & Medical Care

• ACNHs New Summer & Winter Solstice Items Are Available Now

• 11 Best Kisses in Disney History Ranked

• 10 Best Puzzle Games On The Nintendo Switch