Erotic Nights of the Living Dead

Rating:
Summary: doesn't excel at either genre
Review: As a horror/zombie film, this movie doesn't deliver at all. There are very few scenes of actual gore, zombies, or cannibalism and what there is is actually kinda tame(i'm not talking tame by today's standards, i'm talking tame by late 70's/early 80's standards!). Scares are none, and atmosphere in lieu of it is minimal.

As for the sexploitation part, there is one extended x-rated scene(nothing special here). The rest is just soft-core stuff and most scenes are brief(or badly edited...by the editor, not by a censor cause i saw the 112 minute un-cut version). Not much "erotic"-ism in these living dead if that's what you'r looking for.

Overall, this film is really disappointing(despite a nice little twist ending) though not entirely unwatchable. It just seems awkward and disjointed and fails to excel as a gore or sex film; and it's not quite as exploitative as some would lead you to believe. The dvd is nice though: decent widescreen transfer, stills gallery(including a Laura Gemser gallery), 4 trailers(plus the film's own), and alternate footage(nothing special). For the genre collector, it may be enough to warrant buying. But for the curious, a rental should do.

Rating:
Summary: You Gasp! You Scream! You hit the Chapter/Skip Button!
Review: I may not be the quintessential purveyor of Euro-Horror, but I have seen enough to know that I have seen one of of the worst in "Erotic Nights of the Living Dead!" That is not to say that this film is entirely uninteresting.

If money is no object, or you can pick this DVD up for a song, then the combination of eye candy, bad special effects and hysterical dubbing (anybody remember SCTV's "Rome, Italian Style" spoof from years ago? Dubbing wise, this is the real thing!)make this zombie movie fun to watch...for awhile. Cinema this bad can only last so long until you grab your DVD remote and speed up the process, or go to the main menu for the special features.

You have two men and a woman head out to "Cat Island," where zombies are purported to live. These folks don't believe the folktales, meet up with the only two inhabitants of the grave-riddled island (an elderly man with a boil on his forehead and his sultry granddaughter, played by Euro-Siren Laura Gemser), who warn the visitors to leave and... well, y'know.

What I found most shocking about the film was that the restored hardcore sex scenes advertised on the package were actually hardcore sex scenes, available in shops that refuse to sell XXX action. Now--- if this is the part you're curious about, it's only one hardcore scene, and probably tame compared to the other XXX you've seen. You get lots of soft-core, lots of beautiful women romping naked, but nothing worth shelling out hard cash for.

As for the Euro-Horror zombie flesh-chomping scenes, they are far and few between, and amongst the worst you will ever see!

The special features? The alternate scenes and the Laura Gemser gallery is so lame, you would swear the folks producing this DVD wanted to outdo the mediocrity of the film itself. The one good special feature is the trailers for other Euro-Horror films.

Rating:
Summary: doesn't excel at either genre
Review: Oh good lord what can I say about this one. With Laura Gemser starring and Joe D'amato directing, this film feels like a lost entry in the Black Emmanuelle series, but in this one she plays a voodoo girl who keeps staring off the beach of Cat Island. Do not take this as a bad thing as D'Amato's camera loves Gemser and perhaps in this film it is apparent more than their others. George Eastman of 'Baba Yaga' stars in this one as a boat captain who is hired by this skeezy oversexed (you betcha!!) lawyer type to take him to the forbidden island with his tramp dujour. So Eastman (apparently still a Name in the cast because he gets to have all his sex with his clothes on) takes them out there where the living dead attack them. Okay, the zombies don't get as much screen time as the naked chicks, but with this kind of acting, like, who can tell the difference. Combining the hardcore market and the gutmuncher market is honestly one of the most misguided ideas in the history of film, so this one gets three stars just for being a carwreck of a film that you just know you have to slow down for. I will never look at a champagne bottle the same way again, and, like Jay Slater said in his book Eaten Alive, I could only wonder what had happened to the cork... The photography of the sex scenes leaves me with one lingering query: What would D'amato have achieved in the hardcore scene if he hadn't been so misogynistic? Also kudos to the overdubbing dept.--they didn't even match the cat's yowling with it's mouth!!

Rating:
Summary: for the gutmuncher completist only...
Review: Oh good lord what can I say about this one. With Laura Gemser starring and Joe D'amato directing, this film feels like a lost entry in the Black Emmanuelle series, but in this one she plays a voodoo girl who keeps staring off the beach of Cat Island. Do not take this as a bad thing as D'Amato's camera loves Gemser and perhaps in this film it is apparent more than their others. George Eastman of 'Baba Yaga' stars in this one as a boat captain who is hired by this skeezy oversexed (you betcha!!) lawyer type to take him to the forbidden island with his tramp dujour. So Eastman (apparently still a Name in the cast because he gets to have all his sex with his clothes on) takes them out there where the living dead attack them. Okay, the zombies don't get as much screen time as the naked chicks, but with this kind of acting, like, who can tell the difference. Combining the hardcore market and the gutmuncher market is honestly one of the most misguided ideas in the history of film, so this one gets three stars just for being a carwreck of a film that you just know you have to slow down for. I will never look at a champagne bottle the same way again, and, like Jay Slater said in his book Eaten Alive, I could only wonder what had happened to the cork... The photography of the sex scenes leaves me with one lingering query: What would D'amato have achieved in the hardcore scene if he hadn't been so misogynistic? Also kudos to the overdubbing dept.--they didn't even match the cat's yowling with it's mouth!!