Island of the Living Dead (2007)
"Where the hungry dead feast on the flesh of the damned!"
Plot
A group of sea-faring treasure hunters are forced to take shelter on an apparently deserted island when their boat becomes damaged during a storm. Exploring the island whilst repairs are being carried out, the group are unaware that the island is victim to a centuries-old curse which has reanimated the dead and they still roam the place looking to feed.
Cult Italian exploitation director Bruno Mattei gets a harsh rep from me most of the time due to some of his 80s hack jobs such as Zombie Creeping Flesh and Rats: Night of Terror. His was a legacy of shameless filmmaking featuring blatant plagiarising from superior American films, copious use of stock footage, inane dialogue, awful scripts, bottom-of-the-barrel budgets…. and that’s just for starters. Called the ‘Ed Wood’ of horror in some quarters, Mattei was never going to become one of the greats but perhaps one of the most loved. His horror films are awful but in an entertaining way – the master of the ‘so bad, they’re good’ horror film. You knew what to expect from him so even more fool you if you went in hoping for something respectable. Towards the end of his life, Mattei decided to go back to the genre that gave him arguably his most famous hit, the aforementioned Zombie Creeping Flesh (Hell of the Living Dead or Virus to give it two of its alias names), and film a slew of zombie shockers back-to-back in the Philippines. Sadly, Mattei died before he could finish his hellish vision but we did get two of them - Island of the Living Dead was the first of these. Would Mattei have learnt some new tricks in his older years or would he just rinse and repeat his earlier style?
It's both amusing and ironic to know that, in a modern era of filmmaking where directors are desperately trying to ‘recapture’ the look and feel of horrors of the 80s, Mattei was actually still making exactly the same style of films up until his death in 2007. It’s like he missed the memo telling him that the era was done and dusted. The end of the 80s brought an end to the glorious era of Italian cinema and the classic splatter fests that we have come to know and love today. Mattei kept on going though, never losing that exploitation 'style’ and, save for the shot-on-digital look to the film, you could have sworn Island of the Living Dead was straight out of the gory Italian zombie flick period. I suppose this is why I wanted to like it more than I should have done (though due to the second half of the film, I ended up hating it more than I should have done). It looks, sounds and, more importantly, feels like it was from that glory era; like it has been buried away in one of those time capsules and suddenly found.
Island of the Living Dead's plot is all over the place but finding decent narratives for Italian zombie films was always like looking for a needle in a haystack. Some people arrive on an island or remote location, either looking for someone or are stranded there, and they fall prey to the hordes of the living dead. The set-up, so simple and unpretentious, changed little in the countless Italian zombie films I’ve seen and it starts the same here. The gear change midway where the zombies start talking and explaining the plot is confusing and things just go from bad to worse in the final third with a lot of ghostly goings on. This turns Island of the Living Dead into a haunted house-like fairground attraction, where the characters walk around looking in haunted mirrors, listening to phantoms playing music, drinking dodgy-looking wine and so on. This is not really that interesting and you’ll be hoping that the zombies get down to business sooner rather than later.
On a technical level, Island of the Living Dead is atrocious, but that was always half of the Mattei charm to see just how bad things could get. Pacing and editing is poor, there are so many plot holes that it's not worth losing sleep over and even stuff like the cinematography becomes problematic as lots of the film is too dark to get a glimpse at the carnage hidden beneath. The acting is clearly appalling, even before the audio track has been looped and the characters dubbed over, thanks to the obvious body language cues. Lead actress Yvette Yzon is great to look at but she and the rest of the cast are mind-bogglingly awful. Literally everything they say is communicated with the wrong tone of voice. People shout when they should whisper. They talk quick and aggressive when the scene dictates a quiet word. It really is a poor dub but I can't imagine the original soundtrack would be much better. Outside of Yzon's character, the rest of the cast are just zombie chow waiting for their moment in the spotlight.
Speaking of the zombies, despite the fact they're side-tracked a little for the ghostly haunted house elements, they're like they just stepped out of one of Mattei's earlier films. The make-up effects look ok – not exactly believable from a ‘these zombies have apparently been dead for hundreds of years’ point of view but they fit right at home with the traditional Italian zombie look (i.e. a bit of paint and some glued-on oats). The zombie priests look more like something from The Blind Dead films of the 70s than anything from Fulci. The zombies are pretty useless too, unable to overpower the humans in a number of ten-to-one situations, and allow them to escape numerous times. Perhaps this explains why the gore is so thin on the ground. Those expecting a return to the glory days of the gruesome Italian zombie film will be sorely disappointed at the lack of intestine-rippings, eye-gougings and skull-smashings. You could always count on these old exploitation flicks to deliver some cheap and nasty gore so it's a shame that couldn't be replicated again here.
Final Verdict
Whilst many of his comrades retired or moved on, Mattei stuck it out till the last and was making these horror films right up until his death. You can’t fault him on commitment. It’s this nostalgia factor which goes a long way to papering over the multitude of sins that Mattei spoils us with. Made on a low budget and with the usual Mattei trademarks, Island of the Living Dead starts off promisingly enough but when the focus shifts away from being a throwback zombie film to the nonsense with the ghosts and talking zombies, it loses its charm factor and rarely manages to capture it again.
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Island of the Living Dead Director(s): Bruno Mattei Writer(s): Antonio Tentori (story), Bruno Mattei (screenplay), Giovanni Paolucci (screenplay) Actor(s): Yvette Yzon, Gaetano Russo, Alvin Anson, Ydalia Suarez, Jim Gaines, Thomas Wallwort, Gary King Roberts Duration: 91 mins |  |
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