Zombie 4: After Death

Claudio Fragassi is best known as the visionary behind “Troll 2”.  But honestly, he is SO MUCH MORE THAN THAT!  He seemed to have spent the better part of his directing career under either an alias (this one for instance is credited to one ‘Clyde Anderson’), or as an uncredited director brought in to finish works that were abandoned by Bruno Mattei.  If Mattei gives up on a movie, I’m afraid to see the finished product.  Nonetheless, here we are.  “After Death” or as it is also known “Zombie 4”, begins with a throaty dude talking complete nonsense about a group of humanitarian scientists who conduct research on a remote tropical island, research to fight man’s oldest foe: DEATH.  Then horrible eighties synth rock starts playing and Lovelock and Starkwell immediately start rocking out all over the living room.  Buckle up folks, this is gonna be one nutty ride.

[...]

[Voodoo Priest says gibberish while Tina Turner (not actually Tina Turner) does an interpretive dance to horrible synth tribal music.  Light enters her mouth and she vomits.]

Starkwell: I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that they won’t explain much in this one.

[Tina Turner sinks into the ground, and floats to hell.]

Starkwell: Luckily, the group of nerds with machine guns and flashlights seem to know what’s going on.  

Lovelock: Also, they look like they work in a zoo.

[Nerds gun down Voodoo Priest, Tina Turner explodes out of the ground, as a zombie and rips off one nerd’s face.]

Starkwell: Why?

Lovelock: When things make me happy, I find it best to stop asking questions, and fall deeply in love.

Starkwell: What's love got to do with it?

[...]

There are a bunch of characters.  We don’t really know who any of them are, or how they relate to one another.  I don’t think that really matters, since most of them have already died, and there are rabid running zombies everywhere trying to kill, and likely eat everyone.  Lovelock is grinning from ear to ear.  Starkwell is grinning too, but mostly because he’s laughing so hard at the movie.

[...]

[Some little Blonde girl survives, and now we flash forward to her all grown up and she and her mercenary friends end up on the very island where everyone died.]

Starkwell: So how did she survive?  What happened to the… ? Why wouldn’t she know that wasn’t just a dream? What… the fuck… ? Who has mercenary friends?

Lovelock: Dude, “Zombie 4” eats your questions for breakfast.

Starkwell: Will it vomit answers?  Please?

Lovelock: Who needs answers when you have people being eaten every minute?

Starkwell: Well, me, for one.

Lovelock: Your loss.  YOUR LOSS.

Starkwell: Wait, did she mean to go back to that island?  I’m confused.

[...]

[A group of three researchers venture into the cave, end up swarmed by zombies, two are eaten.]

Lovelock: It’s like Meat Loaf says, “Two out of three ain’t bad”.

Starkwell: Dude, it’s all bad.  This whole thing is bad.

[Then they show the same zombie rising out of a grave twice, almost in a row, and Starkwell and Lovelock both laughed hysterically.]

[...]

Then the Surviving Scientist meets up with the Mercenary Gang, and they blow away a million zombies.  But they JUST KEEP COMING.  This movie’s body count is impressive, and we’re only an hour in. 

[...]

[One mercenary turns zombie, eats girl’s face, goes after Blondie, and then absolutely everyone shoots him in the face.]

Starkwell: I love how they were like “We can’t kill Tommy!” and then one minute later all scream “Kill him!” and machine gunned his face.

Lovelock: Yeah… real conflicted… and then they throw his body into a bonfire.

[...]

Then Blondie SUDDENLY remembers everything about her past.  Seriously, every intricate detail, details she couldn’t possibly know, since she was only like four at the time.  Starkwell rolled his eyes so hard he passed out momentarily.

[...]

Lovelock: Can we just stop for a moment and talk about how killer this soundtrack is?

Starkwell: Moment’s up.

[Suddenly one of the zombies has a consciousness and can talk and laugh and use a gun.]

Starkwell: Sure.  Why not?

Lovelock: No seriously, why not?

[...]

[Dude goes Kamikaze and explodes the house.]

Lovelock: Did he just FISTPUMP while exploding?

Starkwell: Does that make it good?

Lovelock: That makes it the best.  The best ever.

[...]

Blondie tries to close the gates of hell, she fails, her face explodes and Captain Science is ripped apart.  Now she becomes the QUEEN DEMON.  I think.  Same synth rock from the opening credits start playing and Lovelock plays air guitar so hard he starts crying.  Starkwell just leaves the room.  It’s obviously no “Zombi 2”, and it doesn’t quite hit the hilariously explosive heights of “Zombi 3”.  But “After Death” certainly earns itself a place in history among the best of the “so bad they are good” movies, wedged somewhere just below “Zombi 3”, which in turn is being sat on by “Nightmare City”, which is being peed on by most of Lucio Fulci’s work.

Zombi 3.

A movie so good that it took THREE directors to complete it!  This started off as Fulci’s 1988 sequel to his own 1979 cinematic gem “Zombie Flesh Eaters”, but apparently took a wrong turn somewhere in Bruno Mattei town.  If you want the whole history, look it up.  I’m only interested in what Lovelock and Starkwell will have to say about the finished product.

[...]

[Scientists inject serum into corpse’s head.  Dead body revives, decomposes superfast. Screams.]

Lovelock: Well, a strong start.

Starkwell: Don’t start playing air guitar quite yet, this is probably just the Fulci portion.

[...]

[Scientists shot at, guards killed, top secret experimental drug stolen.]

Starkwell: I think that they spent the entire film’s budget on that helicopter.

Lovelock: It certainly wasn’t spent on good costumes, good actors or making it look real when people are shot.

[...]

[Sick Infected Thief runs to an island resort, hand is all decomposing, face gross.  He gets a room.]

Lovelock: That’s why I never stay at those all-inclusive places.  They give a room to anyone.

Starkwell: Yeah, that’s why.

[...]

[The over dubbing is so bad, that it actually helps make the movie a comedic goldmine.  Their favorite so far was when the Room Service guy, when asked to bring Sick Guy some water, says to the Concierge “Again??!! What is this guy trying to get in the Guiness Book of World Records?!?!”.]

Lovelock: Yeah… for water drinking at a hotel.

[Guy cuts off own hand, blood flies everywhere.]

Lovelock: That’s why when I cut off a hand, I start with the tourniquet.

Starkwell: Yeah that’s why.

[...]

[Outbreak takes over the hotel, and the crazy HASMAT suit commandoes fill the resort.  HASMAT commandoes find original Infected Guy.]

Starkwell: Why would he take his mask off?

Lovelock: So that they can all hear him scream “FOUND HIM!”

Starkwell: But it defeats the whole purpose of wearing the suit in the first place.

Lovelock: Oh, sure, if you’re worried about that sort of logic.

[...]

We’re introduced to a group of soldier boys, and a new winning line emerges when one says “I don’t remember her name, but I sure remember her tits!”  Starkwell and Lovelock repeated it a few times.  The film seems to be introducing an awful lot of characters, such as the young lovers in the convertible, the RV full of nerds and loose women, the soldier boys, the Radio DJ and of course, General Hard-On.

[...]

[Zombie birds… ATTACK!]

Lovelock: SO MUCH cooler than the CGI birds in that Resident Evil movie.

[...]

[RABID MACHETE ZOMBIE ATTACKS… AT THE GAS STATION.]

Starkwell: So, “Nightmare City” imitates “Zombi 2” and now “Zombi 3” imitates “Nightmare City”?

Lovelock: Not to mention “The Crazies”.  It’s like they say, ‘life imitates art’.

Starkwell: What does that have to do with anything?

Lovelock: You said ‘imitate’?

[...]

The dubbing just got worse and worse.  It started to look as though the actors were really struggling to get the English out, but then they just brought people in to over dub it all anyways.  Lovelock’s new favorite line: “I’m free too, in other words I don’t have a steady girl.”  I guess you had to be there.

[...]

Lovelock: Why do people walk so slowly when they’re scared?  Wouldn’t you want to move fast so nothing can catch you?

Starkwell: Especially in a zombie outbreak situation.

[Girl falls in water, guy pulls her out, she INSTANTANEOUSLY becomes a zombie, and her legs are missing, perhaps bitten off.]

Starkwell: Are we supposed to assume that there was a zombie shark?  The same from “Zombi 2”? In the resort swimming pool?

Lovelock: That’s why I never swim in hotel pools.

Starkwell: Yeah, that’s why.

Lovelock: Anyways, I don’t think that was a swimming pool.

Starkwell: Whatever it was, it has some steamy water.

[...]

Lovelock is able to look past the horrifying plot holes and inconsistencies in the zombie behavior and cheer loudly at every turn.  Starkwell seems less able.

[...]

[Couple complains about how hungry they are and go to the kitchen to look for food.]

Starkwell: Who would be thinking about food at a time like this?!!?!

[Severed zombie head flies out of fridge, eats man.  Zombie rips girl’s face off.]

Lovelock: Answer – About to become dead people.

[...]

At one point Lovelock spent ten minutes or so repeating hilarious one liners of dialogue and doing jump kicks.  Starkwell was just looking at him disappointed muttering “this is sooo not jump kick worthy.”

[...]

[Scientists huddle around whiteboard full of ‘equations’.]

Starkwell: It looks like what a seven year old thinks scientists working on something would look like.

Lovelock: It looks like a connect-the-dots that doesn’t actually make anything.

Starkwell: Oh, it makes something... a bad movie.

[...]

Then the nerd guy got gunned down by the HASMAT crew and Lovelock jump kicked so hard he pulled a muscle.  The movie slowed down a bit after that, which gave him time to recover.  But then a zombie ripped a woman’s face off and pushed her into a pregnant zombie’s exploding womb and Lovelock pushed through the pain to perform a picture perfect roundhouse.  Starkwell wondered “why is there a full grown hand emerging from her vagina?  Was she giving birth to a zombie arm?”

[...]

Starkwell: Why are the zombies just standing there looking at them?  How could there be a perfectly intact and gassed up helicopter just sitting there? Why are there zombies hiding in the haystacks?  Are they ninjas? WHAT THE FUCK!?!?!?!?!

Lovelock: You raise some valid questions.  Most can be answered by the following.

[Lovelock performs an impressive jump kick.  Sticks the landing.]

[...]

Then there was the worst twist ending ever.  It pushed Lovelock deeper into the I FUCKING LOVE IT column, and Starkwell further into the WHAT THE FUCK column.  Then there was a sick eighties song during the credits, and everyone agreed that it was TIME… TO… DANCE!